There are three kinds of stock brokering services that you can provide potential customers. One is the execution-only, basically it means that your customer will call or meet with you to offer you directions on which stocks to purchase or sell. You can call your customer ahead to understand what stocks they want to trade in. This may give you the opportunity to research information on the stocks that they want to trade. Making additional efforts in the research will make them feel safe about trusting you with their money. A telephone recording device that may record each side of the conversation will help you remember what those stocks are.

The 2nd is advisory dealing where the broker recommends the customer on what shares to purchase and offload here the final choice is left to the investor. The last is the optional dealing. Here is where the stockbroker determines the backers investment objectives and makes dealing choices on the investors behalf.

In the last service, to help protect you from losing your customers, make sure that you call and counsel your customer of the stock exchange moves that you’re about to make and what are the consequences if the market does not respond as you have predicted. Making absolutely sure that you’ve got the correct purchase and sell ceiling and instructions from your investor is exceedingly important.

The phone recording device may also be used to record instructions if you want to meet your customers head to head. The device will let you playback each side of the chats. In this fashion you’ll be in a position to double check on the instructions and use it as a reference for future dealings with your speculators.

Embarking on a better career or keeping the old one is not an easy job to do. You need all the help you can get. In searching for job opportunities as a stock broker, one of the requirements for being employed is that you have got to have a confirmed past record of having the ability to develop new clients. You’ll be asked to make cold calls, calling people you do not know, to folks in your neighborhood. There are great features about the telephone recording device. It will enable you to add additional info to an existing recording and best of all it will not destroy your original recording. It’s also wav files so it is simple to copy from the recorder to your PC. Using the equipment to help you push in front in your job is a great investment. Even stock brokers need to invest for their future.

Looking into the future, what can we see? First of all, the “patent cliff” is almost upon us and this is likely to unleash market forces that will completely redefine many different areas. We also know that the market itself is shifting in favour of niche solutions to increasingly complex issues, instead of the previously predominant “blockbuster” product approach. The United States Congress laboured for many a day before passing a highly controversial health-care reform bill and we are yet to see how this will slowly unfold as it will introduce tens of thousands of people to healthcare products, many for the first time, due to insurance overhaul. Markets around the world are feeling the financial pinch and this is especially so in the United Kingdom, where budget deficits are completely unsustainable; this is almost certainly going to lead to a significant reduction in health care spending. Little wonder that the share price of leading pharmaceutical companies is taking such a battering.

The heady days of the past have come to an end and the pharmaceutical consultancy must adapt to survive. When it comes to sales and marketing, it’s time to shift away from sales and more towards marketing, as we cannot rely on all the traditional methodology anymore. Not surprisingly, pharmaceutical marketing training must be reinvented, to reflect the pressures of the New World. Add an increasing trend toward the regulation of pharmaceutical marketing in the US and you can argue that this industry will be difficult to recognise, as compared to its former self, within a few years time.

So where should the pharmaceutical consultancy start? It will be necessary to reconsider all the emphasis that is being placed on sales and come up with innovative strategies instead. It seems certain that the traditional army of sales representatives will be much smaller, more targeted and the focus of niche related pharmaceutical marketing training. Certain regional markets may have more problems than others, but we will see changes everywhere during this process of reinvention. As such, the changes in the US market and the significant budgetary cuts in the government led UK market will redefine the playing field. Pharmaceutical consultants must be able to drive the pharma company forward with different approaches to marketing, focusing on niche markets and above all else, ensuring that more meaningful relationships are developed with end-users. In short, the business relationship is likely to become far more personable, and far less number oriented.

Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of L2L Consulting, specialising in enabling pharmaceutical companies to achieve new heights of productivity and performance, throughout all levels of management and revenue generating activities.

