Attrition Rate Management of Sales Personnel in the Indian Pharmaceuticals Industry

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the Indian pharmaceutical industry’s serious issue related to the retention of sales employees which is an area of concern in spite of its consistent phenomenal growth in 21^st century. Apart from competition luring away the talent from the market to switch over, there are multifarious reasons that attribute to the quitting of sales employees. There is a high cost of recruitment per sales employee in the pharmaceutical industry due to conduct of extensive and expensive training programs. Hence, the pharma organization cannot simply afford to ignore their field force and let them switch over due to a non-conducive environment as they are the real assets who work indefatigably to entrench the organization and generate profits. Through in-house training, the medical representatives and front line and second line managers are always updated in the knowledge based industry. The demand –supply ratio has become more skewed towards demand for successful sales professionals in the 21^st century. Moreover, there are a host of reasons responsible for high attrition rate in the industry such as poor job satisfaction, stagnant career growth, high stress levels due to challenging targets, job monotony, strained superior – subordinate relationship, absence of motivation etc.

The high attrition rate is a gigantic cost to the organization and it brings down the profitability besides the loss of clientele as it takes years to build trust in a sales employee by doctors and they do not rely on a new sales employee so early.