SALES MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS AT GSK

HISTORY• The history of GSK can be dated back as far as the 1800’s.

Glaxo was founded in the 1850s as a general trading company in Bunnythorpe, New Zealand, by a Londoner, Joseph Nathan

• Glaxo Laboratories opened new units in London in 1935. The company bought two companies, Joseph Nathan and Allen & Hanburys in 1947 and 1958 respectively. After the company bought Meyer Laboratories in 1978, it began to play an important role in the US market. In 1983 the American arm, Glaxo Inc., moved to Research Triangle Park (US headquarters/research) and Zebulon (US manufacturing) in North Carolina.

• By 1999 Glaxo Wellcome had become the world's third-largest pharmaceutical company by revenues (behind Novartis and Merck), with a global market share of around 4 per cent. Its products included Imigran (for the treatment of migraine), salbutamol (Ventolin) (for the treatment of asthma), Zovirax (for the treatment of coldsores), and Retrovir and Epivir (for the treatment of AIDS).

• Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham announced their intention to merge in January 2000.

• The company's global headquarters are at GSK House, Brentford, London, officially opened in 2002 by then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. The building was erected at a cost of £300 million, and as of 2002 was home to 3,000 administrative staff.[24] Andrew Witty took over as CEO in May 2008. Witty joined Glaxo in 1985, and had been president of GSK's Pharmaceuticals Europe since 2003.[25] Chris Gent, former CEO of Vodaphone, has been the chair since January 2005. Philip Hampton, chair of the Royal Bank of Scotland, will replace Gent in September 2015

Vision and missionGSK’s vision is inspiring:  

“ The opportunity to make a difference to the millions of lives everyday ”

  At GSK we perform in unison by following our strong value system and ethical guidelines as a source of direction and inspiration to help achieve our vision.

GSK’s quest is to improve the quality of human life by enabling people to  

“Do more, feel better, live longer” At GSK our mission acts as an underlying principle to whatever we do. We follow a legacy of great science and innovative healthcare that provides people around the world with healthier and fulfilled lives, every single day.

GSK products launches in 2014• Dependal – M Suspension(upsized from 60 ml to a

90ml bottle. This aims to improve compliance of patients who suffer from diarrhea).• Respiratory Ventolin(Syrup and Expectorant were

upsized from 60ml to 120ml.)• Analgesics Calpol(was upsized from 60ml to 90 ml)• Dertmatology Cicatrin(In 2014, GSK Pakistan upsized

Cicatrin™ powder from 10g to 20g )

SALES MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS

PLANNING• GSK in Pakistan has taken a rather unusual turn regarding the

policies in the sales department. As of 2013 GSK has decided that there will be no implementation of sales quotas and no sales targets will be set.

• The territories are divided on the basis of workload. They check the number of doctors and distributors in an area. On the basis of that they divide the sales territories equally.

• Apart from that, on field evaluations are also considered, where the number of clinic visits are taken into account and the number of prescription made.

STAFFING• Recruitment is done in GSK mainly through external

sources. GSK gives an advert in the national newspapers for sales rep. the minimum requirement for a sales rep is Bachelors. After a certain deadline, the relevant applicants go through a test.

• The ones who pass the test are then evaluated on their communication skills, through a group discussion. Communication skills are vital for selection.

TRAINING• The new sales rep are given a training of 5 weeks.

• This involves company orientation, teaching selling methods and most importantly product knowledge.

• A GSK sales rep is given extensive product knowledge and is regarded as a specialist.

CONTROLLING• The controlling phase of the company is well managed

in a properly structured hierarchy.

• Different territories and regions have established in which the sales activities are carried out

LEADING/ MOTIVATING• To motivate its employees GSK offers financial incentives

mainly in the form of bonus.

• If a prescription of a medicine is increasing in a particular area that means the sales rep is performing well.

• He will be entitled to receive a bonus along with his salary.

• If a sales rep is performing poorly, that means the sales rep needs a little training and motivation.

SALES FORECASTING• In GSK the sales forecasting will be done by evaluating

the current birthrate and the accompanying diseases that will be prevalent in the environment.

• The correlation here will be that as the birthrate will increase so will the demand of medicines and healthcare.

CONTROL HIERARCHYMedical Director

Director

Business Head

National Sales Manger

Sales Manager

Regional Manager

Field Manager

Sales Representative

GAP ANALYSIS

• As we have discussed in the class that sales quotas is a very important for the company to set and categorize their goals, upon how they have to achieve their planned targets that can either be of short term period or of a long term period.• Upon this basis of the number of sales made, the

greater the number of sales made by a sales rep to a customer the great the reward he or she will receive; so basically apart from the sales persons normal agreed salary for performing his job that sales person will also receive bonuses and different incentives based upon the margin of sales that he made and if he/she keeps up with the good work of increasing the margin of sales each time that sales person will also definitely get promoted to higher designations time to time.

• The company only focuses upon external motivation of the employees such as increment in salary and bonuses and fails to focus on internal motivation like self-recognition, employee empowerment, training and specialization in different kind of sales activities and participation in decision making process.

• During recruitment process both communication and intellectual skill should be considered but in GSK their main focus is only based upon the communication ability of an individual when hiring or recruitment.• As we have discussed in the class that the major

account or key account are mainly maintained by a separate sales person that are the company CEOs, Director, Manager. In GSK key account are managed by same sales rep that are also catering all other customer with in the particular territory.

• According to the discussion that we had in class that there is different and innovative techniques that is used by the company while formulating sales forecasting and sales expense budget and it is very useful if the company uses set of different techniques to know if their forecasting is correct and according to the plan but in GSK there is no such concepts of following any techniques to make sales forecasting and sales expense budget. Only sales and marketing executives or managers takes part in designing sales plan.

RECOMMENDATION• We have found that there is a communication gap in

the process of GSK which means that the employees are not able to communicate with upper management.

• The incentives given at GSK are an only cash incentive that includes bonuses; while other incentives such as medical, health insurance, conveyance etc. are not given. These other incentives are also as important as cash incentives and must be given to the employees who will make their life much easier and stress free.

CONCLUSION• Based on the above discussion we can conclude that it

is necessary for every company to consider all five functions in sales management process. Every function plays an important role in its respective field. A company can only be successful if it maintains full command on all of the functions. If the company lacks in any one of the functions than it will have a negative impact on the company sales/profit which will surely lead to decline in company value/goodwill.

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