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.

Author
Wendy L. Heckelman, Ph.D.

Dr. Wendy Heckelman, president and founder of WLH Consulting, Inc. has over 30 years of experience working with Fortune 100 industry clients. These include pharmaceutical, biotech, health care, animal health medicines, and consumer products, as well as international non-profit organizations and growing entrepreneurial companies.

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Field Force MonitoringComplianceCase Studies