Truly Differentiated Sales Capabilities
In todays highly competitive market for physician time and attention, many pharmaceutical companies consider it a mark of success if they can increase their sales representatives average time with targeted physicians from 1.5 minutes to 2. This statistic speaks volumes about the poverty of interactions between most reps and the physicians they call on.
Within this timeframe, reps can deliver a carefully honed set of messages along with samples, brochures, article reprints, and other leave-behinds. What they cant do is engage in meaningful conversations that provide real value to the physician.
In an environment where samples and sound bites are the reps stock in trade, pharmaceutical companies have an opportunity to differentiate themselves through sales reps that can have these kinds of conversations and use the insights they generate to take a more strategic approach to serving their accounts.
The Downward Spiral
The standard model for pharmaceutical detailing has evolved to its current status for a variety of reasons. The historical experience has been that pharmaceutical sales are relationship-driven and therefore direct, face-to-face contact between reps and physicians is an important element of professional promotion. However, the nature of those interactions has become constrained by several factors. Regulations have limited the use of meals and other social entertainment as a means of building relationships. Because the majority of sales reps are not clinicians, regulations also severely limit the nature of their conversations with physicians. Physicians themselves have faced increasingly demanding schedules, sharply limiting their time available for activities other than direct patient contact.
Pharmaceutical companies have generally responded to these constraints by pursuing regular contact with targeted physicians, seeking to achieve high frequency and reach in their call plans. Up until the past year or two, the competitive dynamic between major companies caused an expansion in the number of repswhich led physicians to split their available time for meeting with reps into ever smaller increments. Companies in turn focused on using this limited time to present highly scripted and simple but memorable messages on the features and relative benefits of their products. Any bonus time with the physician is used to repeat the process with the second and third position products in the reps bag.
The net result of these changes is that physicians generally place a low value on the time they spend with most pharma reps. Under the circumstances, its not surprising that getting even a couple of minutes of face time with a physician is viewed as a success.
Moving to a Higher Value Sales Model
Given the changing economics of the pharmaceutical industry, an expensive sales model that delivers declining value over time is simply not sustainable. The industry can move in one of two directions. Either pharma companies will substitute lower-cost approaches for influencing prescribing behavior or they will find ways to increase the value of their reps. The likely outcome will be a combination of the two approaches: companies will use far fewer reps who will provide much more value.
The starting point for increasing the value of sales reps is defining that value from a physician standpoint. Most physicians want to better understanding the clinical value of the therapeutic choices they make for their patients in the context of patient characteristics and the continuum of care. Given the issues associated with physician reimbursement and cost shifting by payers of prescription drug and other medical expenses to patients, physicians increasingly want to understand the economic implications of their choices as well. In many cases, physicians may also have practice development challenges that relate to the services they offer in conjunction with these therapies. The reps that are truly valued are the ones that can identify and address an individual practices needs for information and support, either directly or by calling on other resources within their companies.
Building the Necessary Competencies
Pharmaceutical companies have invested heavily in rep training and development. Nevertheless, they would concur that most of their reps arent capable of a truly consultative selling approach that adds value to physicians without engaging in discussions that are off-limits from a regulatory standpoint. These competencies are not formulaic. They are sophisticated skills that require active learning and continuous reinforcement. Formal training programs are only part of the solution. To achieve mastery, reps need to practice and hone the skills in their real-world interactions with physicians, with on-going guidance and support. For this reason, behavioral change needs to start with the managers, who should be held accountable for the quality of their reps engagement with physicians. The core expectation for managers should be to have more meaningful dialogues with their reps in order to serve as effective coaches and simultaneously model the behaviors that their reps should exhibit with physicians.
Like any sustained cultural change, transforming sales management requires a multifaceted intervention that goes far beyond training. The good news is that where major pharmaceutical companies have successfully implemented initiatives to change manager and rep behavior in this direction, the results have been overwhelmingly positive. They demonstrate conclusively that intensive coaching can become an integral feature of sales management culture, reps can achieve higher-value interactions with physicians, and the reps that are most effective in adopting these practices are able to drive faster prescription growth than their peers.
Rita E. Numerof, Ph.D. is President, and Jack Nightingale, M.P.A. is a Consultant of Numerof & Associates, Inc. (NAI), a strategic management consulting firm located in St. Louis, Missouri.
NAI works with clients to increase revenues, reduce costs, enhance service delivery, and sharpen strategic focus, providing consultation in three broad areas: strategy development and execution, operational excellence, and organizational infrastructure. For more information, contact NAI at 314.997.1587, info@nai-consulting.com, or visit http://nai-consulting.com/.
Author: Rita E. Numerof, Ph.D. & Jack Nightingale, MPA, Numerof & Associates, Inc.