Interview Story - Accomplishment

As a Pharmacy Manager with a major specialty pharmacy corporation, we went through several changes of leadership at the top of the organization, which resulted in multiple change in the direction of the company.

Under previous leadership, to cut expenses we laid off our entire sales team. Under new leadership, less than 1 year later, to grow our business, an entirely new sales team was hired. There were fewer people on this team, to cover an expanded territory.

A bright, talented young lady was hired as the new account executive for my territory. While she was motivated, there were a few major concerns. She left her home in a small southern town, thousands of miles away to take this promising job in a big city. She knew nothing about the physical territory she would soon be expected to navigate. To complicate the matter, she had minimal training in the clinical and operational side of our business and therefore felt inadequate calling on doctors to sell a service that she did not fully understand.

I saw an opportunity to apply my communication and leadership skills to help her succeed.

As the Pharmacy Manager, I decided to get her up to speed. I coordinated our schedules such that we could work together on days that would have minimal effect on business. I brought in additional per diem staff to cover my more routine duties. Then I took some time to ride with her to familiarize her with the area and our clinical and operational side of the business.

I introduced her to doctors as our new account executive. I modeled the duties she would be required to perform in the near future. Over the course of this training, I handed over more and more work to her. She grew confident as we continued to work as a team. In approximately 4 weeks, we decided she was ready to take the wheel.

The partnership proved successful. We saw a 25% increase in revenue as a result of referrals within the first 2 months, and business began to grow. Ultimately under her tenure, we became the number one region for new referrals in the company.