We don’t do much work in the pharmaceutical market but I do have a couple of friends who sell for the big players. SellingPower.com’s article Have You Heard Who€™s Hiring? discusses a downsizing trend in sales hiring that is occurring in that specific market.

€œThe days of armies of sales reps in the field driving revenues are over,€ Davenport says in a recent Business Wire story. €œIt will no longer be about numbers and volume €“ now the focus will shift to productivity and performance of the remaining sales staff.€

This comment is spot on even though it seems counter-intuitive. My sales friends in this industry have mentioned that their roles have consisted of a strong “shake and howdy” approach. They have both traveled in their territory on a regular basis taking samples into doctor’s offices and then taking the staff out for lunch or dinner. Not what you would call a “focus on productivity” in most other industries.

Now that the companies are changing their focus, the salesperson numbers will cease to expand at the outrageous numbers they have been at for the past decade. That means the competition for the top performers will increase dramatically.

The overabundance of talent flooding the market will also impact how pharmaceutical companies operate. Instead of focusing on recruitment and hiring, companies will need to redirect resources into programs that reward, recognize, and retain the top performers most likely to seize on shiny, new opportunities elsewhere.

Retention activities should always be a priority in any industry. However, as this industry shifts more towards productivity, the top salespeople at one company will become the top recruiting targets for a competitor. This fact is common to many industries but appears to be a nascent trend in Big Pharma.

Yet, smart people run these companies and they are making the right adjustments (sound advice no matter what industry you are in):

Companies are already responding by opening up more career €œtracks€ for salespeople who have no ambitions to jump into management €“ a group whose numbers grew from 57 percent to 74 percent from 2003 to 2004 alone. Wilcox says such developments will only increase in importance as the competition for the best salespeople continues to grow.

€œIt€™s crucial that pharmaceutical companies do all they can to hire and retain the right people with the right competencies, skill sets, and experience,€ he says, €œand to make sure they are deployed in the most effective manner possible.€

Sounds like competencies (aptitudes), skill sets (sales skills) and deployed in the most effective manner (sales development plan).

Of course I’m biased.

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From CNNMoney.com comes a humorous article titled Do CEOs make lousy dads (and moms)?  The Q&A format is a discussion of an entertaining new book from a former comedy programmer at HBO.  The guy is now a CEO of an executive search firm in Los Angeles who almost lost his wife during an armed robbery.

The article starts with some stats from a monster.com survey:

…found that 58% think their employers should do more to accommodate the demands of fatherhood; 71% of those with a child under age 5 took a paternity leave when it was offered. The poll also found that, if money were no object, 68% of fathers would consider being stay-at-home dads.

I’m not sure what accommodations they are looking for and I know I could not be a stay-at-home dad.  There must be a happy medium in there.  Anyway, on to the author who was clearly out-of-control in his work/life balance:

I used to be the kind of guy who would be texting clients while riding the Matterhorn at Disneyland with my daughters. It was nuts.

And later on this tongue-in-cheek gem:

They (his family) like me better. I play with my kids now. I don’t take work calls at dinnertime anymore. I’ve accepted that, at home, I don’t have the control over events that I have at the office, which is why most CEOs have trouble with family life. You can’t fire your kids, although I am thinking of transferring them, as soon as I find the right storage facility.

It’s a fun article to read before Father’s Day with a good message.

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