Sales Force Management at Nobel Ilac

Nobel Ilac was a Turkish generic pharmaceutical company marketing more than 100 drugs in 20 countries and, as of 2017, had over 2,500 employees worldwide. Nobel had implemented a transformation strategy—more specifically, a customer segmentation plan—whereby the sales force had begun to use data to determine their call plans. As a result, it had improved sales performance, and its previously negative EBITDA had reached double-digit positive figures. Two key issues remained: 1) growth was not as high as desired; and 2) the sales force’s voluntary turnover was very high. Given that the sales force was the only go-to-market channel, Nobel needed to do something to reduce employee turnover without affecting the positive trend in sales and profits. For many industries, personal selling is the primary and sometimes the only way that a firm can go to market. Hence, properly managing the sales force is a key to a firm’s success. The case outlines the challenges of managing a sales force—in particular, how to decrease salespeople’s attrition while also increasing growth. The main teaching themes of the case are as follows: • Obtain a deeper understanding of the significance of sales force design in implementing an organization’s strategy, and of the role of sales force management in linking structures and processes to salespeople’s behaviors • Acquire an overview of the range of challenges and intricacies that managers face when designing a sales force compensation scheme, and of the need to align compensation with the organization’s sales management and strategy • Consider the effects of compensation components, fixed and variable pay, as well as other factors such as recruiting, training, and mentoring on sales force behavior—both sales performance and employee attrition • Understand and utilize the mix of various instruments in sales management to achieve the desired outcome of an organization