Season 1 of the ladder was about the rep. Season 2 moves to the first-line manager, the person who now wins through other people's calls.
The best rep in the district gets promoted. 6 months later, they're exhausted and the team has gone quiet. I've seen this many times, and I've felt some of it myself. Talent is rarely the problem. The habits that made you the top rep don't transfer, and nobody makes that shift in the first month.
Step 1 of Season 2 of the Pharma Career Ladder is becoming a manager.
The habits that don't come with you
As a rep, success came from your own calls. As a new manager, it comes from reps doing good calls when you're not there.
As a rep, when a call went wrong, you fixed it on the spot. As a manager, the same reflex means you take over the call and the rep learns nothing. The better move is to ask what they would change.
As a rep, your day was doctors and pharmacies. Now it's double visits, coaching and one-to-ones. It can feel like you're not working, because nothing closes in front of you.
The hardest change is what feels like a win. It used to be a great call you made yourself. Now it's a rep doing it well without you. Stop being the best rep. Start building better ones.
Listen before you change anything
A new manager arrives, and by the second week there's a new report, a new meeting and a new way of doing call plans. The team smiles, nods, and waits for it to pass. I understand the pressure to show you were the right choice. Change made before you understand the team usually fixes the wrong things.
Michael Watkins' The First 90 Days makes the case: learn fast first, secure early wins, then drive the bigger changes. For a first-line manager's first 90 days, that means meeting every rep one to one with 2 questions: what works here, and what gets in your way? It means a field day with every rep before any big decision, because the territory looks different from the car park than from the spreadsheet. Then fix 1 problem the whole team keeps raising. Only after that, share what you learnt and agree the changes together. Earn the right to change things by learning them first.
Find the time to coach
"I have no time to coach." I've said it, and I've heard it from many managers. Every time I've checked my own calendar honestly, the time was there. It had gone somewhere else.
The Eisenhower matrix is an old tool, and I still find it the quickest audit of where a manager's week goes. Sort last week's calendar into 4 boxes. Urgent and important, like a hospital running short of stock: do it now, then ask why it became urgent. Important and not urgent: coaching, double visits, development plans, hiring ahead. Urgent and not important: most emails and many report requests, handled in fixed slots or passed on. Neither: meetings with no decision and reports nobody reads. Stop them and see if anyone notices.
The second box is the one to watch. Nothing in it ever shouts, so it loses every week unless it's booked first. What works for me is putting double visits into the calendar before anything else, and repeating the audit every month, because calendars drift back. Your calendar is your real priority list.
Step in, or stay out
Most of us became managers because we could sell. So when a call starts to drift on a double visit, the urge to step in is strong. You know the answer, the doctor is right there, and it would take 30 seconds.
The manager who still sells needs a clear rule. I step in when the rep asked for help before the call, or when a key account needs a senior voice. We agree my role in the car park, I hand the conversation back as quickly as I can, and we debrief it afterwards so the rep learns how a senior call sounds.
I stay out of a routine call the rep can handle, even if not perfectly. Hands behind my back. Watch, then debrief. The doctor sees the rep as the owner of the account, and the rep learns that I trust them with their own doctors. The honest test I use on myself: did I step in because the call needed it, or because it was quicker than coaching? Every call you take over is a call the rep didn't learn from.
Ask before you tell
The fastest debrief after a double visit is the one where the manager does all the talking. It's also the one the rep forgets by Thursday.
Take the same missed call. Telling sounds like "You should have mentioned the new dosing," followed by 3 fixes the rep agrees to and moves past. Coaching starts with "What did you want the doctor to leave with?" The rep names what went wrong and chooses 1 change, and remembers it because it was their idea. That's the difference between coaching and telling.
Michael Bungay Stanier's The Coaching Habit puts it simply: stay curious a little longer, and rush to advice a little more slowly. I found that hard as a new manager, because I knew the answer and saying it felt like helping. Telling still has its place. A fact, a compliance point or a rule, say it clearly. A skill, ask first. And watch one trap: asking questions when you only want the rep to guess your answer. Reps spot that immediately.
Your checklist for this week
- Book a one-to-one with every rep and ask what works and what gets in their way
- Put a field day with each rep in the calendar before any big decision
- Pick 1 problem the whole team keeps raising, and fix it
- Sort last week's calendar into the 4 boxes and stop 1 meeting with no decision
- Book your double visits first, before anything else lands
- Agree your role in the car park before every double visit
- Open your next debrief with a question, and let the rep choose the 1 change
That's Step 1. Next week Step 2 begins: targets, forecasts and numbers, starting with how to split a target fairly across your team.