A pharmaceutical consultancy can certainly help to develop new tactics and methods for the client in the workshop, but most of the attention needs to be paid on how changes are implemented in the field. This will require reinvention of the very make-up of a sales representative. Is it possible to achieve this with an existing team of reps? It might be difficult for some to overcome the entrenched attitudes that have been “baked in” over the years, but they will nevertheless require a far more entrepreneurial approach to the way that they operate. In many respects, the sales rep should be treated as if he or she was a purely independent contractor, at least in terms of the way that they motivate themselves to generate income.

The very definition of an entrepreneur is somebody who is willing to go the extra mile and not be easily disheartened. This will often involve innovative thinking and will require a greater understanding of the problem and, indeed the client. The new entrepreneurial sales representative will be far more engaged with the buyer and will be able to reveal intelligence that can be of great value to the company, so the pharmaceutical consultancy should develop the concept of a think tank to correlate all this new-found data. This may also require a fundamental change in thinking, as the entrepreneurial sales rep should begin to understand that a pooling of intelligence resources could only help everyone to explain and understand the market better and in turn focus on enhanced sales potential.

All the methods of motivation revolve around a comparison of peer performance to push the sales force forward. The most productive representative was often elevated to a certain position, which was then used to motivate others within the workforce to work harder. The pharmaceutical consultant today must realise that this is counterproductive in the long run and that an entrepreneurial sales rep must be trained to contribute to the overall goals of the sales team, in order to be more successful. The issues of motivation and remuneration must be approached from a completely new angle, but when all is said and done this entire process is far more likely to result in a much more fruitful relationship between the end-user and the rep. It is definitely time to employ this kind of new approach, as we certainly know that the typical practitioner is far from happy to see the sales rep today, as it is perceived that there is no real feeling of apathy or understanding, anymore.

Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of L2L Consulting, specialising in enabling pharmaceutical companies to achieve new heights of productivity and performance, throughout all levels of management and revenue generating activities.

The market research firm Cutting Edge Information tells us that a quarter of all healthcare professionals are really interested in pursuing the concept of e-detailing. This result has increased dramatically from just four years ago. It’s possible that doctors could be far more accessible this way, and that they could be less resistant to communication, consequently.

Pharmaceutical marketing training needs to change in line with the media revolution and the outgoing effects of the great recession. Indeed, they may well need to focus more on training and education based around social media and the Internet and less on hiring and training of new sales representatives.

In the past, it was not uncommon for a typical doctor to be inundated with communications from sales reps, often from the same company. When you think how different reps may have different levels of training and may not all be able to communicate as effectively, it’s easy to understand why the average doctor would become overloaded. This approach to communication was, after all, far from efficient and we can now see why there has been so much backlash. Doctors have started to retreat into their offices, especially as sales representatives seemed to grow in number. If you add into the mix the slowdown in the number of products on the market, it’s quite easy to see why we are now seeing a reduction in the number of sales representatives. Indeed, it is estimated that in the last three years, the total number of pharmaceutical sales representatives in the United States has shrunk by 20% or more.

Not surprisingly, pharmaceutical marketing training must recognise that the newer sales representative is far more likely to be in touch with his or her generational approach to communication. They are likely to feel far more at ease with modern Internet-based communications technology. As these new reps infiltrate the company, the pharmaceutical consultancy should help company bosses to change the way that they approach their marketing, so as to not fight this ever emerging trend.

Considerable challenges face the industry as we all know, and we’re yet to see how the US federal health-care changes shake out. There are certain to be more pressures on companies to cut their overheads and as such, we can expect the pharmaceutical consultant to concentrate more and more on “e-detailing” and the way that this wave of the future can help to restructure pharmaceutical sales.

Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of L2L Consulting, specialising in enabling pharmaceutical companies to achieve new heights of productivity and performance, throughout all levels of management and revenue generating activities.

A great many industry analysts suggested that, notwithstanding the influential role of Amazon in the development of the e-book reader market, the release of the Apple iPad would signal the demise of the Kindle reader. However, after the third generation launch – accompanied by some price cuts – Amazon sold out of Kindles (yet again). Demand seems to be holding up, and then some, for what is now Amazon’s best selling item.

