Combining Sales Coaching and Field Based Compliance Monitoring to Improve Results

Background and Challenge

A rapidly growing biotech company was interested in improving organizational efficiency and sales performance. As part of the effort, they conducted a critical review of several departmental functions, looking for opportunities to eliminate unnecessary redundancies. At the same time, the sales team leaders were struggling to align on a coaching model and method to document coaching feedback. The organization wanted to address these challenges before launching their next product.

WLH had previously implemented the I GLASS™ Field Based Monitoring system within the company. The I GLASS™ system was being used exclusively for compliance monitoring by a third party auditing firm. The organization’s commercial leader informed WLH of their efforts to increase efficiency and improve their coaching results. WLH suggested leveraging the I GLASS™ system capabilities to help achieve the stated goals.

Approach and Deliverables

WLH conducted a series of interviews with company personnel in several departments including Sales, Sales Operations, Business Technology, Compliance, and Training. After conducting an in-depth analysis of the current state and gaining a clear understanding of the desired state, WLH provided the commercial leader with a set of recommendations for improvement.

The recommendations included the following:

• Eliminate the third party auditing team and transfer monitoring responsibilities to internal staff – ideally the sales managers
• Use the I GLASS™ system to monitor for compliance and to automate the coaching documentation process
• Identify the best coaching practices of their sales managers and leverage the expertise of WLH to create a customized coaching model for the organization
• Provide behavior-based training to reinforce and develop coaching capabilities
• Provide training for the sales managers on using I GLASS™ for coaching and compliance documentation

Results

The organization took action on the above WLH recommendations and achieved impressive first-year savings by eliminating third-party monitors. The coaching model and manager training helped to improve performance and increase engagement. The sales leaders used I GLASS™ to provide coaching feedback and the sales representatives received documented feedback following 90% of field rides. This was a 45% improvement in documented feedback.