For an interview, one must be prepared to show an employer that you are the perfect candidate for this position. If you have decided to choose a clinical specialist as your career choice then we are here to assist you! This article is going to help you in preparing for the interview along with its challenges and job description too. Here we are sharing the Top 25 Clinical Specialist Interview Questions & Answers that will be will helpful.
1. Why Are You Interested In This Role?
Pharmaceutical sales give me the feeling of owning a small business by managing a territory. I like to interact with educated people, and influence them by conveying how the positive aspects of my company’s product satisfy the needs of their patients for effective, safe, convenient and affordable medication.
2. What Are The Roles Of A Clinical Specialist?
The major role is to provide medical devices and medicines to healthcare providers. Due to the nature of their job, there is a lot of travelling to introduce products to the medical professional along with the training on how to use it.
3. What Are The Qualities That A Clinical Specialist Needs To Be Successful?
Medical Sales requires the ability to make complex sales while managing multiple call points and being familiar with technical products. Many qualities make a successful medical salesperson.
- Ambitious: This is a particularly great quality to have in a medical sales representative because they are motivated by sales quotas and budgets. Meeting and obtaining quarterly goals is how they make their money and move up in the organization.
- Hard Working: Sales is a numbers game and the harder you work the more sales you typically make.
- Diligent: Not everyone succeeds the first time they try something, especially in medical sales. It can take many meetings to get a physician group or hospital to try your product or write a prescription for a drug you are promoting. Diligent people roll up their sleeves and find out what needs the referral source has and figure out a way to get back in the door and make the sale.
- Well, Read: It is important as a medical sales representative to not only learn the skills necessary to sell and take sales training classes but also to read up on healthcare in general. Know about reimbursement, disease states and overall complexities of the healthcare market. Successful medical sales representatives are a partner to their customers and this can only be accomplished if you are well-read.
- Loyal: The medical field these days can be volatile and the ups and downs of sales can be discouraging to sales representatives. Representatives that are loyal to the company they work for and their managers show a true ability to succeed and trust in the process. Loyal people have confidence and remain committed to the product and company.
- Excellent Follow Up: Medical salespeople present data and often have to follow up with physicians on clinical updates and changes in reimbursement, making a person with consistent follow up more likely to be successful than their less reliable counterparts.
- Flexible: Medical sales are a changing and often a high-stress job. Surgeries are scheduled very early in the morning and late in the day. Medical salespeople have to be capable of working flexible and often long hours. They also have to meet the needs and understand the various personalities of their referral sources.
4. What Major Challenges Did You Face During Your Last Role? How Did You Manage Them?
I’ve had managers that for one reason or another had to be micro-managers, or that gave the reps a lot of assignments, but I’ve never had a manager that I couldn’t get along with, and that didn’t treat me with respect, once they got to know me and that I work hard to attain my goals.
5. Describe Your Daily Routine As A Clinical Specialist?
I start my day at work with a quick team meeting with our superior before we all begin our work. The main objective is to overview the targets achieved and go through the pending task with an understanding of key priorities. Sometimes, this same meeting becomes a brainstorming session for a sales pitch.
6. Describe Briefly About Your Experience?
I’m a seasoned, successful pharmaceutical rep with 3years in primary care sales, and 2years in pain speciality sales. I’ve always been able to deliver results in the top third and have received sales awards almost yearly, including two President’s Club Awards.
7. What Kind Of Strategies And Mindset Are Required For This Role?
Any salesperson needs to know their customers well. To excel, the sales representative should know what treatments are being provided by the doctors and how a product can fulfil the need. This does take work and the medical rep that takes the time to find out all this information and uses it to serve the customers always does better. Also, Product knowledge is vital as a medical representative and you must know everything there is to know about your product including the trials, the best patients to prescribe it to, how fast it works, side effects etc.
