P ERSONA

artnership
HUMAN RESOURCE SPECIALISTS

CURACO
Negotiation Exercise (Pharmacist)
Information for Role Player

Persona Partnership LLP, St Martins House, 16 St Martin’s Le Grand,

London, EC1A 4EN, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)20 7397 8393 Fax: +44 (0)20 7397 8400
www.personapartnership.co.uk | www.assessmentexercises.com
CURACO
Information for Role Player

This is an exercise designed to assess the participant's customer relationship skills,

in particular, their ability to sell to and negotiate with an important customer.

The participant's task is to meet with a pharmacist, Kareem(a) Nassif, who owns
and manages Haria Pharmacy. The pharmacy is in a prime location within Curaco’s
Gulf Region and is therefore of commercial significance to the company.

The participant has 30 minutes to read the brief and plan the meeting. S/he will
then have 30 minutes to conduct the meeting.

The roles are:

Participant – A newly appointed Sales Representative within the Gulf and Africa
Region who has not yet met Kareem(a).

Role player (you) – Kareem(a) Nassif, owner and manager of Haria pharmacy.

The following information should be read in conjunction with the Instructions for
Participant.

HARIA PHARMACY

J The pharmacy is a family run business and one that you have personally
enjoyed running for the past 15 years since graduating in pharmacology.

J The business is well positioned in a central shopping area and close to the
town’s largest medical centre. You have invested an enormous amount of
time fostering relations with the doctors and practitioners at the centre and
have a good understanding of their individual prescribing patterns. This has
enabled you to build your stock profile according to anticipated needs.

J Storage space within the pharmacy is at a premium and therefore you have
to be rigorous about your stock holding. On the occasions when you do not
have a specific drug in stock you are always happy to order a supply in for
individual patients.

J You have recently invested a significant amount of money modernising the

premises and the services offered. It is imperative that you recoup some of
this investment as the exercise was more costly than you originally intended
and cash flow has been tight. Improvements include:

„ Increased sales footage to provide a larger area for OTC drug sales and
beauty products. The extra sales footage was achieved by further
reducing the stock holding area. Although you recognise this may cause
some problems, you could see no other way of increasing your revenue
in order to off set the predicted rent increases for commercial
properties.

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„ The introduction of an online prescription ordering service that you

believe will result in higher sales and better customer service.

YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH CURACO

J Curaco and Haria have enjoyed a long-standing relationship for over 20

years.

J Due to the prime location of Haria, Curaco see the relationship as an

important one and typically appoint their most progressive Sales Reps to the
area as a career development opportunity. Because the Reps are
progressive they don’t tend to remain in the role for very long and you are
somewhat weary of having to keep forming new relationships with different
Reps. You feel these relationships are so transitory that you never actually
reap any of the benefits that you regularly gain from other long standing
partnerships. These can range from financial incentives, such as higher
discounts, through to invitations to some of the nation’s annual sporting
events. Last year, for example, Zenith invited you along with the doctors
from the medical centre to a day of corporate entertainment at the Dubai
Open.

J You feel the Reps from Curaco are very ambitious and are out to achieve
good results for themselves without any genuine concern for the impact on
your business.

J Although you don’t always see eye to eye with Curaco’s Reps you believe it is
essential to work with the company as they often lead the field in drug
innovation and new product launches.

J You would very much like to take the opportunity to persuade the latest Rep
that Curaco must start to offer better terms of business in order to be as
attractive as other suppliers. In your view, just receiving a discount as a
matter of course would go some way to addressing this issue.

J You would also like to suggest to the new Rep that s/he introduces a process
to turn orders around more quickly so that you can respond to customer
needs quickly and not have to wait 3 days for delivery.

YOUR VIEWS ABOUT STOCKING PREVENT&EASE

J You are impressed by the fact that a steroid substitute has finally been
developed and can see the immediate advantages for the customer in terms
of no side effects and improved user convenience.

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J You are, however, concerned about:

„ The price of the product. You believe that given time this will reduce
and that doctors will be more likely to prescribe it in the future. You
believe that most prices reduce within 6 months of launch.