Some people have accepted e-books quite readily. Others have an attachment to physical books. However, for most people the ability to carry large quantities of reading material around with them, coupled with the ease of operation offered by e-book readers, has proven to be a winning combination. Recent reductions in the selling price of e-book readers, possibly brought about by the iPad’s launch, have sweetened the deal sufficiently for many readers.

Amazon recently advised that they are currently selling more Kindle books than conventional hardback books. The lower sales price of e-books – which use no paper or ink and have no delivery fees to speak of – certainly helps. It can only be a matter of time before e-books start to sell more than paperbacks.

The ease with which e-books can be bought, and subsequently delivered, is another influencing factor. Readers can download a book to their Kindle in less than sixty seconds, at any time of the day or night, just as long as they can connect to Amazon’s Kindle store.

A possible area of concern for some customers was the worry that they would be “tied” to one particular e-book reader. This issue has been very effectively addressed by Amazon who have released a large number of free “apps” to allow Kindle books to be read on a wide range of different devices. At the moment, Kindle books can be read on the PC, the Mac, the iPhone, the iPad, the Blackberry smart phone and any device which runs the Android operating system. It’s actually a clever strategy by Amazon. Not only does it remove the fear of being tied to a particular brand of hardware but each new app acts as a separate retail outlet for Amazon’s huge selection of Kindle books. Currently, approximately 20% of all Kindle book sales are destined to be read on non-Kindle hardware.

All things considered, it looks like e-books are here to stay and that they will gradually account for a higher and higher percentage of book sales. It also looks as if Amazon are going to be very influential in the world of digital publishing for the foreseeable future.

Not surprisingly, pharmaceutical marketing training teaches us that key account management is only one part of several major components, when customer relationship marketing and management is considered. The management of key accounts depends a lot on an analysis of a customer’s make-up, taking into account how much the customer is worth over a lifetime and this is increasingly important as we consider whether a particular lifecycle is dependent on the strength of a product, a certain scenario or other metric. The pharmaceutical consultancy is well aware how key account management revolves around the ability to develop a meaningful relationship and it almost goes without saying that one size most definitely does not fit all, as far as this is concerned.

When it comes to customer contribution, this can often be rather difficult to quantify. Does the customer represent a strategic ally for the company? As politics within the industry becomes ever more prevalent, it’s quite conceivable that a customer could be designated as “key,” even though the actual financial contribution to the company’s turnover is relatively small. In terms of lobbying or other methods of tangible or intangible support, it could be well worthwhile for the company to elevate this particular client to a pedestal, alongside those who may be contributing a great deal more in financial terms.

Pharmaceutical marketing training must be structured in such a way that the relatively diverse contributions of each and every client can be ascertained and we need to see how these subtle nuances can be manipulated in favour of the company. The pharmaceutical consultant might even have to engage in a certain amount of psychological analysis, training those who are on the front-line to adequately interpret the finer details associated with these accounts.

It appears that almost 2/3 of pharmaceutical companies are not really aware of this approach and consider that key account management is dictated almost exclusively by sales volume alone. This is where a good pharmaceutical consultancy will step in, bringing education to the line and helping to educate representatives for the task ahead. It is more and more difficult to communicate effectively with a professional in the field, so the company must become much more focused on the finer details, when it comes to managing its existing client portfolio. Pharmaceutical marketing training will need to avoid the use of a broad brush in the future, but focus more on the touch of an artist repainting the Sistine Chapel, as key account management comes to terms with this new reality.

Alan Gillies is the Director of L2L Consulting, an elite pharmaceutical consultancy firm which specialises in Strategy Development and Implementation Excellence for prestigious multi-national organisations.

