In a fiercely competitive pharmaceutical market that is flooded with me-too products, the competition is no longer between products and strategies. The competition is between the talent of one company and that of another. It is the quality of sales force that determines success in the market place. The ever-intensifying competition and the unending proliferation of brands place a premium on the personal selling element of pharmaceutical marketing. This research paper is aimed at determining the current aspects related to fieldwork norms, sources of recruitment, training and compensation of sales force in the pharmaceutical industry and exploring the differences in sales force management practices among the major and upcoming players in the pharmaceutical industry. A close-ended questionnaire was sent to the managers of the marketing department of the selected ten companies, out of which nine responded (five Group 1 and four Group 2 companies). To find out the differences between the sales force management practices of the two groups of pharmaceutical companies, various null hypotheses were tested by applying Mann-Whitney test. Based on the findings, a few recommendations have been made to the pharmaceutical companies to manage their sales force and achieve their sales objectives.

The pharmaceutical marketing environment is perhaps the most challenging one on the Indian industrial scene today. It is characterized by a very intense competition amongst about 23,000 companies—large, big, medium and small—fighting for their own place under the sun in a Rs. 37,000 cr. market. In a fiercely competitive market that is flooded with me-too products, the competition is no longer between products and strategies. The competition is between the talent of one company and that of another. It is the quality of sales force that determines success in the market place. The ever-intensifying competition and the unending proliferation of brands place a premium on the personal selling element of pharmaceutical marketing.

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