Diagnosis
Too much talking is holding your new reps back.

Prescription
Hire people who understand the importance of asking questions.

Why hire reps who ask questions? Here are some good reasons. They'll get the right information from their physicians faster and more accurately, build strong relationships from the start, and be in a better position to change doctors' prescribing habits. In my workshops, I talk about the importance of that first meeting with a doctor. Your new reps set the stage during that meeting and create the expectations of what will come after. I guarantee that if you hire reps who ask smart questions and spend extra time helping them prepare for their first meetings with doctors, they'll reap the benefits and so will you. Doctors will often give more time to a new rep; if that rep is a skilled questioner, it will set a better precedent with the doctor and the rep will wind up with more time and access.

How can you be sure you're hiring new reps who understand the importance of asking questions? The secret is to concentrate on the most important selling skills – questioning and listening. This holds true for your existing reps as well: You must turn them into askers, not tellers. In other words, you can apply these principles to all your reps, and you can use some of the questions posed to train and coach your existing reps.

As you interview potential reps, they will fall into various categories: Some will have been reps in other pharmaceutical companies; some will have been salespeople, but not in pharma; some may be transferring from another field within pharmaceuticals; some may have a medical background (nurse, etc.) but no sales experience. Experience really doesn't matter as long as the potential rep is someone who is willing to ask questions and listen.

I realize there are other advantageous qualities of a good rep, such as intelligence, energy and persistence. But the make-or-break quality is the ability to ask questions and listen. A simple example is a court stenographer – if that person is not a fast and accurate typist, his other qualities or talents don't matter.

The best way to be sure your reps will succeed is to concentrate your hiring (and coaching) efforts in three areas: assessing the attitude in the reps you interview; assessing your own questioning ability; and assessing their ability to ask questions and listen. Ask the reps you are hiring questions that will reveal coping skills and core attitudes. You might ask, "What do you see as the biggest obstacle in selling, given the more than 120,000 other reps out there, and there is less prescribing data available than there used to be?" Be sure to probe — don't settle. You want reps who truly believe that the better they are in connecting to the real concerns of each doctor, the more successful they will be. Avoid hiring reps who blame external factors, like the AMA's PDRP, rather than on their own abilities. After all, reps were making calls long before prescribing information was ever available. If you are interviewing reps who aren't familiar with restrictions such as the PDRP, ask them to describe how they dealt with limiting circumstances in other jobs. Explore how they reacted to them and how their job was affected.

Most interviewers talk too much. In my research I've discovered only one out of 46 sales managers spoke less than half of the time. Few managers ask enough questions, and when they do, the questions are closed or multiple choice type-questions — easy and ineffective. When hiring, you should talk no more than 30 percent of the time. When you're talking you aren't learning much; the purpose of a job interview is to find the best candidate. The goal is to get the candidate talking so you can evaluate his attitude, character and questioning skills.