Pharmaceutical Sales Rep Training - Which Is The Bigger Dilemma?

Training has always been an integral part of a strong Pharmaceutical company. More so to the company's field force or sales force. Since pharma sales force will be responsible to turn solid marketing ideas into flowing revenue, training becomes even more important.

But unfortunately, Pharma Companies face big dilemma when come to training the sales force.

Here's the dilemma: What if we trained them and they leave, and what if we do not train them and they stay?

So, which dilemma is bigger...training or not training?

I'll go with the 'train-but-leave' Pharma sales rep and I'll share with you my argument for that in this article.

Pharmaceutical Companies experience one of the highest turnover-rate for their sales force. Even though Pharma Industry offers high basic salary and attractive perks, they are not enough to keep Sales Reps forever. They will leave eventually, and the reasons for that are many, which include:

. Better job offer

. Dissatisfaction with overall working condition: managers, peers, workload, etc.

. Personal reasons e.g. marriage, parenting, move to new areas, further study.

In short, leaving a company is natural.

Now training comes into the picture.

A new sales rep will at least get a basic NAPSRX training after joining the company. Generally, the basic training covers basic foundation for products training, sales and marketing, and personal role or administration.

The goal for this basic training is to prepare the Pharma rep to do the job right, and instill a good 'come-to-work' behavior.

If we run a simple survey to a new Pharma rep to know the reason for choosing the job, 9 out of 10 people will say because of the money. And this is a very important piece of information as you shall see later.

It is not a secret that a good Pharma Company offers high incentive payout to motivate its sales force. One company I used to work for had the salary to incentive ratio of 40:60. It simply means that total incentive annually is higher than the total annual salary.