What are the Ideal Strengths for a Medical Visitor?

What strengths should we recruit for in sales representative in the pharmaceutical industry? Are the strengths needed for this job any different from typical sales strengths? Do we have any solid evidence for this?

Novartis has done some interesting research on this subject and part of its findings are publicly available in an interesting presentation that can be found in the following link:

http://www.sloansalesconference.com/media/2008/keynote_-_Greg_Schofield_-_Novartis.ppt

According to this presentation, highly successful sales reps in Novartis have the following strengths:

• They purposefully probe and listen.
• They adapt their message to each Doctor
• They are not shy to using rather direct closing techniques with doctors
• They create call continuity, for example by taking good notes, by reviewing them before the next visit, and by defining goals and key messages for each visit.
• They are relationship focused. As such, they make sure that they deliver what they have promised and they never a doctor's question if they are not sure about the answer.
• They coordinate with teammates who visit the same doctor to make sure that they don't miss important information and adapt their messages and approach to what their colleagues have said.
• They have a strong will to win.

What talents can you identify behind these strengths? Do you agree with these strengths, or do you believe that some of them are misleading while other more important strengths are missing? What interview questions would you ask and what answers would you want to hear in order to find these strengths?