A pharmaceutical sales reps has a different job description and responsibilities as compared to a common salesmen.
This article reviews the interview questions for pharmaceutical sales positions with tips and answers.
A pharmaceutical sales representative has to sell medical drugs and other medical paraphernalia to doctors and other medical personnel. Launching and marketing new medical objects is challenging as the consequences are critical and conscious is kept.
These doctors and medical personnel are quite busy and therefore, it is not simple for the pharmaceutical sales representatives to interact with these personnel for presenting/selling their products.
The pharmaceutical sales careers require different set of qualities as compared to normal sales careers.
The qualities may consist – Good communications and presentation skills, negotiation experience, pharmaceutical background, honesty, dedication and hard-working.
The interview of a pharmaceutical sales position will therefore have different questions. Here are some of the questions that are generally asked of a pharmaceutical sales interview with suggested answers –
Answering the Pharmaceutical Sales Interview Questions
Apart from the general questions like those about your previous experience, and why you took up this career, as well as brief introduction about your professional background, there will be several questions related to your day to day work as a pharmaceutical sales person.
Here are just some of these job interview questions with tips to answer:
What is the most challenging aspect of being a pharmaceutical sales person?
A person who is new to the world of pharmaceutical sales will most definitely point out that the most difficult part is meeting the medical practitioner, but that is actually not so.
The most difficult part is actually convincing a doctor to switch from a drug that s/he and their patients are quite comfortable with and present a new alternative, which may or may not be better. Of course, the target group of a pharmaceutical is quite different than a common salesman, but that is the least challenging aspect of a pharmaceutical sales rep.
How do you perceive a typical day for pharmaceutical sales representative?
When asked this question, it would normally mean that the interviewer is looking for your dedication and whether you are up to the physical aspect of working as a pharmaceutical salesperson.
To this question, you should generally reply that you are quite aware of the day time table of a pharmaceutical salesman.
You would also have to make a special mention of the times when the medical practitioners and other medical officers are relatively free, that being around seven in the morning or even around nine in the evening.
This way, you will not only speak about your knowledge of the business, but also inform the interviewer that you are ready for the hard work that goes into becoming a pharmaceutical sales representative.
What is your interaction level with your previous supervisor? What did he do right and what did he do wrong, according to you?
Basically, this question is aimed at finding out whether you are good with some kind of authority above you or whether you are someone who requires a mentor.
The best answer to this question is that you had a cordial relationship with your supervisor and that any differences you had were purely theoretical and in the end, what was best for the company won.
How do you think the company would help you the best?
This question basically means the company wishes to know whether you are a team player and whether you can handle your own resources.
The answer to this question is that the company should chalk out a plan and quota that you should achieve in a month and then give you the resources that are reasonable and logical for you to meet.
These are the basic questions that are asked of a Pharmaceutical Sales interview.
You can also read the sales manager interview questions article for getting more related questions.
Make sure that you have all the answers ready and there are very good chances that you will be kept in mind by the interviewers.
