How do you demonstrate sensitivity to others in the workplace?
Successful pharmaceutical sales reps always have to strike a balance between being goal/sales-driven and taking a sensitive approach with their physician customers. The team you are interviewing with needs to be assured that you will always bring a sensitive approach to your communications and interactions as a new rep with their team.
"I fully understand that sensitivity in the workplace is incredibly important as a pharmaceutical sales rep. In my work now, I demonstrate sensitivity to others by respecting the needs, emotions, and beliefs of everyone on my team and the customers I work with. Just last week, I had a long-time customer of ours inform me that he would be purchasing his products from another company that had much cheaper pricing. Of course, I talked to him about the service we provide and let him know I would look into other potential bulk buy discounts, but he wasn't having that. He was respectful and thanked us for the years of partnership, but let me know that cost was vital to him in this day. Rather than getting upset, I let him know that I respected his decision and thanked him for his continued business. I also told him that we would follow up in about six months to see if he wanted to reconsider and we had a great handshake to end our conversation."
The thing you most want to make clear as you answer this question is your ability to always react with sensitive emotional responses in the workplace. To do this, don't hesitate to talk about a specific time when you had a difficult interaction with a colleague or customer and you naturally took the high road and demonstrated sensitivity to the other person. This can of course include a time a sales pitch was declined and you kept communications positive moving forward.
