Delve newsletter · Issue 3 · Performance review

Stop arguing about the number. Start appreciating the person.

Sudhir Sharma, founder, Delve Solutions · 29 October 2026 · 5 minutes

Sit in on a monthly review in almost any pharma company and you can predict the first twenty minutes.

The rep says the stockist's sales were credited to the next territory. The manager's team total does not match the sum of his reps. Someone says the RCPA figures are from last month. HR has a different number on the incentive sheet. By the time the figures are settled, the meeting is over, and the one thing the review was meant to do, to talk honestly about how the person is growing, never happens.

The rating that comes out of it is often an impression. The incentive is worked out in a separate spreadsheet. And the rep leaves feeling judged, not seen.

We named our review module Sarahana, which means appreciation, because that is what a review should end with. To get there, the arguments about the number have to be settled before the meeting starts.

Five habits of a fair review

1. One source for every number.
The score on the review screen, the rating band and the incentive must all come from the same calculation. When the review page and the payout slip are worked out in two places, they will disagree, and the rep will trust neither.

2. Sales follow the territory, not the person.
Money lands on a territory. A person's sales are the sales of the territories their position covers, and a manager's number is the sum of the line below them. When a post falls vacant, the territory's sales are not lost; when a rep is transferred, they do not carry last year's stockists with them.

3. Say which months you are measuring.
"Last three months" and "this cycle" are different answers. A fair review shows, on the screen, which months each figure covers, so nobody compares April with June by accident.

4. Never show a number that isn't real.
A blank should say "no data", not 0. A zero that is really a missing upload has ended more than one good rep's month badly. If the data is not there, the review should say so and say why.

5. More than one pair of eyes.
Numbers are half the picture. The first-line manager and the manager above can both rate what they saw in the field, peers can rate collaboration, and the company decides how much each counts. The weights are written down, the same for everyone in the role.

A practical way to start, this cycle

You can begin with your next review, with or without any software:

1. Agree the definitions with sales and finance: what counts as a sale, which stockists belong to which territory, which months are measured.
2. Publish the weights to the team before the cycle starts: how much is sales, how much is field work, how much is the manager's view.
3. Ask managers to rate before the meeting, not during it.
4. Spend the meeting on the person: what went well, where they are stuck, what they will do next.
5. End every review with one specific thing to appreciate. Say it out loud.

Teams that review this way spend less time defending figures and more time improving them.

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