Pioneering Sales Force Excellence

Pioneering Sales Force Excellence

How Abbott’s commitment to excellence is defining a new era for SFE.

The modern business world is founded upon a litany of threeletter acronyms (TLAs); from CRM to ITC, through ROI to KPI, the theory suggests that if your strategy is going to prosper, you’d first better deploy a TLA. In the competitive UK pharmaceutical industry, one particular buzz-phrase has been dominating commercial thinking for the past five years: SFE. But while use of the term has become routine for the sector, defining it is much more challenging.

Traditionally, SFE is viewed as Sales Force Effectiveness – a metrics tool through which sales force activity can be measured against productivity and actual sales performance. Facilitated by often complex CRM systems, traditional SFE has been built around targeting, call-rates and prescription sales per ‘brick’. For Abbott, however, SFE has taken on a whole new meaning, where the success of a field force depends upon a variety of critical factors, of which targeting is just one element. Here, motivation, resource allocation, skills training and professional development all combine to determine the relative successes and failures of the sales effort. In this brave new world, SFE stands for Sales Force Excellence, and Abbott is emerging as an important thought-leader in the area.

A model for growth

Recent data shows that, among its peer group of large pharmaceutical companies,Abbott is the fastest-growing outside the US with growth of 11 percent, making it the only organisation of its kind to experience double-digit growth during Q1 2007 (IMS HEALTH Midas data). In the UK,Abbott has enjoyed a 20 percent increase in pharmaceutical sales revenues through the same period, which is in no small part due to its very low staff turnover rate and the strong commitment of its employees.

Such statistics vindicate Abbott’s focus on excellence, with the company continuing to reap the rewards of an innovative modular programme that began over five years ago, which set about outlining, developing and delivering an integrated strategic direction for staff in three key areas: Business Excellence, Marketing Excellence and Sales Force Excellence.The results speak for themselves.

Motivation

A motivated workforce lies at the heart of Abbott’s SFE strategy, and Abbott has worked hard to create a culture that encourages dialogue across all areas of the business to ensure that the professional environment supports the pursuit of excellence.

“Sales Force Excellence is about providing a framework that supports people when they are working,” says Ronan Moran, Sales Director at Abbott.“It’s a structured approach that looks to ensure that sales professionals are happy with the benefits they receive and the professional tools they are given to support them in their roles. It also provides a clarity that helps them understand what is expected of them, and it facilitates communication to ensure that management understands the challenges they face and how best we can support them.”

The approach is working. Data from Pf’s 2007 Company Perception, Motivation and Satisfaction Survey places Abbott at the top of the industry in terms of a motivated field force.This independent survey asks respondents to indicate how satisfied they are with their current employers against a number of critical motivational factors, such as company culture, job security, personal development, salary and bonus.Abbott outstripped the industry average in 14 of the 16 key factors.Moreover, satisfaction in areas such as ‘relationship with manager’, ‘company culture’,‘job security, ‘accountability for sales’ and ‘personal development’ massively out-performed the collective industry (above).

It’s good to talk

The Pf survey is just one example of how, through its SFE focus, Abbott encourages its field force to speak out and enter into meaningful dialogue.“SFE provides a voice for the field force to feed into areas that they believe may need to be improved,” says Ronan Moran.

“Internal surveys, as well as external studies such as the Pf survey, provide an invaluable temperature check of our field force – over 70 percent of our sales professionals returned the Pf survey, so it is representative – and we take the results very seriously. These surveys are anonymous, but they give a clear indication of how our employees feel about the company.”

In fact, they are feeling pretty good. Abbott’s sales staff turnover has halved in the past four years – it is now 7 percent, one of the lowest in the industry.The industry average is 15 percent.

To enhance the positive feedback from its field force,Abbott identifies the lowest-performing areas identified in the surveys each year to consider strategies for improvement.This is done in partnership with Regional Business Managers and Sales Managers to develop key projects designed to increase satisfaction and, by association, enhance performance.

“Communication is a critical factor in our SFE effort,” says Jo Cowlin, Sales Force Excellence Manager at Abbott.“There has to be a transparency in our communication, and this, in turn, encourages dialogue. Sales Force Excellence has become a tool through which we can address the issues of our field force and develop strategies that will take us all to higher levels of excellence and productivity.”

Growth planning

A central component to Abbott’s success has been its commitment to the professional development of its sales professionals.This it terms as ‘Growth Planning’, where growth represents ‘personal growth’ as opposed to ‘business growth’. In reality, an investment in the former is a vital step towards achieving the latter. Regional Business Managers (RBMs), as the key link between head office and the field force, play a critical role in the Growth Planning process.

“All of our RBMs have gone through special coaching and have been up-skilled to play the lead role in the growth-planning process,” says Ronan Moran.“Each year, sales representatives have quarter cycle appraisals with the RBMs. At the year-end appraisal, they go through a plan that looks at their aspirations, identifies development needs and opportunities to increase skillsets.

The RBMs are coached to tease out training requirements so that, by the end of the process, we have a clear picture of individual needs.

This goes into a succession planning matrix so that everyone can see how it personally affects them.” Once again, the Pf survey demonstrates Abbott sales professionals’ satisfaction with both the appraisal system and personal development opportunities at the company.

Accountability

SFE cannot function solely on factors such as motivation and personal development, with traditional performance metrics a vital ingredient in measuring progress. Success at the bottom line is, of course, the ultimate judgement. However,Abbott is convinced that developing the right culture remains paramount.“In isolation,‘soft’ issues such as personal development will only take you so far,” says Ronan Moran.

“But when you can demonstrate that people enjoy the culture and want to stay with the company – and our low turnover rate certainly shows that – it proves you have a motivated field force and you can tackle the ‘hard issues’ together, and more effectively. At Abbott, we treat our sales professionals as partners and give them responsibility, and with that responsibility comes accountability; if they accept that accountability and are happy, the productivity comes through.And this truly is Sales Force Excellence.”

As the fastest-growing pharmaceutical company outside the US in Q1, and with satisfaction rates well in excess of the industry average, it’s difficult to argue with Abbott’s approach. In fact, in a business world dominated by three-letter acronyms (TLAs), in terms of a fiveyear commitment to the pursuit of excellence, one could be forgiven for lauding such SFE achievements as demonstrable ROI.

If you would like to know more about the company that has outstripped its peers in 14 of the 16 factors in Pf's staff satisfaction survey, please visit www.abbottuk.com.