[Samantha Ushedo]

Preparing for an interview (first B2B sales, worked in pharma 13+ years)

Samantha Ushedo

Participant

Oct 14, 2023

Hey Will and company!

I’m going into a 3rd round interview next week for a VP of Sales role with a company that sells a digital education product for doctors to pharmaceutical companies. I’ve worked in pharma for 13 years mostly selling drugs directly to doctors but never worked in a B2B setting. I’m equal parts excited about trying something new and nervous about the challenge of doing more “hard sales”.

Wondering if you could offer any advice on how I can effectively translate my results in pharma sales/leadership in a way that translates to this role? The recruiter told me that I should expect to be “grilled on sales competencies and strategies in the face of competition” and to “know my KPIs”.

Thanks in advance! Really happy I found you and to be here!

[Varsha Raghavan]

Varsha Raghavan

Participant

Oct 16, 2023

Varsha Raghavan Oct 16, 2023

Hi Samantha!

My suggestion would be to go in with a high level 30-60-90-day plan/ approach on what you would do, to give the hiring manager confidence straight of the bat that you know how to apply your pharma sales skills to the new role.

Hope this helps!

[Samantha Ushedo]

Samantha Ushedo

Participant

Oct 17, 2023

Samantha Ushedo Oct 17, 2023

Thanks Varsha! I agree. It’s for a VP role so I think they will want to go a bit further which is what I’m not 100% sure about. I also don’t know much about the role so I’m going into this interview a bit blind!

[Will Barron]

Will Barron

Keymaster

Oct 18, 2023

Will Barron Oct 18, 2023

Samantha Ushedo wrote:

Thanks Varsha! I agree. It’s for a VP role so I think they will want to go a bit further which is what I’m not 100% sure about. I also don’t know much about the role so I’m going into this interview a bit blind!

Hey Samantha, here’s a link to a workbook that Salesman.com Academy members receive –

https://app.salesman.com/resources/TPD%20REVIEW%20WORKBOOK%20-%20V0.3.pdf

I run through it with our members in a one-to-one call but if you take a look through it, it will give you a bunch of metrics/KPIs that a VP of sales should know about each on of their individual reps.

Varsha Raghavan wrote:

Hi Samantha! My suggestion would be to go in with a high level 30-60-90-day plan/ approach on what you would do, to give the hiring manager confidence straight of the bat that you know how to apply your pharma sales skills to the new role. Hope this helps!

Varsha isn’t wrong here. You need a really solid 30, 60, 90 day plan based around how you’re going to –

• Build relationships with the team/other leadership
• Make sales data more visible and forcastable
• Bring new strategies to the table to innovate on the companies current sales process

All of these are hypotheses. You won’t know for sure the best approach until you get started at the organization but you need to come to the table with some ideas and a time frame.

 

 

[Samantha Ushedo]

Samantha Ushedo

Participant

Oct 18, 2023

Samantha Ushedo Oct 18, 2023

Thank you Will! I really appreciate the insights and feedback. The interview was actually a lot more straightforward than I thought (or maybe I was over prepared?). They asked nothing about KPIs or my results – only how I would address turning around a team that was underperforming as a result of not bringing insights to clients and not demonstrating the value of their product.

The book and these ideas helped me be ready for anything and possible future interviews.

Thanks again.

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