The Impact of Sales Force Effectiveness Implementation on Sales Achievement Performance The Case Study of a Global Biopharmaceutical Company in Central Taiwan

[[abstract]]The environment in which pharmaceutical companies promote their product has become increasingly tough over recent years as a number of trends and factors drive changes. As the effect of patent expires, shrinking piplines and rising R&D costs impact companies. In addition, because NHI intervention, cost-containment policy, regulatory constraints on promotion, ever more influencers on prescribing, they are under increasing pressure to delivery greater productivity from their sales forces. The drive for increasing sales force productivity is taking place in a difficult environment. As the increasing physician workload with concern over the effects of biased promotion?pharmaceutical sales reps are finding it more difficult to gain time with their core customer. Furthermore, the network of prescribing decision maker and influencers is becoming more complicated. How to optimizing sales force effectiveness become a critical key issue in pharmaceutical company. In the case study, target company is a renowned global biopharmaceutical company committed to improving the health and quality of human life in each of core therapeutic fields: fertility, gynecology and selected areas of anesthesia, immunology and oncology. 5 This study attempted to assess the impact of Sales Force Effectiveness program on sales and analyse relationship between selling skill and sales achievement performance. Based on the company?s SFE program that defined the factors of core selling skill inclunding 7 important selling abilities: precall planning, opening, probing, presentation, objection handling, closing, postcall recording. To analyse the sales growth rate after SFE program execution and use sales manager?s coaching report ranking PSR selling skill score then analysis each skill item effective in increasing sales. A random sample of 50 coaching report selected from 89 reports in company?s central sales force team. In addition, quota attainment was obtained for an objective measurement. The findings from this study provided insights into several areas. First, this study showed that the SFE program does reflect the actual sales growth. Second, an overall relationship between selling ability and performance was found this study also shows clearly that selling skill consists of differing components and these components may or may not be determinants in performance. The following dimensions of probing ability were found to be significantly related to achievement performance on sales target. Key word: productivity?sales force effectiveness?core selling skill?coaching?sales performanc