Personality Assessments Help Hiring and Employee Development
Personality Assessments such as Caliper, Disc, Gallup, HBDI and FiroB are popular tools that yield useful, consistent information for medical sales managers.
There are 2 scenarios that assessments are normally used:
- As a hiring tool in the hiring process.
- As an employee development tool for sales managers.
In the hiring process, you normally take an assessment at the very beginning of the interview process or towards the end.
An assessment that is used in the beginning is usually used to screen out people that wouldn’t fit in the job. When I say fit, maybe it is a very technical scientific job and the candidate didn’t have a science degree. The employer may be using an assessment that focuses on abstract reasoning because that is seen as a good measure of intelligence and they are trying to gauge if the candidate will be able to grasp their new technology quickly. If it is an accounting job, maybe the employer is focused more on the candidate’s ability to work by themselves with no direction.
A good manager believes “Where there is smoke, there is fire” and if the assessment comes back with more than 2 points of contention, they may think they are better off passing on you and moving on to the next candidate. They don’t want to gamble with their new hires.
It’s much less likely to keep you from getting the job if you are taking the assessment as a final step to receiving an offer—unless your assessment comes back with anti-social behavior patterns, the manager will probably move forward.
People who vociferously disagree with their results are almost always a personnel issue waiting to happen. They think they have all the skills needed for their job and they are great. The truth is that is they don’t have the needed skills and probably won’t change.
Personality assessments work similarly in terms of employee development. As a manager, sometimes you have a really good employee who wants to move to a different role. Maybe they are in a technical staff position and they would like to transition to a line sales position. You like the employee’s values and work ethic and you want to help them advance in their career, but you don’t want to set them up for failure by putting them in a job that doesn’t match their skill set.
So what happens when they take the test and it shows they don’t like to communicate with people and are introverted?
A good manager will handle it correctly by sitting down with the team member and having a conversation about the assessment and try and understand how the team member perceives and interprets the results.
The conversation should be warm and focused on the individual. As you go through the assessment with them and ask their feedback, you will start to get a picture of how that team member sees his or her self. When you start reviewing some of the needed skill sets for the new job and how their results compare to that, often the team member will see that where they want to go doesn’t utilize their strengths and it would be a really difficult transition.
What happens next? Are they doomed to stay in that role forever? No.
The manager and the team member work together to assemble a plan that will develop or supplement the areas they need to be successful. If they are poor public speakers, maybe Toastmasters is a good idea for them. If they have no clue what a day in the life of a sales rep is like, what about scheduled ride-along days in the field?
If the assessment and the review is done right, both parties leave with a better understanding of the team member and where they want to go in the organization and what skills they will need to be successful in a new role.
Your thoughts? Comments? Put them in the comment section or e-mail me at: kraig@phcconsulting.com
Kraig McKee
Snr Recruiter
Sales Forecasting: Use the Rule of 78
Everyone knows what their annual goal is, but how do you calculate how much you need to close each month if you missed your goal for the first 3 months of the year? The Rule of 78 to the rescue.
Sales goal planning needs more than a crystal ball.
The Rule of 78 is used in the diagnostic industry to calculate how much new business you need to close to hit your annual sales goal. It allows you to recalculate that increment or growth as the year unfolds.
You say, “Why do I need to recalculate, I have a sales budget that breaks down my goal by the month?”
I say “That’s great, tell me what new business you have to close for the remaining 9 months of the year if you missed your goal and didn’t sell enough in the first quarter.”
That’s why you need the Rule of 78. It allows you to calculate how much new business you need to close to hit your growth budget based on where you are at that time.
This tool is very valuable for reps formulating tactics to help them achieve their goals. It is also very helpful for managers to help reps realize that there is a point of no return, i.e., a point in the year that they cannot “catch up”, even if they get a big order. The reason being, there aren’t enough selling opportunities in the year.
Before we work through an example, consider these facts:
1) The Rule of 78 (Ro78) assumes that you maintain your base business.
2) The “increment” is the amount of new business you need to sell to add to your base business to hit your sales goal.
Base business + New Business (growth or increment) = Your sales goal for the year.
3) The Ro78 allows you to calculate in “real time”.
How much will you have to close to make up for an account that you lost in March?
Let’s look at some simple examples now:
Your sales goal for the year is $122,000 and your territory finished at $100,000 last year…so, $22,000 is your growth or increment.
The company wants you to grow your territory $22,000 larger than it was last year.
$100,000 + $22,000 = $122,000
Base Growth/increment Annual Sales Goal
$100,000-your total last year’s production.
It seems like you need to sell $10,166.67 (base +increment/growth) per month, starting in January (122,000 / 12 = $10,166.67)
That seems simple enough—but hold that thought.
This is where they get The Rule of 78.
January 12
February 11
March 10
April 9
May 8
June 7
July 6
August 5
September 4
October 3
November 2
December 1
The numbers to the right represent the number of selling opportunities in a year. You start in January with 12; February has 11, March 10 etc.
That equals 78 selling opportunities.