8. What Is The Biggest Challenge You Foresee In This Job?
I’ve found that physicians can be intimidating if they’re having a bad day or if they want to establish their power over you. I’ve handled these types with courtesy and empathy, or a combination of both. If you remind yourself that they’re human, and are not intimidated, it usually works out with time.
9. How Do You Stay Motivated At Work?
The world of medicine and its power motivates me every day. I believe in the industry’s power to provide the best healthcare facilities as technology advances. My motivation is a happy patient who does not complain of pain due to medical contributions.
10. Describe A Time You Failed In This Role And The Lesson You Learned?
Yes, once I was on the call with a new client for a new product line. Since he was a new client, the company offered a few promotional discounts. When notifying him about the final amount, I forgot to include those in the calculation. He got a little furious for missing the important part of the deal. I apologized to him on this matter and offered him 10% off on his next 2 orders. I was able to secure him a client though even though I lost a bit in sale value. I did learn that I should be remembering all promotional information on my tips to avoid any further inconveniences.
11. Why Do You Feel You Are Qualified For This Role?
My goal is to work for a company in which I can use my knowledge of the market, as well as leverage the relationships I’ve established with specialists in the area. This job would allow me to do that. I also like that your company is making ethical contributions to global health by addressing medical needs which are significant but not potentially profitable.
12. Share With Us Your Greatest Achievement
I would say that I locked an important client based on communication. I once reached out to a physician and tried to convince them to switch over to our product based on a powerful customer service reputation. I made sure that I am always answering all his call and replying to his email whenever he had a query regarding medication. He told me that he only shifted to me because of my great customer service skills which were not provided by other companies.
13. What Is The Advantage Of A Clinical Specialist In Sales?
The Clinical Specialist is now an invaluable asset in the Sales Team of any Multinational Medical Device company. They work with the KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) and other potentially high volume users to ensure that all relevant staff is fully trained on the device that is being actively promoted. This then frees up the salespeople to generate more sales and establish more potential KOLs etc. The huge plus point is that a company person has concentrated face time with all the key individuals either in the Cath Lab or Operating Room which gives not only relationship-building opportunities but the chance to promote other products in a non-threatening environment.
14. What Are The 7 Basic Selling Steps In This Field?
- Pre-call planning: This involves identifying the right doctors who would be interested in your product. If it is a follow-up call then review your previous last call to prepare well. You should be aware of objective and promotional material too.
- Opening: It is a skill to capture the doctor’s attention and focus on the sales call.
- Questioning: It is used for purpose of gaining information to use in a sales call. It starts with open questions and moves to close questions. The open question caters to What, When, Why, Where, Who and How. The closed questioning invites a yes or no reply from the doctor and starts with Do, Will, Is or Should.
- Presentation: It is a balance between doctors’ identified needs or wants with appropriate product features and benefits.
- Handling Objections: It either can be a question or query. If asked, it means the doctor is interested in your product.
- Closing: The real success of sales calls depends on the use of effective closing.
- Post Call Analysis: It is a process of evaluating and recording the outcome of the call. to plan for future calls.
15. What Is The DAPA Method Of Selling?
D- Define the doctors’ requirements for the product
A-Acceptance by the doctor of the requirements
P- Prove that your product can fulfil the doctor’s requirement
Acceptance of the proof by the doctor.
16. How Would You Handle A Doctor Who Tried Your Drug, And Had A Bad Experience With It?
I had an experience like that once. I arranged a lunch meeting, and brought the doctor’s favourite meal, to soften the doctor’s resistance. I then asked the doctor to tell me all the details of his experience before I said anything. I empathized with him and made sure he knew that I knew how he felt personally and professionally by prescribing a drug that had a side effect. Then I asked if he would like to hear what I knew about it. I went over the side effect profile in detail and made sure he understood that the side effect was very rare. By the end of the lunch, his guard was down and I asked him if had enough confidence in what I had presented to try the drug again. He did and later went on to become a valued prescriber.
