Rethinking targeting and segmentation strategies to improve SFE
The right combination of strategies and approaches, Awopetu suggests, depend on each company’s situation, size of its sales force, types of products and stage of the product lifecycle.
By on Oct 26, 2006The right combination of strategies and approaches, Awopetu suggests, depend on each company's situation, size of its sales force, types of products and stage of the product lifecycle.
The argument generally is that if you deploy the most sophisticated segmentation that there is available, it will bring you some kind of ROI, he says. But is that true in every case? Do you always need to go for the most sophisticated process? Or are there some cases when you would be ill-advised to try to deploy such sophisticated segmentation models just because they sound good, when what's more practical and useful for your business is something a little more simplistic?
Awopetu says the other thing that is critical in the current environment is to look at customers from the perspective of their ability to influence their peers.
Instead of worrying about who has the most patients and who prescribes the most, we have to get beyond that to who is influencing them, he says.
He equates the concept to breakfast cereal sales.
Kellogg's has to convince the children, Awopetu points out. Even though they are not the ones doing the purchasing, they usually make the decision or have a great deal of influence. So you focus your attention on getting them on your side and they'sll do the rest of the job for you.
The story is the same among general practitioners, he says.
We just need to identify the individuals who are driving and influencing the market, Awopetu suggests. If we can focus on the top 20% most influential customers in any market and we can convince them, we will be a lot further down the line at having an effective targeting process than worrying about who has the most patients.
Awopetu urges pharmas to also consider a concept known as diffusion of innovation in their approaches. It is a 1960s idea Awopetu says still applies to the industry today.
Everett Rogers, and other sociologists at the time, demonstrated that there are patterns to how new ideas catch on and spread. People fall, generally, into five categories, Awopetu explains innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and conservatives or laggards and do so in predictable percentages for any given population. For instance, about 2.5% of any group can be expected to be innovators, he says.
A survey by IMS of about 18,000 physicians, Awopetu reports, confirms that the concept and breakdown of percentages per category hold true for healthcare provider groups and that doctors's behavior can be identified and predicted. This concept, he says, can be used to help boost marketing efficiency and ROI.
If you can convince earlier adopters, that will have an impact, Awopetu says. And every percent of the early adopters that you miss will have an impact on the rest of the populations. Late adopters rely on the opinions of early adopters, so if the early adopters don'st endorse it, it won'st diffuse very far.
Awopetu uses a recently launched product in the cardiovascular market and an established product within the same market as an example.
Let's look at an older, well-established product compared to a newer one that's considered a little more innovative, he says. If you look at prescribing per GP, the highest prescribing groups for the newer product are the innovators,'s followed closely by the early adopters.'s In contrast, however, because the established product has been on the market so much longer, the worst performers are the innovators,'s while the best are the conservatives.'s
Awopetu says the distribution will be different for different products depending on the level of innovation the product represents and its stage in its lifecycle. But understanding diffusion of innovation, he says, is more important than ever before, given the pressures in the marketplace.
'sLaggards's may eventually deliver more, because they will eventually prescribe more and for a lot longer, he points out. But the key to the diffusion of innovation concept is to understand that some innovations don'st diffuse effectively and if you can'st convince the innovators's that will have an impact.
Sales and marketing professionals should also consider propensity, Awopetu urges.
We need to better understand the likelihood that a customer will actually use our products, he says.
Even if one doctor has more potential on paper, but isn'st brand-loyal to the company or ready to try new products, he may be less likely to prescribe than another doctor with more loyalty or more of a propensity to try new products, Awopetu explains.
You want to focus your effort on the customer that's most likely to give you a return, he says. Sometimes a customer that on the face of it presents less opportunity, actually has better potential.
For example, he says, in the UK NICE tries to regulate what physicians and surgeons prescribe.
What you'sll find is that when some physicians are told do not prescribe X,'s some won'st go near it again, he says. Others, when you tell them that, it makes them want to prescribe it even more. It would be nice to have the kind of data that allows us to separate one from the other. This is another layer that allows us to facilitate and improve the effectiveness of our targeting.
Awopetu calls this kind of thinking framework PEP for potential, environmental influences, and propensity. These three key categories must be considered in targeting and prioritizing, he says.
You can'st just think about potential or a particular segment; it's too elementary and can be deceptive, he warns.
Gain more keen insight into cutting-edge sales force effectiveness strategies at eyeforpharma's 4th annual Sales Force Effectiveness USA conference, November 13-14 in Philadelphia. For more information and to register, visit www.eyeforpharma.com/salesusa06 , or call the eyeforpharma team at +44 (0) 20 7375 7575.