Frontline manager - Role clarity

An area manager can play the role more effectively if he moves away from getting caught in the web of activities, says K Gopal

The frontline sales manager in a pharmaceutical company is given different job titles in different companies - area business manager, area sales manager, area manager, district manager or district sales manager. Whatever be the title, a fact that is indisputable is that he plays a very important role in the hierarchy. We will call him area manager in this article.

I have interacted with hundreds of area managers from various organisations during training programmes that I conduct or during casual chat when I meet them elsewhere.

One thing that has puzzled me always is the lack of role-clarity in a large number of area managers. Most area managers find it difficult to answer the questions - ‘What is my role? What am I here for?’ The most commonly seen answer for this vital question is, ‘‘My role is to achieve sales and collection targets.’’ They are absolutely right, but is that all that can be said while defining the role of area managers?

I have always found that an interactive discussion based on Time Management Matrix as described by Stephen Covey in his all-time classic ‘‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’’ with area managers really helps to clarify their role. How do we go about it?

The chapter on Habit III (Put First Things First) is a must-read for anyone wanting to organise his life around priorities and area managers certainly need to prioritise their activities instead of falling a victim of the activity trap. I have made an attempt to give the essence of the wonderful discussion you find on Time Management Matrix in the book.

Time management matrix

Step 1: Make a things-to-do list

Write down a list of all the jobs you have to get done, not just today’s jobs but your long-term tasks and priorities. It does not need to be in any order at this stage. Just brainstorm the list. Sorting it out comes later.

Now let’s study its contents. It will doubtless be a mixture of large and small tasks, the urgent and non-urgent, the immediate and the long-term, the boring and the interesting. Now start thinking about the items on your list and ensure that it also contains tasks, which help you to achieve the primary purpose of your job as area manager.

Step 2: Identify importance and urgency of tasks

Tasks normally fall into two categories: Important and not important. Whether a task is important or not important, it can be further classified into: urgent and not urgent.

It is vital to be ruthless with yourself as you categories your list and allocate the important task status to only those jobs which help you build the business and achieve the objectives of the organisation. The rest then become the reactive tasks - the daily running problems and maintenance needs.

These tasks can be either urgent and important as well as urgent and not important. These are the tasks that you have to do to keep things running. Like chasing payment for a bounced cheque (urgent and important) or receiving mail and attending to unproductive telephone calls which fall under the category urgent and not important.

The danger and this is the trap most area managers are caught up in, is that you will spend all the available time on reactive tasks - coping with the day-to-day jobs - and no time, or very little time, on the positive tasks which feature in the quadrant II in the time management matrix shown below.

Quadrant I

Quadrant I activities are urgent and important - called problems or crises. These are activities screaming for action as ‘‘Urgent.’’ Examples for this category in the case of area managers will be chasing the all-important budget and targets during the month-ends or preparations for an ensuing CME or seminar in which the company is participating or Quadrants III and IV

Quadrant III activities are urgent and not important, and often misclassified as Quadrant I.

Quadrant IV is the escape Quadrant - activities that are neither urgent and nor important and hence do not even deserve a discussion in this article.

Effective people stay out of Quadrants III and IV because they aren’t important. They shrink Quadrant I down to size by spending more time in Quadrant II.

Quadrant II

Quadrant II activities are important, but not urgent. Working on this Quadrant is the heart of personal time management. Quadrant II activities are high impact - activities that when done regularly would make a tremendous difference. I have asked this question to a number of area managers who have attended my programmes on role-clarity, because I am strongly convinced that what goes into Quadrant II really defines the role of a frontline manager.

I have found that area managers find it quite easy to identify the activities that should go into Quadrant I, which stands for Urgent and Important. It has been my experience that most of them take some time to identify the activities that should go into the Quadrant II, which stands for important and not urgent.

Role of an area manager

In other words, it is not easy to answer the questions:

• What is my purpose?
• What is my contribution?
• What am I paid for?

Area managers with whom I have interacted during role-clarity training sessions have answered these vital questions admirably and the roles they have identified as Quadrant II roles - the important and not urgent tasks - are listed below:

• Exploit opportunities/show new avenues to MRs
• Develop representatives
• Communicate constantly with MRs
• Focus on redistribution/secondary sales
• Analyse data, reports and information/arrive at solutions
• Coach MRs for skills
• On the job training
• Make MRs more effective in their job
• Counsel for personal problems/behavioural change
• Ensure my own self-development (so that my team benefits)
• Plan the territory’s future - strategic thinking
• Territory reorganisation / Upgrade and update customer lists
• Talent scouting - to fill up vacancies
• Focus on solutions and not problems
• Proactive steps to prevent crises
• Relationship building - with key opinion leaders, trade and with drug control authorities
• Customer service.

As rightly identified by area managers, none of the above, fall in the category of ‘urgent and important’ (which consists of crises and deadline projects). All are very important not urgent. If you are an area manager reading this article, ask yourself the question - How much time do I spend on this important but not urgent part of my job. Find an honest answer to this question. You, as an area manager, can play your role more effectively if you move away from getting caught in the web of activities (Quadrants I, II and III) to the more meaningful Quadrant II role of a developer, strategist and leader in the true sense of the term.

The writer is Chennai based pharma sales training consultant. Email: gopalk19@rediffmail.com