As with others with jobs in pharmaceutical sales, at first there weren’t many opportunities for promotion. Compared with product management, regional sales management, head office training, field training seemed to offer someone in their first role a smaller leap to a promotion from a field based sales role. In the end there was no contest. Field training offered both a position of perceived higher in status and a potential stepping-stone to an even more attractive role.
The basic concept of a field-training role is to take an experienced and successful individual and ask them to work alongside and mentor those with less experience while out in the field. There are some real positives with the way this works. First, the field trainer teaches the student skills. At the same time, the field trainer can learn training and development skills – handy for prospective jobs like management or head office training. What’s more, the field trainer isn’t the student’s manager, so they are able to be more neutral, shed the pressures of needing to see results.
What about the drawbacks of field training? Well there are some negative issues to bear in mind. A highly successful salesperson who a gets a buzz out of the sell may find field training wearisome since they can only watch and not properly take part. A good analogy would be a prolific centre-forward in a game of football, who has to keep passing the ball to young novice in the team each time he gets a chance to score – and frequently watches the novice miss the goal!
More seriously, in today’s market, jobs in pharmaceuticals are having to shape up to meet the shifting demands of the NHS. And because in most organisations out-and-out field training roles are not 'directly producing’, they are frequently the first to be cut if redundancies are necessary in order to reduce overall headcount. Job security, then, may also be a concern.
One last issue that is commonly ignored is that as a field trainer you’re placed in an awkward position between the management and field force. And when, for instance, sorting out poor performers, the experience can be slightly tricky. It’s possible you’ll be requested to undertake field visits with team members, essentially to improve their performance while also assessing the standard of performance in a way that can affect your student’s future. When other members of the team see this taking place, they will start to you differently. Thus a field trainer can be stripped of their 'just an ordinary member of the team' status and feel slightly isolated – part of neither the sales nor the management groups.
If you are looking at jobs in pharmaceuticals and field training, the best option is probably to get the responsibility of field training while keeping hold of a sales role. It can be taxing retaining your patch while at the same time organising training days, but there are various advantages as well. You’re blessed with stronger job security because of being in a producing role. You hold onto the work-diversity and buzz of the sell to keep your mind active. And you are also more likely to feel a part of the sales team, and treated as such while you are out and about selling. In sum, field-training experience is definitely a useful string to your bow that will open up future opportunities in your career.
