A single double visit can mislead you.
The rep has a good day, or a bad one. The doctor is in a hurry, or in a good mood. If you judge development from one field day, you are judging the weather.
The habit that fixed this for me is a coaching log. Nothing complicated. One line per call, kept with the rep, not about the rep.
Four things go in it:
- The skill in focus. The one skill we agreed for the month.
- What went well. One line per call.
- One thing to try. The change the rep chose, in their own words.
- Seen next visit. Did it show up on the next double visit.
Read across a month, the pattern is obvious. The same gap keeps coming back, or it quietly disappears. The strengths become clear too, and those are worth building on.
The most important rule: the rep sees the log. We read last month's lines together at the start of each field day. It is their development record, not a file I keep.
When reps know the log is shared and fair, they start adding to it themselves. That is when coaching begins to stick.
“One visit is a snapshot. A month of lines is the picture.”
Lesson 6 of 23 in Step 4: Coaching, with the full guide and a checklist for this week.