Critical Guidelines On Key Account Management And Good Communication
One of the ongoing challenges facing the pharmaceutical company is the attraction, motivation, management and handling of key salespeople. The company itself has a significant reputation in the marketplace and has allocated certain resources to the development of its reputation and the dissemination of its cutting-edge products. Every organisation is, of course, very dynamic and its ongoing success will depend on the correct, but complex interaction of many moving parts, on an ongoing basis. Most notably, the all-important clients must be handled very carefully and certain key account management policies and techniques must be developed, so that mature relationships proliferate.
These days, key account management training is so important as the company develops a line of procedural guidelines, disseminated from the highest levels for clarity. However, one of the major challenges facing the company hierarchy is one of communicating to its sales staff through pharmaceutical sales training and in turn ensuring that the level of communication, both outgoing and incoming to and from a client organisation, is perfectly formed.
In truth, a relationship between a supplier and buyer may rise or fall on the strength of communication, which can sometimes be as relatively tenuous as an interpersonal relationship between two people — the key account client contact and the key account manager at the pharmaceutical company end.
When it has been established that an account must retain “key” status, the pharmaceutical company must define the nature of this relationship very clearly and must communicate the appropriate elements of this definition throughout the company through good pharmaceutical sales training. This will ensure that any responses are always well engineered and stable. Of course it is difficult to automate every element of the policy; after all, human elements are always present. It must be recognised that there is potential for a breakdown of relationship if too much emphasis is placed on a particular individual at the interface level. It is much more preferable to build a variety of different tiers of communication between the company and client organisations, be they informal or formal, thereby negating the effects of catastrophic failure.
The pharmaceutical company would be best served by establishing and implementing regular development, planning and review meetings and exercises, with the clear aim of “over delivering” to satisfy the relationship.
When an important relationship is in the process of development, we should remember that financial considerations are not the only motivators in question and both parties should see the dissemination of confidential information as an important ingredient, going forward. As such, the pharmaceutical company must be well aware of who, within the client organisation, is the key person responsible for receiving such information, clearly identifying the role and ensuring success. Without putting too fine a point on it, interpersonal communication and relationships must be very sophisticated, but it is equally important that the focus is not on the particular personality associated with the individual fitting the role. From time to time a “key” individual may leave his or her role and should this happen, ongoing functionality will not be compromised.
Alan Gillies is the CEO of L2L Consulting, a cutting-edge pharma consultancy firm which specialises in optimising productivity and performance within international companies by applying tailored organisational strategies.