What's next for sales reps?
Marcus Deans explains why summers here and the time is right for ... rethinking the future of the sales rep.
While stoking the BBQ and having a nice cold beer, a friend who has also worked in the pharma industry for longer than either of us would care to remember joined me in reminiscing about the good old days.
Anyone who has been in the industry longer than ten years knows exactly how that conversation goes.
Huge budgets, great conferences to exotic destinations (he recalled a Caribbean cruise!), making a great number of friends due to the sheer size of the sales force, and selling drugs that essentially sold themselves.
What happened and where did all it go?
As a regional sales manger, he had very much seen all of theses changes in high definition.
His team had shrunk, territories had expanded, and the demands placed on him and his team had, almost overnight, increased exponentially.
Coupled with this, the environment within which he worked had almost changed beyond recognition.
Physician decision making power had reduced, and selling to these new budget holding customers had become a lot more difficult.
As a marketer, I had also witnessed a change in the landscape, as the struggle to deal with loss of exclusivity on some of our core brands and to optimally commercialize those molecules coming through the pipeline continued.
As the afternoon sun began to die down and a cool evening breeze set in, we decided to crack open another beer and continue the conversation.
Dont forget to tell the reps
For the representatives at the sharp end of these changes, whats next?
How can the dedicated sales professional continue to be successful in this new environment?
Market access strategies, patient access schemes, pricing strategies, health economics, and health technology assessments are the new buzz phrases of the industry.
How have these phrases integrated themselves into the vernacular of the average sales rep?
Essentially, they havent.
This, we both agreed, was part of the problem.
At a higher strategic level, and in an effort to continue to communicate value, these changes in approach had been discussed for some time.
As a result, strategies had been formed to deal with the new environment and the shift in core customer.
In-depth discussions around sales force effectiveness have also continued, often about targeting, modelling, and CRM systems.
However, these conversations tend to happen in isolation and in different forums.
Strategies developed in ivory towers without a real understanding of real implementation is what is hurting the industry, we decided.
Hence, the sales reps have a void in their understanding about what is now meant but my communicating value to these new customers.
Communicating value
At its core, communicating value is about deep customer insight and understanding leading to arguments based on the cost and consequence of one treatment versus the cost and consequences of another.
This sounds simple.
But when broken down into the components required to effectively communicate with customers, this requires a deep understanding by the sales teams of each of those buzz phrases.
In order for sales forces to be effective, it is imperative that the internal hurdles that in many cases prevent departments having open discussions about key issues and common goals are removed.
This will ensure that market access, marketing, and sales are aligned.
Only then will each individual, irrespective of function, be able to fully understand the issues and challenges in this new era of pharmaceutical sales and marketing.