Raise your voice Letters Times have changed In today’s highly competitive environment, experience and training together will be of great help in the development of managers. — Avinash L. Salunke Manager development The April 2004 story, Coaching: Developing a Playbook for Sales Rep Success, was very useful to me as a product manager, as training is a very important part of my job profile. We always find that the training is more focused on medical sales representatives rather than front-line managers who play a major role in guiding the sales representative team. In today’s highly competitive environment, experience and training together will be of great help in the development of managers. The five pillars of coaching stand to be the basic fundamentals in training. Avinash L. Salunke Product Manager NuLife Pharmaceuticals (Editor’s Note: The Five Pillars of Coaching, as outlined by Brennan Sales Institute in the April 2004 issue of PharmaVOICE, include: 1. Speaking Straight. Managers need to speak straight to their representatives. By correctly assessing the situation and giving accurate feedback, managers can enable the representative to improve on every call. Focusing on the development of the rep’s skills, managers will know how to show respect, be sensitive to the delivery of their information, and gain commitment to move the learning process forward. Managers need to learn how to balance the importance of showing empathy and interjecting their own experiences to add value without taking the emphasis away from the rep’s development and focus. 2. Coaching Different Behaviors. Managers need to learn how to use a common language with collaborative and dictorial coaching methodologies to motivate and develop the four different behavioral types — willing and able, unwilling and unable, willing and unable, and unwilling and able. Also, managers need to learn how to accurately assess their staff’s behavior by types to determine how to collaboratively coach in the field and develop specific plans of action for skill development. 3. Being There. Managers need to support both the successes and failures of their reps. Managers need to know the importance of providing rigorous support, dealing with direction regarding uncomfortable issues, and confronting poor performance issues. A good coach knows how to praise an individual’s strengths and teach an individual how to offset his or her weaknesses. This helps in the development process and enables managers to assist their reps to move up or move out. 4. Honoring Commitment. Commitments are a two-way street between the manager and his or her teammates. Without commitments, no one can achieve the established goals. Both parties must hold each other accountable to the commitment. The rep needs to learn the difference between a declaration and a commitment and a manager needs to learn how to hold an individual accountable. 5. Listening Generously. Listening is more important than talking. Managers tend to talk actively rather than listen actively to their reps/customers. In addition, automatic filters often cloud expectations and create prejudices and beliefs. Listening actively means listening for the speaker’s contribution.) What’s Your Opinion? Security: Big Brother Really Could be Watching The Computer Crime and Security Survey, conducted by the Computer Security Institute with the participation of the San Francisco Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Computer Intrusion Squad, paints a compelling portrait of just how often crime occurs on computer networks and just how expensive such crime can be. Even organizations that have deployed a wide range of security technologies can fall victim to significant losses. Furthermore, the percentage of these incidents that is reported to law enforcement agencies remains low. So attackers may reasonably infer that the odds against their being caught and prosecuted remain strongly in their favor. According to the CSI/FBI 2003 survey, respondents were asked what kind of security technologies they had employed to protect their organizations. Virtually all organizations use antivirus software (99%) and firewalls (98%). Most (91%) employ some kind of physical security to protect their computer and information assets and most employ some measure of access control (92%). In September, PharmaVOICE’s feature article, Biometrics — Beyond Passwords, will examine the potential use of biological markers, such as fingerprints and iris scans, in the pharmaceutical industry to ensure security within all areas of the industry. PharmaVOICE wants to know: Do the benefits of increased security outweigh the abdication of such personal information? And what is your company doing to protect itself? What’s your opinion? Please e-mail your comments to [email protected].

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