My beard has grey patches. That doesn’t make me a better consultant.
At 43, I’m in the middle of nearly every “should we hire experienced or entry-level reps?” conversation. Commercial directors assume tenure equals performance. The research says something more uncomfortable: experience ranks fifth as a critical success factor in pharmaceutical sales, behind relationship building, adding value to doctors’ practices, conscientiousness, and interpersonal versatility. That’s the finding from a University of the Witwatersrand study of 688 pharmaceutical industry respondents across South Africa. Fifth. Not irrelevant, just not what we’ve been optimising for.
The research contradicts conventional hiring wisdom
The Wits study identified what actually predicts sales performance. The top four factors have nothing to do with years on a CV.
What matters most:
- Relationship building capability
- Ability to add value to doctors’ practices
- Conscientiousness: reliability, preparation, follow-through
- Interpersonal versatility: adapting communication style to the person in front of you
- Experience
What doesn’t predict success:
Call rate and call frequency showed no significant correlation with sales outcomes. The rep making 12 calls per day isn’t necessarily outperforming the rep making 8 well-prepared ones. This contradicts decades of pharmaceutical sales management orthodoxy, and I’ve watched managers defend call-rate targets with the energy of someone defending a religious conviction.
Extraversion also failed to emerge as a critical success factor. Introverted reps who listen carefully and prepare thoroughly often outperform more gregarious colleagues. The assumption that pharma sales selects for big-room personalities isn’t supported by the evidence.
The magic happens in mixed-tenure rooms
My best training sessions happen when I walk in and see grey hair sitting next to fresh graduates. Mixed experience, mixed perspective. Something shifts in those rooms that doesn’t happen in homogeneous ones.
Veterans bring pattern recognition. They’ve seen the cycle before. They know which objections are real and which are smoke. They carry institutional memory that no onboarding document captures. A rep who’s navigated three product launches, two restructures, and a pandemic knows things that simply can’t be taught. Doctor relationships built over seven years. The rhythm of a territory. How a difficult specialist eventually became a strong advocate after the rep helped navigate a patient access issue.
Newer reps bring questions. They haven’t learned what’s “impossible” yet. They challenge assumptions the experienced reps stopped questioning years ago. And they’re often more comfortable with the digital tools reshaping how HCPs want to engage.
The advantage isn’t in one or the other. It’s in the transfer.
I’ve watched the transfer happen in real time
I’ve watched a 25-year veteran learn a CRM shortcut from someone three months into the job. The veteran had been doing a five-step process the graduate condensed to two clicks - roughly 15 minutes per day recovered, which is over 60 hours per year now spent in front of customers instead of a screen.
I’ve watched that same new rep completely rethink their call approach after hearing a story about a seven-year doctor relationship. The veteran’s account of how persistence through a difficult period turned a sceptical specialist into a genuine advocate changed how the new rep thought about the slow work of trust.
The research doesn’t favour young or old. It favours coachable.
The hidden cost of homogeneous teams
When companies hire only experienced reps, they create echo chambers. Everyone knows the same tricks. Everyone has the same assumptions. Everyone has the same blind spots. Knowledge retires when individuals leave.
When they hire only new graduates, institutional memory evaporates. Every lesson is learned from scratch. Mistakes veterans would have flagged get repeated.
Teams with intentionally mixed tenure tend to onboard new reps faster through informal mentoring, adopt new tools more readily because graduates drive digital fluency, and solve problems more creatively when diverse perspectives are allowed to collide. The veterans I’ve spoken to often describe the teaching role as reinvigorating - it asks them to articulate things they’d been doing on instinct for years.
Practical implications for hiring managers
The research points to specific changes worth making.
Reframe the job specification. Instead of requiring “5+ years pharmaceutical experience,” specify the capabilities you actually need: relationship building, value creation, conscientiousness, adaptability. Then assess for those capabilities regardless of tenure.
Design interviews for coachability, not polish. The candidate who commands the room and answers every question smoothly might be performing rather than demonstrating genuine capability. Ask them to describe the last time they changed their mind about something important. Ask what they’ve learned from a recent failure. Coachability leaves evidence if you know where to look.
Build structured knowledge transfer into your operating rhythm. Don’t leave intergenerational learning to chance. Create forums where experienced reps share case studies and new reps share digital tools. Make it formal. Put it on the calendar. Measure participation.
Assess for learning orientation, not years on a CV. The rep with 15 years of experience who’s still learning will outperform the rep with 15 years of experience who stopped growing at year three. Past tenure tells you nothing about future growth potential.
A framework for assessing learning orientation
Evidence of recent learning:
- What’s the last thing you changed about your sales approach? Why?
- Describe a time when feedback changed how you work.
- What are you actively trying to improve right now?
Evidence of knowledge sharing:
- How do you help colleagues learn from your experience?
- When did you last adopt an idea from a more junior colleague?
- How would you approach mentoring a new rep?
Evidence of intellectual humility:
- Tell me about a time you were wrong about something significant.
- What don’t you know yet that you need to learn?
- How do you respond when someone challenges your approach?
Candidates who struggle with these questions often struggle with ongoing development. The specific answers matter less than the evidence of reflective practice.
The question worth sitting with
What would change if your next hiring decision prioritised learning orientation over years on a CV?
What would change if you structured your team to maximise knowledge transfer between generations?
What would change if you assessed for coachability with the same rigour you assess for territory knowledge?
The best pharmaceutical sales teams aren’t the most experienced ones. They’re the ones where experience and fresh perspective combine to create something neither could achieve alone - deliberately structured, not left to chance.