Consider many of the metrics that are traditional in our world and consider the approach that is often used as a sweeping, across-the-board approach to the issue. We are far too willing to accept generalities and not prepared to investigate segmentation, so it should not be surprising that we have less than spectacular results. For example, high-volume prescribers are almost universally targeted, purely due to the fact that they spend a lot of money. Little attention is paid to the individual doctor’s primary motivation, what he or she happens to like, dislike, or what happens to move the doctor to purchase; rather, an assumption is made that spending will be allocated in this niche, irrespective. It’s almost as if they are treating the professional as an automaton and this is surely not what pharmaceutical marketing training seeks to teach, is it?

We need to focus on industry intelligence, casting our net wide to find out how competitors interact with particular professionals. Far too often a broad brush approach to this issue is used and we need to be far more specific when we are working out who to target. Surely, results are evident, but just consider how these could have been far more fruitful if a different tactic or approach had been employed. In the quest for the correct tactic and approach, we need to analyse the group behaviour of a broad range of end-users, instead. We cannot assume that a particular course of action is going to work and we need to dig deeper to really find out what drives a decision-maker to make that decision. Once these groups have been segmented, they can be placed into appropriate categories, potentially leading to far more productive results. This is where the pharmaceutical consultancy should practice diversity and ensure that pharmaceutical marketing training for the modern era involves fewer generalisations.

While it may once have been okay to buy data, resources and other lists based on so-called “intelligence,” this should be questioned today. Many of our competitors could have access to the same lists and it is little wonder that certain doctors feel that they have been overly targeted and are suffering from consultant overloads. It is inconceivable that we could be relying on this style of approach considering how much is at stake and the pharmaceutical consultant really needs to steer senior management toward a better way of analysing data, to come up with a much better solution. Members of the salesforce itself may already have a lot of this data and intelligence, due to their one on one interaction over the years. This is the kind of intelligence that we need to use.

Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of L2L Consulting, specialising in enabling pharmaceutical companies to achieve new heights of productivity and performance, throughout all levels of management and revenue generating activities.

Many companies think that they should deploy their sales representatives with as tight a focus as possible. Pharmaceutical marketing training revolves around specific products and given approaches. Why is it that some companies believe that their sales representatives are incapable of “multitasking,” as if their efficiency trails off when they have to focus on more than one product? From listening to the professional prescriber, the pharmaceutical consultancy knows that they often complain about being overloaded, having to meet with too many of these various sales representatives and as a consequence feel that the entire process is not personal enough. Remember, that the doctor has an enormous number of different products to focus on and therefore it would be far more productive if the meeting with the pharma sales rep was able to cover a broader range of product solutions. It’s up to the pharmaceutical consultancy to help the company move towards this different approach. Of course, this might not work in every market, or even within certain routes or product areas, but a process of analysis must be undertaken to see what can be done.

Each member of the sales team must be analysed to see what makes them work well. Compensation is of course a powerful motivator, but unless you know what makes them “tick” and what is important to him or her, there’s a danger that you can completely miss the target with compensation. The uniform package will definitely not work and you should avoid an “adequate” approach at all times. If targets and bonuses are within easy reach of the individual, that person is not likely to be sufficiently motivated to help the company reach its absolute goal. While compensation is a very big issue for every organisation, it must be approached very carefully.

It’s also essential to treat a sales representative carefully, as very often the personal inter-communication between this person and the healthcare professional can make a difference in total productivity. In most cases, pharmaceutical marketing training should be able to reveal each individual’s dominant strengths and work to support them by providing the necessary resources and products. The pharmaceutical consultant should analyse the interaction with the end-user, to provide the information necessary to make this kind of decision.

Alan Gillies is the CEO of L2L Consulting, a cutting-edge pharma consultancy firm which specialises in optimising productivity and performance within international companies by applying tailored organisational strategies.

