5 Sales Acceleration Technologies That Drive Sales and Marketing Alignment

March 10, 2015●Chelsi Linderman

Oil and water. The Hatfields and McCoys. Sales and marketing.  Too often these two revenue-generating groups are in conflict with each other.

You know how the battle goes.

Sales complains that marketing is not producing enough quality leads. Marketing fires back that sales isn’t working the supplied leads hard enough.

The gloves come off and between all the bickering, business slips through the cracks.

Sales acceleration technologies that integrate seamlessly with your CRM can stop the finger-pointing and align your sales and marketing teams.

These five tools will help you bridge the gap between these departments, and will generate revenue for your company:

1. Predictive analytics

Infusing predictive analytics into your CRM seamlessly injects the power of big data into your marketing and sales workflow. As predictive analytics technology applies insights from billions of sales interactions to the leads generated by marketing, it is able to prescriptively sort those leads according to which are most likely to convert into opportunities and close. Armed with analytics, reps know which leads to work and when to contact them.

2. Dialing technology

Industry research indicates that only 27 percent of leads supplied to sales by marketing are ever contacted.  We also know that immediacy matters when it comes to contacting leads, as 78 percent of buyers choose the vendor that responds to their needs first.  Good leads can languish in the Bermuda Triangle that often exists between sales and marketing, taking so long to get contacted that they just disappear.

Dialing technology solves these sales problems.  A prescriptive dialer can pull the most relevant leads to the top of a rep’s list, enabling that rep to communicate with the right prospects, at the right time, with the right message.  Dialers integrate easily with other technologies like Salesforce.

Dialer technology further maximizes reps’ time by automatically logging data to the CRM, offering single-click dialing, automating voicemail and using local callerID display to increase connect rates.

3. Email tracking

Email is traditionally considered to be a marketing tool, but email tracking technology enables sales and marketing to share the power of the most preferred method of professional communication.

Email tracking technology can provide real-time alerts to sales reps, delivering increased awareness of the buying signals exhibited by marketing leads.

4. Data-driven hiring

Of course, all the sales acceleration technology in the world is ineffective if placed in the wrong hands. To maintain mutual goodwill and enthusiasm between your sales and marketing departments, you have to get the right bodies in the right seats.

Data science applied to sales hiring measures the character dispositions of your applicants, scoring them on key traits in order to remove the guesswork from hiring.

Further, this type of technology allows you to audit the key attributes of all your employees to identify trends and themes that are specific to your business model and company culture. You can know how likely your reps are to succeed with the leads marketing hands them before they even step on the floor.

5. Gamification

With sales acceleration technology and the right people in the right seats, the last key for better aligning your sales and marketing teams is to keep both departments motivated in supporting the other, making each less inclined to play the blame game.

Gamification technologies used to motivate sales reps have been shown to boost sales performance by as much as 40 percent or more.

Paired with predictive analytics technology, gamification can leverage your company’s data and an individual rep’s performance history to pinpoint what motivates each rep.

Whenever leads are handed from marketing to sales, conditions are ripe for problems. Technology offers tools that can solve common lead generation snags, and align sales and marketing around company goals.

The Sales Manager’s Success Checklist

By Steven A. Rosen

January sales are in, how are you doing? Are you on track for a successful year?

This is a difficult question to answer.

How can you assess if you are on track? It is far to early to look your at sales.

Go through the checklist below and see how many items you have completed to ensure that you are on track.

Here are the top 10 questions you should ask yourself and your sales managers to gauge if you/they have set the foundation for success.

The STAR 10 Point Checklist

1. Have You Identified Your 2-3 Key Success Factors?

As the leader of your team it is critical that you have identified 2-3 things that your team needs to do extremely well in order to be successful. Keep your plan simple. Many times managers tend to complicate things because they really don’t know what key success factors (KSFs) are going to make a difference so they come up with too many of them. If you want your sales team to perform and perform well you need to give them the gift of focus. Decide on your KSFs and measure them monthly.

Watch my video “Focus on What is Going to Make you Successful!”