„ The request to stock large quantities. You would rather wait and
see what the prescribing pattern is like before committing yourself.
Experience tells you that doctors will only prescribe expensive new
drugs to a few select patients initially.

„ Existing stocks of reliever and preventer inhalers. You would

rather run these stocks down before holding large volumes of
Prevent&Ease.

„ Increasing stocks of Curaco’s Long Acting Bronchodilator. Your

sales patterns indicate that demand for this increases in the winter and
therefore further stock won’t be required over the coming summer
months.

YOUR APPROACH TO THE MEETING

J You run a profitable business but insist that trading is difficult and
competitive. You tend to play the ‘martyr’ and always try to appeal to the
Sales Rep’s better nature by telling them they have no idea just how difficult
it is to make an honest living at the retail end, long hours, high rent etc.

J Because of the high churn of Sales Reps in the region, you can be a little
cynical about spending a lot of time ‘getting to know’ new reps. You typically
make it quite hard for them in the early stages of the relationship, and view
them as ambitious upstarts who are keen to deliver results at your expense.

J You feel aggrieved that Curaco is reluctant to offer discounts despite the fact
that you are seen as a key customer in terms of both volume of sales and
location. You regularly remind them that Curaco’s competitors offer
discounts of between 3% and 5% as a matter of course.

J You should also show that you are annoyed and quite frustrated by the fact
that the previous Sales Rep, Yasmin Hussain:

„ Persuaded you to top up on stocks of reliever and preventer inhalers

without mentioning the imminent launch of Prevent&Ease. You would
like Curaco to take some responsibility for what could now become
obsolete stock and see the fact that you haven’t yet paid the bill as
fortuitous. The Rep needs to appreciate that at this point in time you
have sold 50% of the recent delivery of each inhaler. In addition you
are also holding stock of the inhalers from 2 other suppliers.

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„ Reduced your payment terms to 30 days when you have always,

without exception, been reliable and paid on time in the past. You are
doubly annoyed because you notified her during an earlier meeting that
there might be a slight delay in you settling your account because of
what were short-term cash flow issues due to the modernisation
programme. You are now confident that this situation has passed and
would like the 60 days reinstated. This is why you have with held
payment of the May invoices. You wanted to discuss reverting to 60
days with the new Rep.

„ Appeared to dismiss the fact that Haria is now well positioned for
dramatic growth due to increased sales footage and new methods of
generating sales, e.g. online ordering. You believe that Yasmin has
been short sighted and missed the opportunity of potential business.

J At first, you should be fairly resistant to the idea of the new product owing to
the high price. Initially, you would prefer to order stock of Prevent&Ease as
and when needed so that you can ascertain the level of demand before
committing to a large order. This would also enable you to get a better
understanding of the possible deflection of sales from the reliever and
preventer inhalers. However, if the participant sells in a convincing way, and
you are offered some reasonable financial incentives, e.g. some discounting,
you should become more receptive and co-operative.

ADDITIONAL GUIDANCE FOR THE ROLEPLAYER

You will consider placing an order of Prevent&Ease depending on the development

of the relationship with the participant and the balance of the negotiation offered.
You would expect him/her to explain the advantages of the new drug and find
mutually beneficial or satisfactory solutions to some of your issues.
Remember your role and take on Kareem(a)’s characteristics:
J You are a tough negotiator who feels exasperated by the lack of gestures
from Curaco Reps to work as partners. You feel it is time that Curaco met
you half way in the way that other suppliers do.
J You do not want to commit to stocking Prevent&Ease until Curaco offers
some assistance to help you with your financial situation, e.g. discounting,
raising credit ceiling or payment terms.
J You will not stock the levels of Prevent&Ease the participant is suggesting
unless there is some appreciation of the current stock holding you have of
reliever and preventer inhalers that may now become obsolete, e.g. s/he
offers to reduce your outstanding/unpaid bill.
J You will only stock Prevent&Ease at a price that is acceptable to you and a
quantity you feel you can accommodate and are comfortable with.
J You do not believe it makes good business sense to hold large stocks of
anything. In your view this is ‘dead money’ taking up valuable sales floor
footage.

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organisation which purchased them. All rights reserved.