What are pharma sales reps for?
If you think your mission is value communication, think again
By on May 17, 2011I recall a conversation I had a few weeks ago with a sales director of a pharmaceutical company.
He was having huge challenges recruiting a pharmaceutical sales representative for an important territory and, as a result, the territory hadn't been covered for months.
I could really see that being a big problem for the company and asked how this was impacting sales.
To my surprise, he said that sales had continued on the upward path that they were on when they had a representative on territory and that he had seen this before in other territories and it didn't worry him!
So this got me asking myself, What are pharmaceutical sales reps actually for?
This is certainly a question I have seen being asked globally by top executives.
I have been to many sales director and general manager seminars and conferences and, three years ago, top of the agenda would have been incentive plans, CRM systems, or sales force automation-bread and butter concerns about how to achieve sales force effectiveness.
But at recent meetings, with mature healthcare markets around the world changing, the questions have taken on a much more searching and fundamental tone.
Do I need a sales force at all? (Take Germany and IQWIG as an example where a pharmaceutical sales force has, almost overnight, become redundant.)
What is the difference between selling and marketing? (Is turning up and delivering a pre-determined message to a customer, nothing more than very expensive marketing?)
What role does the pharmaceutical sales force play in the future of the pharmaceutical industry?
In yesterday's world, it was possible to argue that by communicating product information and product features and advantages to customers, the sales force was actually adding some value.
When I challenged one senior sales leader on this, he said, "We're valuable to customers as we educate them on the latest drugs. We tell them about new treatment options that haven't got into the reference books yet."
Many other industries have performed like this for years; we inform customers about things they otherwise wouldn't know about.
But increasingly, buyers know as much or more about the products as do the people selling to them.
What is more, with mature products, late in their lifecycles, what have you to inform them about that they don't already know from previous visits?
To this, add the rise of the Internet as an important information tool for physicians and patients alike and the idea of an expensive live salesperson to communicate factual information sounds less and less plausible.
Pharmaceutical sales reps that see their mission as value communication are living in the past.
Izzy Wakeling is with Huthwaite Asia Pacific. Download Huthwaite's latest whitepaper: Creating Real Value for Customers.
For eyeforpharma's series on how mobile technology is impacting sales reps, see ‘Future pharma: Making the most of the tablet takeover', ‘Future Pharma: A closer look at the iPad in pharma/physician relations', ‘Pharma goes mobile: Making the most of the app opportunity', and ‘Will the iPad kickstart a pharma sales and marketing revolution?'.)
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