I have an interview in a couple of days and have been asked to prepare a “detail” for a certain product? I’m so overwhelmed. What should I do?

The Sales Process

Step number one – uncover the customer’s needs

When you detail or when you are going to sell something it is important to first ask a series of questions, otherwise known as probing. This enables you to find out about the customer’s needs and wants. Consider this . . .

My husband and I owned our own business for 5 years. One day I had a man come in who wanted to sell me a new credit card terminal. After listening to him for an hour I didn’t buy a thing, nor did I switch to his company for my card processing services. Why? Because he didn’t find out what our needs were. He started by trying to sell me the most expensive model. When I declined, he moved on to the next model and tried again. As I kept declining, he kept reaching for cheaper and cheaper models. In the end, he walked out the door with one less hour in his day and the same number of credit card terminals in his bag – never a good thing.

Some may say that it is smart selling to show the most expensive model first so the others don’t look as expensive. However, if he’d started by asking some questions about our business and its needs he may have walked out with a sale. As it stands, his company will probably never get my business because they now have a reputation for wasting my time.

While this little anecdote is true, it is also very different from the world of pharmaceutical sales. It is very rare that you will get six minutes with a physician, let alone sixty. It’s not likely that you will have many products in the same therapeutic class from which to choose based on price – you have to sell what’s in your bag. In the world of pharmaceuticals, it is imperative that you uncover the needs of your customer before you start trying to fulfill them. The bottom line is, you can’t get where you want to go if you don’t first know where you are.

Step number two – address the customer’s needs

Think about the last time you bought a telephone – cellular or otherwise. Most likely you were presented with a multitude of options. You could choose from many different brands all with different bells and whistles. In the end, though, it almost certainly came down to features and benefits. A feature is a part of the product that stands alone. A benefit takes some human interaction. In the case of a cell phone the features and benefits may be . . .

If you were disciplined enough to implement step one (uncovering customer needs) you now know exactly what features will benefit your customer enabling you to not only make the sale but to make it more quickly as well. It sounds complicated to be able to think on the fly and present your products in a way that will address the needs of the customer but the more you know about your customer and your products, the easier the sell will become.

Step number three – call to action or close

If you have uncovered the needs of the customer and gone on to address those needs, the final step in the process is easy. You have to ask the customer to act. Close the deal. While it may seem uncomfortable, closing is just a natural part of the sales process. If you have all of your bases covered, closing is easy. If and when you make the mistake of closing too early, you will inevitably learn that there are other needs you need to address. No problem. Just like a car, the sales process has a ‘reverse’. If you miss a turn, all you have to do is back up and make it happen.

Preparing for the Detail

If the company you are interviewing with asks you to prepare a presentation and they don’t provide you with a sales aid (i.e. detail piece, brochure, etc.), be creative. Ask your networking contacts if you can have a brochure, look in your doctor’s office to see if there is one nearby, or ask the doctor if they have any promotional materials for the product you will be detailing. If all of these things leave you empty handed, save picture ads from magazines and website printouts. Laminate them or put them in a clear folder. Study these ads thoroughly. What themes are consistent will all of them? Are there three or four main points that you can pick out from every ad? What is the patient that is defined in the ad? Save the ads and learn the answers to the above questions. You will use them in your sales presentation. Consequently, you will show your resourcefulness and creativity as well.

This is a script that can be used with any product in situations such as these. Notice the steps of the sales process in the message.

During a detail, I always try to make sure I cover the acronym NIFDA – Name (brand name of drug), Indication (what the drug is approved to be used for), Features & Benefits (the features of the drug – what it does, Benefits- how what it does benefits and makes life easier for the patient & physician), Dosing (starting and maintenance dosing), Action (Asking for the business, after getting agreement on the features and benefits, asking the doctor to write the drug for the appropriate patients). Use your pen to point to sections on your detail piece as you discuss them. Never use your finger.

Engage the physician in conversation.
“Hello doctor, I’m [your name here], I’m a BRAND NEW rep for XYZ Pharmaceuticals, and I’d like to introduce myself and find out how I can be a true resource for you and your office.” Insert some fact finding chit chat here, then say something like “I know your time is valuable, and I want to be a resource for you and your practice.”

Here are a few examples of engaging, probing questions:

“When treating a patient with these symptoms [insert symptoms here], how do you determine what therapies to use?”
“How would you describe the perfect patient for XYZ drug [insert drug name here]?”

Be sure to change your probing questions to tailor you style or disease state. At this point you have enough information to go ahead and introduce your drug.

For the purpose of this discussion, let’s say you’re promoting a drug called SliplessGrip for hyperhidrosis (sweaty palms) in Silicon Valley, CA. In your discussions with the physician, she shares with you that she feels the disease is devastating because it keeps her patients, who are mostly computer programmers, from being productive at work. Because of this decreased productivity, many of these highly motivated, intelligent people develop a decreased sense of self and often times suffer from comorbid depression.

Now you have the info you need to sell SliplessGrip. Pull out your detail piece, and introduce SliplessGrip. “Doctor, SliplessGrip is indicated for the treatment of moderate to severe hyperhidrosis in adults.” At this point explain the features and benefits of the product based on the needs you uncovered in the first step.

One of the most exciting features of SliplessGrip is its quick onset of action. Because the starting dose is also the maintenance dose, your patients don’t have to wait for relief from their symptoms. In fact, 86% of all patients who took SliplessGrip said that their hyperhidrosis had improved significantly within a week of starting the medication. What this means for your patients is two-fold. Not only can they be more productive at work, quickly, in many patients this increased productivity will lead to an increase in self-worth.

Based on the information we have discussed, do you think SliplessGrip would be appropriate for some of your patients who suffer from hyperhidrosis?

Great, since we agree that the patients we discussed would be good candidates for SliplessGrip can I ask you to try SliplessGrip in some of those patients? Wonderful, I think you and your patients will notice an improvement. As I mentioned earlier the starting dose and the maintenance dose are the same – 45mg per day. I’ll provide you with these samples and come back in a few weeks to follow up. Is there anything else I should leave with these? Thanks for your time.

Of course, you should fine tune this fictitious scenario to your style and the drug you will be selling. Wrap your own words around it, study the product’s competition, and practice in front of the mirror with your spouse, a friend, or whoever will work with you. The take home message is exactly what your mother always told you, “You have two ears and one mouth, use them proportionally”. Make sure to listen to what the customer has to say.

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