A golden time to attend NSPST show

As companies have added representatives over the past two years, salespeople have overwhelmed the medical field. As a result, many offices significantly limit physician access or deny access altogether.

A recent audit of the top 17 pharmaceutical companies indicated that the call average for presentations to physicians has decreased to 151 per quarter. This means that the average sales rep makes physician contact less than 2.5 times per day!

Sales trainers face the challenge of giving sales reps the skills and tools that differentiate them so that they can gain access. They have to meet this challenge while also keeping pace with training a high number of new sales representatives, who have been hired as a result of sales force expansions or staff turnover.

Turnover itself has become a major issue among many organizations for several reasons. For one, many companies look to staff their sales force expansions with quality pharmaceutical reps from other companies. Therefore, for every vacancy filled in one company's expansion territory, a vacancy in another company is created.

This has created a cascading need for new representatives - and more sales training - across the industry. The second reason is that rapid expansion offers new sales and marketing opportunities to existing field sales personnel. When salespeople apply for and accept other positions within their organizations, they create additional field vacancies.

The 1999 National Society of Pharmaceutical Sales Trainers' annual meeting will focus on helping sales trainers keep up with these challenges.

Held at the San Francisco Hyatt Hotel, June 6-9, 1999, this year's meeting will revolve around the theme, "Learning to Improve Performance: A Golden Opportunity."

Workshops will fall into three major categories: sales representative performance and development, sales manager training and development and personal development.

A director's forum will provide sales training executives with an opportunity to explore the challenges they face when leading a training group and improving performance of a sales organization.

The meeting will also feature several nationally recognized keynote speakers, including Ken Blanchard, author of "The One-Minute Manager," "Everybody's a Coach" and "Gung Ho!", Blaine Lee of the Covey Institute and William Ury, author of "Negotiating to Yes." PR