Administrator Guidelines
Exam Proctor Information and Forms
Congratulations on your decision to offer AMS Sales Training for your employees! To successfully implement this program, every licensee company needs at least one training administrator. Most often, this person is the manager to whom participating sales reps report. In larger companies, it may be a training leader or senior sales executive.
The training administrator is responsible for helping the sales force successfully implement the AMS Program. The administrator also serves as HIDA’s main contact with your company. Sometimes, companies split the administrator’s jobs, and assign a sales manager to work with the sales force to put training to work in the field, while an executive assistant or marketing person takes responsibility for communications with HIDA.
This works very well for a number of companies because it allows the manager to focus on skill development and coaching while the administrator handles the details.
The “job description” of the training administrator typically includes the following:
- Introducing the program to the sales team or other users within the company and ensuring that they know how to access and use the resources
- Setting the training schedule and expectations
- Tracking participants’ progress
- Scheduling the AMS exam for your team
- Ensuring that exam candidates register for the exam online before the deadline
- Providing a proctor for the AMS exam (your reps may take the exam online at your location, but an approved manager must be in visual contact during the exam to ensure the integrity of the testing)
- Helping to recognize and applaud reps who earn AMS accreditation
- Encouraging reps to maintain their AMS accreditation by earning the required 6 AMS points per year
Getting Started
If your company is just getting started with the AMS program, your first step will be to make a list of company users and send it to HIDA’s AMS program manager:
HIDA will set up a unique login for each user. All company employees may have their own login, but please only sign up those who will be using the program.
You can also work with HIDA to schedule a web conference to introduce the program to your team and show them how to use the website.
Setting Objectives
Most companies using the AMS Sales Training Program have several objectives in mind, which may include:
- Having their salespeople earn the AMS (Accredited in Medical Sales) designation
- Improving their sales reps’ knowledge of customers, products, and issues
- Honing their reps’ sales and account/territory management techniques to help them grow their sales and their profits
- Advancing industry knowledge in non-sales staff members
- Ultimately, ensuring that the company and its team members are well equipped to meet customer needs
It’s important to think over your company’s objectives as you plan how you will implement the AMS Program. For example, if your primary goal is to improve your reps’ selling skills, make sure to plan how long reps will spend developing these skills, and how you will monitor and reinforce the desired sales behaviors. Reps will not adopt these behaviors simply because they read about them – it is essential that you or the reps’ direct sales manager coach and support skill development.
Suggested Schedule
Determining how long you should give a sales rep or trainee to complete the Core Curriculum requires going back to your objectives. If your primary goal is to get your sales team accredited quickly, you may choose a more compressed scheduled than you would use if your primary goal is to help sales reps make significant improvements in their sales techniques. A few considerations:
- Course length: Each AMS course is about an hour’s worth of reading or studying
- Training current reps: If you are training current reps, they already have many tasks and goals besides training. So most companies require no more than one course per week, or one course every two weeks. This allows time for the rep to not only read and study the course, but also to focus on applying the training in the field for several days before moving on to other concepts
- Training new reps: If you are training new hires, it may make sense to use a more compressed training schedule, ensuring that the trainees gain all the information they need before they start making sales calls. In these cases, it’s a good idea to also go back and review course content again later, after the rep is working the territory, to make sure that the rep remembers and integrates the skills and knowledge he or she gained during the training period
Leverage Your Team’s Accreditation
Your reps work hard to earn and maintain AMS accreditation, so make a big deal about it!
HIDA has assembled tools to help promote accreditation.
Ideas from Other Users
Make it mandatory: AMS licensees often struggle to decide whether to make training mandatory or optional. There are good arguments for and against:
- Making the program mandatory can irritate experienced, proven sales performers who don’t want another “to-do” on their lists
- Making the program optional greatly reduces the likelihood that reps will take advantage of the training
In general, experience has shown that it is better to make it mandatory. Even experienced sales reps say they have gained knowledge and insight from the courses, and acknowledge how critical it is to stay well-informed of customer and market trends. And many of those same reps admit that they participated because they were required to do so. After all, most people put off things that we don’t have to do, and often we never get around to them, even if they are important. HIDA can offer suggestions on how to implement AMS Sales Training as a mandatory program in a way that your sales team finds motivating and inviting.
Measure results: As they say, “anything worth doing is worth measuring.” Record your reps’ sales volume and profits before they start AMS training, and then on a month-by-month basis after they complete the program and maintain their accreditation. You’ll begin to see how training impacts sales success, and you can use this data to convince reluctant reps that their training effort will pay off.
Incorporate rewards and incentives: Many companies reward sales reps when they pass the AMS exam. Some offer a slight pay bump or bonus; others rely on recognition. Use the incentives that work best for your team to reward your reps’ accomplishments.
Do you have ideas on successful AMS implementation? We’d like to hear it! To share your idea, please contact the HIDA program manager.