17. What Are The Reasons For Direct-To-Consumer Advertising Growth?
- FDA easing regulations on this type of advertising,
- Patients want to be more involved in their healthcare decisions/educating them more,
- Public increasing medical and health literacy, and
- Physicians increase the willingness to consider their patient’s requests for advertised drugs.
18. What Is The General Spectrum Of Healthcare Settings?
There are 4 settings:
- Home-Based Care
- Primary Care, Secondary Care,
- Tertiary Care
- End-Stage Care
19. Do You Believe In A Money-Back Guarantee Strategy In This Field?
A money-back guarantee is essential for your success. A lot of people won’t buy it because of the simple fact that if they don’t like it, they can’t return it to you for a refund. And believe it or not, when you offer a money-back guarantee, it will boost sales, and you will find that a lot of people won’t return your product to you. This is the benefit of having a money-back guarantee. People want to know that they can get their money back if they aren’t happy with your product. This is a subconscious decision, and it can immediately be switched to a positive decision if you incorporate the idea of a money-back guarantee.
20. Why Should Companies Invest In Sales Team Instead Of Marketing?
This is the longest debate that we all have in our offices. I don’t believe that any of the sides takes the lead. The business needs revenue and both sides should work efficiently in the promotion. Close the gap between Sales and Marketing. Reach out to Sales to better understand their challenges and needs. Both should work together to better serve your customers. Sure, it will improve your business and probably increase revenue, but it will also improve your workplace happiness!
21. How Often Do You Change Your Sales Tactics In This Field?
I believe improvement and innovation are very important when it comes to medicine. Sometimes when I realize that the person is not interested in one aspect of the pitch, I make sure that I add more relevant information regarding the topic they want to hear about. The change in selling tactic excites the other person and helps in finalizing the sale too.
22. What Is The Basic Requirement Of Pitching A Medical Product?
If you are selling a technical product in pharmaceutical sales or a medical device you will need to be able to communicate to your customer the features of your product and how that will relate to benefits for the patients your customer is treating. To do this some fundamental knowledge of the disease area and how it affects the body will be vital.
23. Are You Aware Of Medical Products That Are Being Sold Through The Same Channel Worldwide?
I believe that with a flair for marketing and anyone who can show extraordinary results has a variety of choices to advance into management roles. They can make a very promising career in pharmaceutical marketing based on their sales performance and ability to manage customers. His sales performance is assessed based on his ability to achieve targets fixed by the company. Starting from one type of product, the following can be added to the portfolio too.
- Pharmaceuticals
- Dental
- Home Health
- Veterinary
- Disposables/ Supplies
- Laboratory Items of Diagnostics
- Medical Devices
- Biotech
24. What Important Trends Do You See In The Pharmaceutical Industry?
Increasing costs of R&D, as well as marketing, coupled with shareholder and public pressure to contain those costs are forcing the industry to streamline its procedures. New models rely more on collaborative agreements with biotech for Research and Development, and agreements between companies to share sales forces. I think there will be more emphasis on speciality sales, with decreasing emphasis on primary care.
25. Why Clinical Specialists Are A Necessity In The Medical World Today?
It ensures that physicians, clinicians and distributors are trained to an agreed level of competency in the specific products. These specialists will visit key accounts with an agreed frequency which is almost impossible for traditional “Export” staff to achieve. Enhanced customer comfort and familiarity with a product will lead to repeated use of that product. The presence of a Clinical Specialist will greatly enhance the confidence of the KOLs enabling them to quickly become familiar with new or modified devices. This sales boost generates early revenues, which so vital in young companies. Clinical specialists can spend time with doctors in their areas, further enhancing client company recognition and helping to identify future opportunities for clients. This is an ideal time for them to also carry out market research and gather market intelligence. Clinical specialists are the client’s eyes and ears in the clinical setting.
Conclusion:
Be confident and smile as you give your interview. These 25 questions are surely going to help in acing the first round of interviews as a Clinical Specialist. Good luck!
