From the Field
Practical thinking from transformation frontlines. No jargon. No fluff. Just what actually works.
Written by Dieter Herbst and the Herbst Group team, based on 20+ years of pharmaceutical sales force transformation.
I built a locked calendar and mental health days into policy because without them I cannot function. What one needs to survive, everyone needs to thrive.
Dieter Herbst
Nine people, a Monday morning, five classification levels. How responsible AI governance works in practice - a decision made by everyone who touches the work.
Dieter Herbst
32 evidence pieces. 5 incidents. 10 risks. 6 registries. This is what compliance actually looks like.
Dieter Herbst
Data does not become dangerous when it is wrong. It becomes dangerous when it is right about something you were not ready to hear - and you dismiss it anyway.
Dieter Herbst
The 10x gap between your best and worst reps is a systems failure, not a talent problem. The fix is intelligence before the call, not coaching after.
Dieter Herbst
Your commercial teams are already using AI tools you haven't approved. The answer is not restriction - it is governed enablement. Here is how that works.
Dieter Herbst
Seven data systems, six hours a week arguing about whose numbers were right. Consolidating to one source of truth turned Monday meetings into decision sessions.
Wimpie du Toit
Most sales compensation fails not because each component is wrong, but because no one asks whether the components work together. The diagnostic and the fix.
Dieter Herbst
A Wits study of 688 pharma respondents found experience ranks fifth for sales success. What actually predicts rep performance changes how you hire.
Dieter Herbst
When an annual target becomes mathematically impossible mid-year, reps disengage. The fix is milestone structures that give people repeated reasons to try.
Dieter Herbst
32 reps spread evenly across 1400 pharmacies meant the wrong customers got too much attention. Rebuilding the call plan around potential changed the numbers.
Dieter Herbst
Data security policies were not designed for a rep pasting customer records into personal ChatGPT. Shadow AI is already inside - find it before a breach does.
Dieter Herbst
Extraversion has near-zero correlation with sales performance. The trait that predicts it - conscientiousness - is almost invisible in interviews.
Dieter Herbst
Three hours waiting. Two minutes talking. Volume-based targeting is often mathematically correct - and strategically incomplete.
Dieter Herbst
Most of your best prospects are already convinced before they contact you. How the B2B buying journey works in private, and how to write for it.
Dieter Herbst
Selling knowledge drives sales performance, and it transfers through coaching - not dashboards. Most organisations have buried their managers in reporting.
Dieter Herbst
When reps say their customer list is wrong, they are sometimes right. More often the list is a shield against accountability. What transparent design reveals.
Dieter Herbst
Most territory problems are actually sequence problems. Get the order wrong - geography last instead of first - and no amount of segmentation fixes the outcome.
Tiaan Keyser
Most reps walk into their next call on memory and instinct. We built a single pre-call view - one tap - that puts the right intelligence in the rep's hand.
Dieter Herbst
Monthly rankings arrive 720 hours after the behaviour they should reinforce. The science on feedback timing says the monthly scoreboard is broken by design.
Dieter Herbst
AI fails most of the time - not because the technology is wrong, but because organisations skip the governance that makes it work.
Dieter Herbst
When someone says 'the data is wrong,' they usually mean they don't like what it shows. That reflex is costing you insights already in your systems.
Dieter Herbst
Most organisations drown in data they never use. Becoming genuinely data-driven rarely needs big investment - a few precise changes to what you already do.
Tiaan Keyser
A visible laptop screen in a photograph triggered a four-hour investigation. Why that is exactly the right response, and what it says about security culture.
Dieter Herbst
After two years embedded with one client, the real differentiator was not dashboards or models. It was the trust that turns insight into action.
Tiaan Keyser
Map actual call patterns against customer value and the belief rarely survives contact with the data. One engagement's 90-day recovery.
Dieter Herbst
After 1001 days inside a client's business, you stop bringing answers and start building the conditions for better questions. On embedded practice.
Dieter Herbst
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