Have you identified and communicated your key success factors to your team? If you have, then give yourself a  √

Otherwise get it done NOW!

2. Do All Your Sales Reps Have Strong Business Plans?

In order to get a jump-start on the year, reps should have developed their annual business plans. Two key areas of focus are: what accounts represent the best opportunity to achieve their quota, and which accounts is new business going to come from. Strong business plans have clear steps and tactics on what the rep needs to do to move business forward with each account.

Watch the video Key Sales Management Actions To Prepare for 2015

If all your reps have strong well-articulated business plans, give yourself a √

3. Have You Built Your Coaching Plan?

Sales coaching is the #1 sales management activity that drives sales performance. The reality is your most precious resource as a sales manager is your time. You only have so much time. Many managers look at coaching as just another “to-do” item on their task list. In fact, coaching is the most important activity in which one must allocate time. Realistically, how many managers take the time to plan how many days they will spend in the field, how many days they will work with each rep and what the monthly breakdown is by month? If you want to better plan your coaching time then get your FREE STAR Coaching Planner and build your plan this week.

If you download the STAR Coaching Planner and build your coaching plan give yourself a √

4. Have You Established a Coaching Plan for Each Rep? 

A big part of your role is to develop your sales people to become better. It is about moving your B’s to B+ etc. In order to do so, you will need to gain a commitment from each of your sales people to decide on what area(s) they will be open to working on and how they will do so. A focused coaching plan for each of your reps enables you to help them develop 1-2 specific skill sets or behaviors. Remember small changes in skills have large impact on sales.

If you have built specific development/coaching plans with each of your reps for 2015 then give yourself a √

If not, get a copy of my FREE Goal Planning Guide for each of your sales people to use as a tool to build their goals/sales development plan.

5. Do You Have the Right Team In Place?

Are there any sales people on your team that should not be there? If so, I recommend that you deal with them early in the year. In fact, if you believe that you have reps that don’t belong on your team, why are they still there? You need to move NOW. You can’t afford to have weak reps on your team.

Cut your losses if you haven’t already done so.

If you feel that you have the right sales people on your team give yourself a √

6. Have You Been Out In The Field This Year?

I know I am obsessed with the value of sales managers being out in the field coaching. Many of my clients have been so busy with sales meetings that they have not spent any time in the field so far this year. Shame. Yes this is a shame as it is bad business. If you haven’t been out in the field with each of your sales people then make sure you plan to do so by the end of this moth.

If you have been out in the field with each of your reps by the end of this month give yourself a √

If not, “don’t pass “Go” and don’t collect $200.”

7. Do Your Reps Know What Their Quotas Are?

I know that quota setting is a difficult process. However, sales people need/want to know what their goals are. If you want your sales people focused and producing, they must know how much sales they need to bring in.

If all your reps know how they are doing YTD vs. quota give yourself a √

8. Do Your Reps Know and Understand Their Compensation Plan?

I hope by now you or the head of sales has rolled out the compensation plan. If not, then what the hell are you waiting for? Sales people need to understand how they are being compensated. Companies that fail to communicate the compensation plan in the first month of the year tend to lag in comparison to their proactive competitors.

Given your company has already rolled out their plan it is up to you to address your reps questions or concerns.

If both of these factors have been met give yourself a √

9. Is Your Sales Team Engaged?

It has been proven in multiple studies that highly engaged sales reps create highly engaged customers. They deliver great sales and profit.

Have you had an opportunity to connect with each of your sales people and see how they are feeling? If you have, give yourself a √

10. Are You Feeling Energized?

As the leader of your team it is very important that you are feeling good and that your energy levels are high. Your team feeds off you. They can sense your mood and your level of energy. If you are not feeling energized then find a way to get yourself feeling great. Go to the gym, go for a run or do whatever it takes to get yourself in the right place to lead.

If you are feeling highly energized give yourself a √

Conclusion:

After reviewing the list, feel free to comment on any important items I should add to my checklist. Also please let me know if there are any items that are on the list but not important.