The latest Kindle release sees a 21% reduction in the physical size of the reader (whilst still maintaining the same display size), a reduction in weight of 15% and faster page turns. Memory is doubled and there is now enough space for 3,500 Kindle books on board. A new high contrast, low glare, e-ink technology display, coupled with a battery life of up to one month (with Wi-Fi turned off) means that the Kindle the is the ideal reading device, whether at home or whilst travelling.

Customers can now pick either graphite or white body colors and the standard unit comes with both Wi-Fi and free 3G connectivity. Users who don’t anticipate the need to use 3G connections can now opt for a cheaper, Wi-Fi only, version of theKindle.

Starting with the UK, Amazon will be selling the Kindle direct from some of its international sites. UK consumers can now buy their Kindle direct from Amazon UK rather than having it shipped from the USA. A dedicated UK Kindle book store will be launched, and no doubt similar arrangements can be anticipated for Germany and France at some point in future.

Amazon recently advised that Kindle books were outselling hard cover versions on their US website . In the last month, Amazon has sold 180 Kindle editions for every 100 conventional hard cover versions. They appear to be very confident that the future of reading is going to be digital – and these figures do seem to support that assertion. E-book readers are, on a commercial basis at any rate, a fairly recent development. On the basis of these figures, the reading public seems to have adopted them very rapidly.

Recently, e-book reader prices have fallen significantly. The latest Kindle with 3G and Wi-Fi has a price of $ 189, which is significantly less than the $ 359 February 2009 launch price of the Kindle 2.0. With a price tag of just $ 139, the Wi-Fi only option reader is getting into mp3 player territory. The launch of the iPad may have influenced, or at least hastened, these price cuts to some extent – but the hardware price was always going to come down, and there may still be further downward movement to come.

Although the sales price of e-book readers has fallen, the cost of the e-books themselves seems to have climbed a little. This gives Amazon a very real competitive advantage over many of its competitors who are mainly interested in hardware manufacture and marketing. The huge library of Kindle books is a great asset for Amazon – as is the fact that, thanks to Amazon’s policy of releasing free Kindle “apps”, it’s possible to read (and buy) Kindle books on a wide range of different devices. As the emerging e-book market matures and more emphasis is placed on e-books rather than the hardware to read them on, Amazon look very well placed to be the dominant player in the new digital publishing world.

Companies are now beginning to understand how important the information is which can be gleaned through social media interaction with their prospects and they should be able to integrate the end-user’s information in a much more targeted, responsive and productive way, to ensure that they can communicate with healthcare prospects and clients efficiently. Virtual communication is going to be of far greater importance going forward, so it is up to the pharmaceutical consultancy to work out how the value message is going to be incorporated. It’s important to analyse every aspect of information that is gathered in this way and to develop simple, yet effective ways of communicating with a prospect or client to generate this intelligence. Schedules and travel constraints being what they are, that when a meeting takes place, face-to-face time between the doctor and the sales rep can often be hurried or take place in a less-than-perfect environment. As such, a virtual style of communication could be seen as far more productive, as it would fit in with the schedules of each individual far more efficiently, by definition. Webinars and online methods of presentation enable high levels of communication through different forms of multimedia. Studies conducted by some pharmaceutical consultancy experts reveal that this can be a highly efficient way of reaching clients and of course it would be far more cost-effective as it cuts out the significant costs associated with travelling, together with the productivity trail off that is endemic. As the additional cost of generating sales will, in future, be significantly reduced, these resources should be reinvested in education, software and a variety of new communication tools necessary to enable the company to reach its clients.

Pharmaceutical marketing training is beginning to change to take into account the latest communications methods. The pharmaceutical consultant must accelerate the sales rep’s education, but it is also important to introduce these strategies to the client at a pace which is appropriate for the individual end-user. While personal communication will always be an important ingredient, we can look forward to a time when productivity will be increased substantially as a consequence of the new virtual styles of communication.

Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of L2L Consulting, specialising in enabling pharmaceutical companies to achieve new heights of productivity and performance, throughout all levels of management and revenue generating activities.