Changes in the prescribing landscape are driving new and innovative sales models based on stronger relationships with key prescribers and their influencers. Nev Skelton, Sales Force Effectiveness Group Vice President at IMS, considers the implications of the move towards account-based selling:
At a time of growing complexity in the market, the need to improve the effectiveness of sales operations has become paramount. High performing companies are already stepping up the pace of change in their sales and marketing activities, switching away from the frequency and coverage models of old towards new approaches that better meet the demands of today’s dynamics.
But raising the bar for sales productivity is no easy task. With the increasing clustering and influence effects of specialists and hospitals comes the need for a deeper knowledge of prescribers and their attitudes; a need to start working with practices and primary care organizations to build and manage strong, long-term relationships; and to ensure that prescribers and their influencers understand the drugs in their portfolio and make them the treatments of choice.
Among several trends emerging in response to these needs is a move towards account-based selling, with teams promoting a range of products from across their portfolio. This is complemented by a key account management (KAM) approach where the role of the sales represenative expands to include local account strategy and educational, coaching and mentoring activities.
These approaches allow reps to build a strong relationship with both their key prescribers and the prescribers’ influencers, through a better understanding of their needs and the factors that influence their decision. But what sort of skills do they require? How will compensation schemes need to change? What do they mean for the future of sales force models? And what should pharma be doing to prepare? Nev Skelton explains.
- What sort of skills are required of the reps?
Traditionally, reps have been very product focused and needed to know a lot about a small number of drugs. They know a lot about a product in terms of clinical trials and efficacy and will talk about cost benefits and health outcomes. They may not be experts in the disease area and typically won’t be experts in other disease areas and other drugs.
Now it is becoming much more relationship-focused as opposed to brand- or product-focused. You could say this is a shift from share of voice to share of relationship.
If, as a rep, I have a unique product, then it’s very easy to talk about that to a practice or an individual doctor or prescriber. But I may have a different message for the doctor than the nurse. Even around an individual product, the messages I’m giving to someone within a particular account must be varied. I have to know who I am talking to and have a good sense of their respective interests.
Certain procedures, such as treatments for smoking cessation or diabetes follow-ups, are increasingly being treated by practice nurses rather than doctors. The rep may therefore need a specific message for practice nurses about helping with patients’ lifestyle changes, such as diet, etc. For doctors they might give a different kind of message, about why the drug is more cost effective than another drug in the marketplace.
Key account managers need a wider understanding of the drugs they have in their company’s portfolio and how they might apply to a particular practice. They need to understand the patient population of that practice, the needs of the professionals within it and how to relate their products to those needs. As the business owners of the profit and loss in their region, including other sales reps in their team, they need a much higher level of business and team building skill than product reps.
- What does this mean for future sales force models?
This means that instead of having 10 products in the portfolio, for example, with 10 or more individual sales reps detailing the doctor with 10 different brands, there will now be perhaps one or two reps – possibly therapy area focused – who go and talk about the needs of that practice. We are going to see companies move away from an individual product-focused sales force to a sales force that’s going to have multiple skills and multiple products in its portfolio.
What this means in terms of the sales force model is a move away from the armies of product reps towards a focus on managing relationships with an account or a practice, or a set of practices within a geographic territory. The key questions are whether a company needs as many reps in this case and how they can right size the sales force and ensure they have appropriate team roles in place.
- How will compensation schemes change?
IMS has done a lot of work in this area, investigating what physicians, doctors and prescribers value in their interactions with the industry and pharmaceutical reps. We’ve found that reps need to spend more time understanding doctors issues and needs – getting to grips with their key concerns, identifying what would be of value to them and determining whether they have particular patient issues that would benefit from information researched by the pharma company.
This means that companies must be able to measure what their customers think of them. How are they perceived by the physicians? How do the nurses rate the company, its reps, messages, and the level of added-value being attained?
Pharma reward systems are going to start including qualitative measures such as “are we individually adding value to that account?” In other words, does a particular practice believe it is getting value from us? Are we seen to be reactive and providing the right information that’s helping them to treat their patients?
In the case of groups of reps and the account managers - are they seen in that particular area to be adding value? Are they perceived to be a supporting mechanism for the healthcare professionals or are they considered to be still promoting their products without very much extra value and support?
We are going to see reward systems that are not only account-driven, based on feedback from those accounts, but also team reward selling systems that say “Overall we’ve managed to get our product onto the formulary in this particular area of the country. We’ve managed to make sure that it’s on the formulary of all the hospitals that prescribe our products. We’ve got good relationships with these consultants and they tell us we’re adding value. We’ve got very good relationships with the practices and doctors in practices or practice nurses and we’re getting good feedback.” All of these will contribute to the bonus of the rep or the group of reps, and we will see far more team-based reward systems put in place as a result.
- How should pharma be preparing?
If we are talking about a big pharma company that’s had many sales reps promoting individual brands, the question as they move to account management and as their portfolio moves towards speciality, is what other kinds of skills do their reps need and what kind of structure and organisation is required to support that account management and speciality product move?
Some of the smaller companies that may have more niche products have probably been taking more of this approach anyway. They’ve not had the coverage and reaching frequency to see every doctor, so for some it will be more about making sure they have the right skills and people to influence the formularies, the practice leads, and the key opinion leaders.
There is an opportunity for some of the smaller companies, which lack the strength of sales force depth, to have much more of a share of mind and share of relationship with some of the key providers and key doctors in the healthcare marketplace.
For more information about the way that IMS can help you enhance sales force effectiveness, visit www.imshealth.com/sfe/precisionsalesforce
Copyright IMS Health, 2nd July 2007