Now to the fun part.
It is the end of March and you have only sold $2,000 and you should have sold $30,499.98. ($122,000/12=$10,166.67 per month. $10,166.67x 3 = $30,499.98)
Tell me how much new business you need to close every month for the rest of the year to achieve your sales goal?
First, I need to calculate how many selling opportunities I have left in the year.
78 Total Selling Opportunities in a full year
-33 (Selling opportunities lost-Jan-12, Feb-11, March-10=33)
45 Remaining selling opportunities
Your annual growth budget divided by the remaining selling opportunities equals the new increment or growth that you need to sell each month for the remainder of the year.
$22,000(annual sales growth goal)-$2,000(your actual sales for that period) / 45 = $444.44
Since you sold only $2,000 in January, February and March, your increment/growth went from $282.05 per month (total growth goal for the year / 78) to $444.44. That means that you can still hit your annual sales goal if you maintain your base business and add $444.44 of new business each month for the remainder of the year.
Try one yourself:
Use the same annual sales growth goal of $22,000.
You sold $8,000 worth of new business by June.
How much new business (while maintaining your base) do you need each month to hit your annual sales growth goal of $22,000?
1) Calculate the selling opportunities left in the year after June.
78-57(12-11-10-9-8-7) =21
2) Subtract the new business that you have done through June from your annual sales growth goal ($22,000-$8,000=$14,000) to derive the amount of new business you need to add each month for the last six months of the year ($14,000).
3) Divide $14,000 by the remaining selling opportunities (21) to get your new growth/increment-$666.66.
What does the $666.66 represent in this example?
That represents the amount of new business you need to add each month, beginning in July to hit your annual sales goal of $122,000 while maintaining your base business.
It assumes that you sold $8,000 through June, when you needed to sell $11,000 to be on track to hit your annual growth budget of $22,000.
So, if you maintain your base business and add $666.66 of new business per month beginning in July, you will hit your annual sales goal. Did you notice that your increment more than doubled because you missed you goal for the first six months of the year?
This example is a little misleading, because technically, the rep could close a big order in December and hit his growth goal—but that’s a big gamble. I kept the numbers small to make the math easier. Realistic growth goals in today’s diagnostic market are somewhere between 8-30% and make the “Point of No Return” in June or July.
This model only applies to reoccurring consumables and doesn’t apply to capital sales.
Here is a visual representation of The Rule of 78 based on needing to generate $22,000 growth for the year: Click here to view the Rule of 78 Chart
Your thoughts? Questions? Put them in the comments or email me at: kraig@phcconsulting.com
Kraig McKee
Snr Recruiter
Holiday Gift Ideas for Your Medical Sales Team
Need some quick, easy and great gift ideas for the medical sales rep on your team?
- You almost can’t beat a gift card…to a restaurant, a spa, or even their favorite store (bonus points for you if you know what it is).
- If you don’t want to give something a little more personalized than a gift card, try a themed gift basket built around just about anything: coffee, movies, fruit, candy, gourmet food, or chocolate.
- Get them a Kindle. What’s better for a busy person on the go than a quick and easy way to keep up with their reading?
- If they already have a Kindle, get them e-books to go on it. Read anything great lately?
- Get them a magazine subscription (print or digital). I like Selling Power.
- I think the ultimate gift for a sales rep is more sales training. After all, what’s better than learning new ways to build your skills and make more money? If there’s a good training program that the reps would normally be required to pay for themselves, foot the bill for them. You’ll both benefit from this one in the long run…
A really nice finishing touch to any gift: write your team member a note expressing your appreciation for them, and/or noting something especially great they did in the past year that really impressed you.
Women Won’t Become CEO? Maybe, But Not For the Reasons You Think
Have you read this? Forbes published it: Why Most Women Will Never Become CEO, by Gene Marks.
Gene says that most women won’t become CEOs because there’s a double standard of behavior for women and men in the workplace. Men get away with sophomoric behavior that women would never get away with, they still judge women by the way they look (and not the way they work), and they don’t have the family pressures that women do. If the kids need to be taken care of, it’s the women who must deal with it—while the men step past them and continue to climb in the ranks.
I think that’s a load of BS. If women aren’t reaching the highest ranks of the workforce, it’s not men’s fault. Men aren’t the problem—women are. Why?
1. Women don’t self-promote.
Women are much more likely to talk about their accomplishments in terms of “we”, and not “I”. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe women are socially conditioned to think of themselves as always part of a group, maybe it just feels safer to say “we” did it in case something goes wrong, I’m not sure. Either way, when women don’t take credit for the things they accomplish as individuals, it becomes harder to justify promotions and higher salaries for them. After all, bosses don’t promote teams, only individuals.
2. Women don’t support each other in the workplace (or in politics, either).
It sounds like a contradiction of the “we” mentality I just talked about, but it isn’t. Women don’t promote themselves, and they don’t promote each other, either. They seem to go out of their way to criticize other women—if they’re successful, they must be a bitch or they’re a terrible mother or they’ve failed in some other stereotypical way. There’s a lot of jealousy. Men are much more supportive of each other in the workplace. They are more straightforward and don’t see each other as threats in the way that women see each other. Men understand that the whole point is to be productive and climb the ladder as high as you can. Other issues don’t get in the way of that for them.