Count the number of ticks or checkmarks you have given yourself. If you have 8 or more then you are going to have a great year in 2015. If you scored less than 8, the good news is that you still have time to get things in place. At the end of the month, review your list and see how much progress you have made. There is a relationship between my sales managers checklist and success in sales.

Success is a mindset, make up your mind and you will achieve success.

Now let’s just do it!

Is there still a place for the mighty pharmaceutical sales force?

By Nicole Gray | February 23, 2015

For the better part of the last decade, the diminishing role of the pharmaceutical sales representative as an integral part of the pharmaceutical sales model has been a hot topic. In the last six months, news of sales reps being banned from a large, acute-care hospital system made industry waves. A week later, pharma sales reps were under attack in Australia when a group of physicians banded together to start a “No Advertising Please” campaign designed to keep reps out.

Add to that the threat of increasing reliance on digital non-personal promotion, which has been likened to a bogeyman determined to snuff the life out of the pharmaceutical sales profession, and the picture looks bleak. In fact, a reportpublished by Cegedim Strategic Data in January found that many physicians do like the convenience of digital marketing, especially email communications, video streaming, automated detailing, and webinars.

Sales reps are still necessary and relevant

But despite the whiz-bang appeal of digital marketing, many physicians still prefer face-to-face communication, and most large pharmaceutical companies still rely on well-trained sales forces to deliver increasingly complex messages, in an ever-tightening timeframe, under circumstances that are not always ideal.

AstraZeneca (AZ) has more than 6,000 sales reps in the U.S., including a large specialty sales force. As part of its growth strategy, AZ has invested heavily in oncology R&D, resulting in a strong pipeline and the upcoming launch of Lynparza (olaparib), which was approved in the E.U. in October 2014 and in the U.S. in December 2014, for the treatment of BRCA-mutated advanced ovarian cancer.

AstraZeneca’s oncology strategy

AZ is optimistic about Lynparza, which is part of a new class of oncology drugs known as PARP inhibitors. With annual earnings projections as high as $2 billion, AZ is in the process of building up its commercial team in order to support Lynparza and other oncology drugs coming out of the pipeline.

A key part of AZ’s launch strategy for Lynparza is to train more specialty sales reps, who have oncology experience as well as the ability to convey nuanced and complex information to physicians while building long-term relationships.

Sanofi’s diabetes-focused dream team

By contrast, Sanofi is facing the challenge of protecting its diabetes therapeutics market share from the competitive pressure that Novo Nordisk is leveraging, especially in the long-acting basal-insulin space.

One way that Sanofi is trying to push back Novo’s market encroachment—Novo’s  long-acting insulin Levemir has been taking roughly 2% market share per year from Lantus, Sanofi’s best-selling drug—is by shoring up its sales team. Recently, the company replaced one-third of its sales managers in its U.S. diabetes business, while continuing to train diabetes-focused reps to tackle the endocrinology market and get the word out (eventually) about Toujeo, an innovative long-acting insulin that is currently being reviewed by the FDA and is expected to win approval later this year.

"We need experienced representatives who can uncover insights about a customer’s practice, patients and payer environment as a basis for uncovering unmet need, and resulting in quality healthcare decisions," said Sanofi VP and Head of General Medicine Sales Scott Oehrlein in an email interview with BioPharma Dive. "That is why face-to-face interaction is so important. Non-personal promotion can’t replace the quality a sales professional brings, especially during launch. However, the right balance of personal and non-personal promotion is the key to success."

What comes next?

In good times and bad, there is a place for talented and well-trained pharmaceutical sales representatives. While in previous decades, reps may have shown up at a physician’s office toting a brief case full of samples, detail aids, and reprints, they are likely to be traveling lighter now, with an iPad and an array of other interactive digital tools.

Is the era of the pharmaceutical sales representative coming to an end? No. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 16% annualized job growth for pharma sales reps between 2010 and 2020. The takeaway: Despite some challenges and a shifting landscape, the pharmaceutical sales representative is here to stay—at least for the foreseeable future.