Abstract

Missionary Selling is a form of indirect selling in which a salesperson tries to provide information about the given product to an individual who has an influence on the buying decision rather than directly selling the product. This is used to convince a person who has never used a product to buy it. Missionary sales are common in technical, pharmaceuticals and text books. The pharmaceutical industry is growing exponentially; there is a constant thirst for the best and the brightest of employees. After IT sector, the pharmaceuticals industry is grappling with the highest level of attrition rate of 30 to 35 per cent, according to a recent survey of Indian pharmaceutical companies by Interlink Marketing Consultancy. Job satisfaction had a positive influence on organization commitment and a negative influence on turnover intentions. The differences in job satisfaction across age and experience categories were not significant but salespersons with higher educational qualifications reported lower levels of job satisfaction. The talent management has arises as a big task for pharmaceutical  industry to consolidate their growth; thus in this paper talent management strategy of missionary sales people in pharmaceutical industry for reducing their attrition rate are discussed. The causes of attrition like money factor, working conditions, organization’s culture, opportunities for growth, organization behavior, low self-esteem, platued sales person etc are discussed. Roles of human resource management in meeting organizational needs and tasks have also been discussed. Strategies to attract best talents, retain and motivate talented people, psychological environment, and career track management are also discussed in this study. Organizational environment like work culture, engaged leaders, effective communication practices, challenging assignments, differentiate rewards for superior performers like financial and non financial benefits , growth opportunities, training programmes, flexible work-time, quality of life, work-life-balance, MBO practices, posting in the local areas , assignment of higher responsibility and accountability to platued sales people who are above the age group of 45 can help them to retain in the organization for longer period of time and  reduce attrition rate in the organization resulting  improvement in  productivity. 

Keywords: Missionary Selling, Attrition Rate, Talent Management, Job satisfaction,  platued sales people, MBO practices, flexible work-time, quality of life, work-life-balance