Presentation anxiety and pharmaceutical sales are closely related. There has never been a time when even an experience rep did not feel the butterfly in the stomach. To a pharma sales rep, making presentation is routine. Day in and out, a presentation is made for two specific occasions:
1) Face to face detailing
2) Group presentation
The Source of Presentation Anxiety
From my experience and observations, I can conclude that anxiety often occurs because:
1) The pharmaceutical sales reps are new. This is normally what happened. It is the first time the see a customers, being in the environment and do the presentation, the one that counts, I might add.
2) Not well prepared. This is true even for experience reps. Failure to prepare sales material, marketing tools and relevant contents causes them to sweat in anxiety, especially when the ‘boss’ is observing.
3) Caught off guard. This might be a side-kick from above and frequently happen when customers ask questions about products which facts they overlooked or neglected. Well, some facts are not documented in the marketing materials so they don’t bother searching, until they’ve been asked!
These three apply to face to face and group presentation. Perhaps, the difference is in the degree the anxiety is manifest but it is there.
Pay special attention to reason (2). It has caused a lot of trouble for new pharmaceutical sales person and experienced alike.
How To Handle Anxiety When Presenting
It should be clear by now that the ONLY way to handle it effectively is to train for it.
But the way presentation training is structured is very important. It is ideal to break the training to tackle both situation; one to one and also group presentation. Both situations call for different competencies and skill sets, and require different durations.
Let’s take one to one presentation first.
The best way to train for this is by doing lots of role play.
Role play is an activity where a person takes the role of a customer and is given a certain scenario. The objectives to be achieved are set out well before a session and are monitored throughout. Observers, which typically consist of more experienced reps and sales managers, will evaluate the objectives and supply feedbacks.
A session can last for half an hour or so, but frequently repeated, possibly on a daily basis.
When does it stop?
Never! This is an ongoing process of monitoring and improving pharma sales reps skills and it is done continuously as long as that person remains an employee. Furthermore, one can only get better with practice.
What About Group Presentation?
It comes easily once a person get used to ‘face to face’ presentation. What’s left is to expand the involvement to include more people. It can be simulated back at the office’s training room or on the field, with close supervision from trainers and managers.
The same process does apply; a person presents and others observe, and give feedback later. The more a pharmaceutical sales rep practice, the better he will adjust to a presentation situation. In fact, to rate the effectiveness for both type of presentations, I will personally choose group presentation because of the lasting impact.
Think about it: Which session will create more impact to your customers; while they are alone or in a group?
Anxiety is part of presentation and for pharmaceutical sales, it is inevitable. It is a good sign when you feel butterflies flying in your stomach; the task now is to make them fly in unity.
A Malay male with decade of experience selling pharmaceutical products across all range and channels. I'll show you how to | build pharmaceutical sales careers | carry out pharmaceutical sales rep jobs