3. Women have a skewed perception of power.
Women seem to believe that if they have power in their professional lives, they have to give up something in their personal lives—so, they don’t put themselves in place for promotions. But that’s just not true. If you see that some issue at home is not getting taken care of because you’re at work, that’s a management issue. Take care of it. It doesn’t have to always be you. Delegate. Hire someone. Figure it out. You don’t have to cut your ambitions to do it yourself. A man would, and he wouldn’t feel guilty about it, either. And by the way, there are lots of women working 60 hours a week in low-level jobs…if you’re going to work that many hours anyway, why wouldn’t you work that many hours at a higher level? With more power and more pay?
I think that when women as a whole start addressing these issues successfully, we’ll see lots more female CEOs.
What do you think?
Don’t Miss the Medical Sales Summit 2011 “Early Bird Special”
Acting now puts an extra $100 in your pocket!
If you’ve been thinking about registering for the 1st Annual Medical Sales Summit, now is the time. If you register for the Medical Sales Summit before September 25, you receive $100 off the regular price.
After September 25, the discounted registration fee goes away…and it’s going to cost you $100 more to come to the biggest medical sales event of the year.
If you’re ready to go, click here to register now.
If you want to find out more about the Medical Sales Summit 2011, like:
- the targeted sales management training focusing on incorporating sales analytics to boost sales, running more productive and effective sales meetings, and motivating your team to its best; and
- the medical sales rep training to apply Lean Six Sigma, Sales Levers, and Best Practices to be the best;
- the amazing networking connections you can make at a medical-sales-focused event; or
- the group discounts available; then…
Click here to get all the details about the Medical Sales Summit 2011.
The Medical Sales Summit 2011
Maximize Your Business Using Sales Analytics
Sales Analytics Improve Performance
Many medical sales managers and reps don’t know much about sales analytics and how they can help you drive your sales volume, even in recessionary times.
In the video below, I’ll tell you more about how you can learn more about them to get the competitive edge…
Click here to get all the details about the Medical Sales Summit 2011
Medical Sales Training Meeting
Medical Sales Managers: Need an easy fix for the hassle (and necessity) of setting up a training and skill-building event for your sales reps? I have the ideal solution for you that saves you time and money — the Medical Sales Summit provides top training for your reps while you get training of your own, at your level, to meet your unique needs. Watch the video below and I’ll tell you more about it:
Click here for more details about the Medical Sales Summit 2011
Medical Sales Summit Coming This Fall
Medical Sales Training and Networking Opportunity this Fall…
If you are a medical sales rep, a medical sales manager, or want to be employed in the medical sales industry, then you need to know about the Medical Sales Summit I am putting together in a few months. It’s been my dream to have a gathering like this for the medical sales community, and I’m making it happen: a one-day conference in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area to get the freshest ideas for building your sales, your business, and your career that incorporates some truly amazing networking opportunities.
And here’s the really exciting thing: you have the very unique chance to actually shape the content of this conference.
Right now, there is a LOT of room for YOU to customize this summit so that it EXACTLY fits your needs. What would help you advance your medical sales career the farthest and the fastest?
Click on this 2-minute information video about the Medical Sales Summit I’ve made for you…see what I have in mind for the Summit, and then there’s a survey right on the page for you to give me your input about what you’d like to see happen there–location, topics, speakers (maybe you’d like to be one?) and more.
Your answers will have a direct impact on the shape, the content, and even the location of the Medical Sales Summit. Find out more and tell me what you’d like to see, learn, and do at the Medical Sales Summit this Fall.
Hiring Tips to Get the Medical Sales Candidate You Want
As a medical sales recruiter, I’ve definitely got my finger on the pulse of job market trends in this industry…and I’ve got to tell you, I’ve noticed some changes in the last few months that are bucking the overall trends of the last couple of years. These new developments are having a negative impact on the ability of some sales mangers to successfully hire the candidates that are best for their team.
In the video below, I’ll talk about what I’ve seen happening and what you can do to make sure you end up with the candidate you want:
Top EMR (Electronic Medical Records) Vendor List by Dark Daily
The Dark Daily has just published a list of the Top 10 Hospital EMR Vendors, ranked by number of installed systems, along with a very nice analysis of this trend and what it means for hospitals, pathologists, clinical laboratory managers, and laboratory information systems (LIS) everywhere.
So far, Meditech, Cerner, and McKesson are leading the pack, but there are many others not far behind.
We expected to see a lot of growth in this area, given what we’ve seen already in other ways–doctors using their own smartphones as tools in their practices, and the iPad’s inroads into the entire pharmaceutical industry. The trend towards all things digital will only accelerate as hospitals continue this move to electronic health records.
How do you see this playing out in your area of medical sales?
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