Sales Force Effectiveness through Technical Skills – An Empirical Observation in Indian Pharmaceutical Industry

Abstract

The study is an attempt to identify the technical skills adopted by sales people in a pharmaceutical industry. The main objective is to understand how far these skills enhance the effectiveness of these sales people when they are in the field. This study is conducted based on survey research and a minimal usage of statistics brought out significant results. The major findings of this study points out the customer/product knowledge and client evaluation are some basic skill sets, which improves the sales people performance in this industry.

The direct effect of B2B sellers' skills on relative and absolute sales performance: a dual measurement approach

“…Accordingly, seller skills are classified into three dimensions, with their sub-dimensions as follows: (1) interpersonal, including presentation and communication skills; (2) degree of adaptiveness, referring to the ability to modify sales approach and sales behavior and (3) selling-related knowledge about product/ technology and customers. Sellers who have such skills will make more sales and thus perform better (Rajan and Srinivasan, 2015), especially in B2B settings, as those skills help them to improve their understanding and adaptation when interacting with clients (Churchill's et al, 1985;Rentz et al, 2002;Basir et al, 2010;Verbeke et al, 2011;Arli et al, 2018;Chawla et al, 2020).…”