Written By: Dave Manning
November 28, 2023 – 6 min read
In the high-stakes arena of life sciences, sales teams face challenges with unprecedented scope. Staying ahead requires sophisticated strategies and unwavering dedication.
The keystone to this effort? Sales leaders.
These leaders must break down barriers to success and inspire field sales reps toward excellence. However, they often lack the skills or resources to cultivate world-class performance within their sales teams. This article dissects this issue, offering actionable insights for sales leaders in life sciences.
Similar to how changes in automotive trends led to the tagline “This is not your father’s Cadillac,” life sciences’ commercial landscape has seen revolutionary changes in recent years. Many factors have driven this shift, leading to compounding degrees of complexity directly influencing sales efforts:
If your sales strategy is still focused primarily on “hitting the numbers” based on reach and frequency, you’re missing the mark. To navigate this complicated landscape, field teams need support and guidance from conscientious, empathetic leaders who can provide the guidance and coaching they need to break down barriers and create engagement. It’s not about telling reps what to do, it’s about providing the necessary tools and coaching to transform performance.
If your sales strategy is still focused primarily on “hitting the numbers” based on reach and frequency, you’re missing the mark.
Coaching is an indispensable tool for developing your sales team. Strikingly, about 75% of sales leaders admit they devote less than fifth of their time coaching sales reps. This reality squanders a crucial opportunity to create profound change.
The truth is, that sales leaders should be spending 80%-80% of their time on coaching-related activities. The benefits of prioritizing a coaching culture are substantial, driving revenue generation, talent retention, and deal closure rates. Indeed, coaching aligns individual performance with organizational goals, bolstering revenue.
Where does it all start? Leadership.
As commercial leaders assess their sales organizations and search for opportunities to improve, they should be asking themselves two important questions:
While field reps provide the execution, it’s up to sales leaders to identify performance gaps and work towards closing them. High-performing sales leaders understand the importance of nurturing talent instead of exclusively driving numbers. They invest time and effort in supporting reps to identify and tackle barriers to high performance.
High-performing sales leaders understand the importance of nurturing talent instead of exclusively driving numbers. They invest time and effort in supporting reps to identify and tackle barriers to high performance.
While field reps are the “boots on the ground,” as a sales leader, you must work to identify and address the gap that exists between what is (Current performance) and what could be (the sales rep’s full potential) and then work to close the gap. The best sales leaders don’t fixate solely on driving the numbers. Rather they invest the time and develop the strategies that are needed to truly enhance the talent on the ground, and they help individual reps to identify and overcome the performance and attitudinal barriers that are holding them back.
Performance drives numbers, not the other way around.
Just as we’re told to put on our oxygen masks first before helping others on a plance, today’s sales leaders must reflect on their own developmental needs and take steps to address them (with support from executive leadership) if they are to become visionary, trusted mentors for their field force.
Three major factors often contribute mediocre sales performance among leadership:
The good news is it’s never too late for a paradigm shift to better meet the needs of today’s complex sales landscape. To identify opportunities for self-improvement, sales leaders should ask themselves:
Effective sales leaders inspire and enable excellence among their field reps, which in turn delivers tangible results for all stakeholders.
Exceptional sales leaders cultivate excellence among their field reps, reaping benefits for all stakeholders:
Strong sales leadership isn’t merely about process management – it’s about cultivating and leading people. The effort invested in developing competent, visionary sales leaders and fostering a pervasive coaching culture invariably yields a handsome return on investment.
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