CEO Insights

Identifying and Nurturing Effective Sales Leaders in Pharma—A Blueprint for Success

Written By: Dave Manning

When it comes to building market share and driving sales, leadership is key. Effective leaders inspire their teams by exemplifying organizational values, offering clear guidance, robust support, and nurturing a culture of continuous improvement, thus empowering field reps to excel across territories regardless of industry, market, or personal challenges. However, when it comes time to fill a leadership role, this question always arises: to hire the best, should we promote from within or bring in someone from another organization?  

Not everyone is meant to lead, despite their tenure with the company or performance. When filling a sales leader position, it’s crucial to find the best candidate—someone who can inspire and mobilize a team to meet key business objectives while fostering professional growth within the ranks. This calls for a person with a distinct blend of hard and soft skills, sales and leadership experience, and specific personality traits. 

While there is no hard-and-fast rule for when one approach is better, a few important factors can help to inform and guide the decision-making process and help to drive the right hire, whether that person is promoted from within the organization or brought in from the outside. 

Leadership Traits—What to Look for

Whether you are looking at internal or external candidates, your organization should be identifying and evaluating individuals who demonstrate the hallmarks of an excellent sales leader. You goal should be to identify candidates who can help chart the course for the entire sales organization, develop individual team members and drive results through the strategic use of mentoring and coaching. 

In my experience, the most effective leaders have both the skill sets and personality traits that are needed to bring out the best in their entire sales team. 

 Among the sought-after attributes, you should be looking for individual who demonstrate: 

• Strong industry and clinical knowledge 
• Proven selling skills  
• Strong overall business acumen (that is, the ability to connect the dots from where the team is now to where it needs to go and find opportunities to create cross-functional partnering with other parts of the organization—such as commercial operations, human resources, and marketing, and with key opinion leaders in the field—to help advance all sales objectives) 

However, what really sets apart the strongest candidates are some of the less-celebrated traits, such as: 

• Strong listening and effective communication skills 
• Empathy  
• High emotional intelligence 

No matter the approach, when hiring the best leader, acknowledge that you are looking to fill gaps that may exist on the team, choose a sales leader who can articulate the vision and chart the course for the field reps, and develop the trust and rapport that is needed to get the team to follow. 

Internal versus External Candidates—Balancing Risk and Reward 

If you’re lucky enough to have already one or more field reps who meet the requirements of an emerging leader on your team, congratulations! Hiring from within the ranks means you can bypass some of the inherent onboarding of someone new.  

You’re also confident that the internal candidate already has strong product knowledge, is familiar with the culture and systems that are already in place, and is keenly aware of the competitive challenges and intricacies of the various sales territories. This means that the onboarding process associated with the promotion to leadership will be shorter and less costly, allowing you to concentrate on developing their leadership skills. 

While there are solid upsides to promoting an internal sales rep to a leadership position, there may also be some downsides. Unless your organization already has a formal management training and succession planning program in place, the individual considered for promotion may not yet have had an opportunity to demonstrate the types of formal and informal leadership skills that are needed to succeed in the new role.  

If you are thinking primarily about focusing on promoting just those field reps who are top performers in meeting quotas or growing their territories, think again. Not every top performer is equipped for leadership. If they don’t have the emotional intelligence, coaching abilities, and rapport to build trust and motivate others to be top performers, they won’t necessarily be the best candidates for a leadership role. 

One of the strongest cases for hiring an external candidate for a leadership position is the opportunity to re-invigorate the existing sales organization. Given an external candidate meets the basic skill and knowledge requirement to do the job, they often bring a needed “fresh” perspective and insights to break from the status quo. 

On the flip side, when filling a leadership position by hiring an external candidate, there will also be a learning gap that needs to be filled relative to the company, product, systems, processes and tools. There is also the risk that the new person won’t fit in with the culture or be accepted by the sales team. 

Ensuring a Smooth Leadership Transition

Here are some recommendations to consider when starting the process of filling a leadership position: 

• Broaden the field of candidates. Even if you have a strong opportunity to promote from within, it’s always a best practice to evaluate one or more external candidates for comparison’s sake. This will help you benchmark the talent pool and either identify a strong candidate or validate your preference for an internal promotion. 
• Look beyond just sales numbers when vetting any candidate. Beyond their personal record of success, evaluate if they have the core competencies, communication skills, and emotional intelligence for managing and motivating others (or can be coached to leadership excellence). 
• Prepare the person to succeed. Ensure the candidate understands all the expectations related to the position and understands that a variety of quantitative and qualitative metrics will be used to assess their performance going forward. 
• Formalize the management training and development process. To ensure a smooth onboarding process, it’s important all parties must be aligned in terms of the support and resources that will be provided, both from executive leadership and field sales reps. 

Expect a Mixed Response

Change is difficult for some and exciting for others. Anytime there is a change in leadership, there is bound to be a flood of mixed emotions among your existing field reps.  

For instance, when you promote from within, you risk alienating team members who may feel they have been “passed over” for that opportunity. Some reps might feel frustrated or reluctant and need coaching to help improve their understanding of the situation and redirect their attitude. Similarly, others may feel threatened by, or mistrusting of, a new leader who is brought in from the outside. It’s critical to recognize and understand the emotions at play so they can be addressed head-on. 

Here are some tips for a smooth transition: 

• Articulate to the team the thought process that went into the selection to ensure transparency 
• Rally the troops to welcome and support the new leader 
• Restate the expectation that the new leader will continue to nurture ongoing professional development and create opportunities for advancement for every sales rep on the team 

The Bottom Line

It will take time for the team to embrace a new leader. From the onset, the leader must build trust and rapport by connecting with each sales rep.  

Leadership is half art and science. Business acumen is a must — however, there are human elements associated with strong leadership cannot be overlooked. The more any leader gets to know their team members personally — their wants, aspirations, motivations, and ongoing challenges — the better leaders they’ll be and the more their field reps will unite behind them. Sales reps who feel a genuine connection with their leader are more likely to go all in, in terms of supporting and trusting that the most recent hiring decision was the right one.