Deniz ÖZLER*, Sevgi ŞAR*,°

*Ankara University, Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Pharmacy Management, Ankara, TURKEY
°Corresponding author

Summary:
All production and marketing activities result in sales. One of the purposes of sales force training is to increase sales performance of salespeople for the benefit of the firm. Therefore, there is a strong relation between sales force training and success of the company.
The purpose of this study is to understand the realization of sales force training programs in Turkish Pharmaceutical Industry; which criteria they use, the frequency of the programs which training methods they use, who the trainers are and to whom this training is given. A questionnaire with 24 questions is applied to Training & Development departments, Sales/Marketing Managers or Human Resource Managers in charge of sales force training, in 51 pharmaceutical companies, 37 of which are members of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Association, 14 of which use the services provided by the organization.
At the end of the study, the firms which answered the questionnaire stated that they found the role of sales/marketing department very important in determining the requirements of sales force training program and the increasing productivity of the sales as the primary aim of the sales force training program. The firms also stated that they have training specialists and training programs for trainers and they subject inexperienced salespeople to a traning program for less than 3 months.