Is optimisation the new sales mantra?

pharmafile | December 11, 2006 | Feature | Sales and Marketing |  NHS, sales, strategy 

The pharmaceutical industry still refuses to fall out of love with large sales forces, but there are signs beginning to indicate that the affair has cooled a little in recent years, as evidenced by job cuts at a number of firms and a renewed focus on optimisation.

Optimisation in this sense means not only making the best of what you've got, but also making sure that what you've got is the best.

There are three broad approaches to optimisation: recruit and train the right people, make the best use of your data, and ensure you are targeting the right customers  who are no longer restricted to doctors.

So, how do you make a successful sales force? Samantha Hamilton Stent, a director of Insight Associates, thinks that, in the first instance, recruitment and training are central to the optimisation programme:

Get it right from day one by recruiting people who have a passion for the pharma industry and a passion for sales.

A model for best practice

Just getting people in, though, isn't the end of the story. Sales teams need coaching and development. This is particularly important in pharma sales, where it is more difficult to measure success, and reflective practice at the individual level is often the exception rather than the norm. Comprehensive programmes of coaching and development, as well as strategies to model successful sales practice, are vital if teams and individuals are to thrive.  

Since the late 1990s, Insight has been developing approaches that allow companies to deconstruct and understand what makes top performers, and to identify the business-critical differences between top performers and mid performers.  

"These approaches give you a model of best practice that acts as a framework for delivering brand success," says Samantha Hamilton Stent. "The framework continues to offer value over time by being a working model of best practice used by marketing, sales managers and reps themselves to ensure they are on track and are delivering what counts in a way that counts."

But sales people need back-up, and the vital sales support that brand-building can deliver means that the relationship between sales and marketing is critical. Marketing teams need to ensure they are communicating the brand, its vision and, critically, have the know-how to deliver the sales story in a clear, consistent way.  

"The missing link is often lack of brand translation from sales to marketing," says Samantha Hamilton Stent.

"The result is micro-implementation on a rep-by-rep basis that evolves away from the campaign over a relatively short period of time, leading to lack of uniform communication, which has a directly negative effect on sales. This can be disastrous for brands; particularly in crowded markets."  

People matter, but the tools they use matter even more in a crowded and busy marketplace, thinks Elfed Robbins of Dendrite

"A successful sales force depends on the tools the reps are given, so they can use their time as effectively as possible. These tools must reflect and support the way that the reps actually work, rather than merely being a way for management to gain information for their reports.

"Our territory mapping solution, IntelliGEO, illustrates this concept by providing the rep with accurate and up-to-date and easy to interpret information. It combines all the data needed to produce a geographical output for effective territorial management."

Back to basics

Alan Alexander, sales operations director at Innovex UK, goes back to basics and points to the need for a clear strategy for sales.

"You need to understand the dynamics and challenges of your market places in which the products are to be sold. That means you must establish who the target should be; where the potential for growth lies; how often and by what means these prescribers should be visited, and with what messages.

"Once strategy is clear, recruit the sales team to the required skill set; train them on product knowledge and sales techniques, deploy them to the high-potential territories, clearly setting out expectations on who they should target with what frequency, and developing reward systems that support the strategy,

"Then there is the feedback process. Continually monitor performance – not just sales – and provide continuous and ongoing feedback.

"Refine the tactics as required; establish why some territories are outperforming others, and reward performance in a way that is clearly understood by the sales team."

So, people, technology and strategy are the main ingredients, but how many reps do you need for an effective salesforce? In other words, does size still matter?

Typically, a company will spend one-and-a-half times as much on its salesforce as it will on its R&D. This spend was sustainable when blockbusters abounded, but these days, new drugs are typically secondary care products prescribed by a few hospital doctors rather than thousands of GPs.

Does big mean better?

The old idea that a bigger sales force equals increased sales no longer holds true. Doctors have more time pressures than in the past, and although they see good reps as a valuable source of knowledge, they prefer to use the web for obtaining the information they need.

Blanket sales coverage made sense when pharma knew little about the people it was visiting. Now, increasingly sophisticated targeting tools combined with much richer information about sales calls stored and analysed in CRMs, mean that efforts can be concentrated on the productive frequency range which generate the most prescriptions.

Samantha Hamilton Stent believes there is no definitive answer to the question: how big should your sales force be? She notes that leading commentators are unsure whether downsizing or upsizing sales forces will deliver a competitive advantage.  

"What is clear is that pharma sales teams need to be more responsive, savvy and highly skilled than ever;" she says, "both on the personal rep level as well as the strategic sales force level.

"More sales teams with less opportunity to call on customers  who are themselves increasingly resistant to pharma  means teams must be highly customer-focused. "Customer focus is an evolving phenomenon. Gone are the days when this was a fairly simple recipe of excellent service development and implementation, coupled with the efficient delivery of brand messages. Today, it's also about representatives functioning fluently within the system, given the rise of nurse prescribing, the pharmacy contract and practice-based commissioning."

Julian Tompkins, partnership director at In2Focus says:"With the changes in the NHS, companies no longer work in a uniform market and increasingly, this is beginning to look like nearly 200 different primary care organisation (PCO) markets.

"The number and type of reps you deploy depends on many factors, such as the therapy class in which you operate, NICE guidance and  the local PCO environment.

"What's certain is the number required is likely to be fewer than five or 10 years ago and the skill mix needs to be different. Additionally, local intelligence and insight to aid targeting is essential.

"The number of representatives deployed in the UK has been steadily declining over the past few years and the proportion outsourced is on the increase, as companies look to build in flexibility and lay off risk.

"Typically a sales force now stands at about 50 heads and still provides national coverage, although there is a move from companies to disinvest in certain geographies where potential or the environment is unlikely to yield a return."

This increased customer focus means that targeting the right customers to focus on has now become critically important.

Elfed Robbins of Dendrite thinks that a successful sales force is now highly dependent on strategic targeting and better data:"Comprehensive database management services are essential to a structured and effective sales campaign. However, within this industry, many sales forces are faced with the challenge of keeping up-to-date with the continuous changes in NHS structure, operation and reform.

"This problem can be solved by cross-linking multiple sets of data using, for example, the recent linkup established between the Pharbase database and Infoneticas National Health Intelligence Service (NHIS). Together, these give access to a comprehensive set of data addressing a wide range of areas in healthcare information across the pharmaceutical industry and the NHS."

Pinpointing potential

A similar approach is taken by Innovex, where it is not about absolute numbers but is about really understanding the sales challenge presented by the product or products.

Alan Alexander says: "It is about understanding where the potential lies and realising this by ensuring skilled representatives visit the correct high-potential doctors with the targeted frequency with the brand marketing message. Innovex has built an extensive database which  combined with sales data and the right analytical tools  means we are in an ideal position to advise our customers on the numbers and territories an individual customer requires."

Of course, the problem then is that even with all the most elaborate databases and the most skilled, motivated sales force, what really counts is results. But what do we really mean by results, apart from the obvious answer  more sales?

Samantha Hamilton Stent thinks softer measures play a major part: "Alongside sales data, understanding what customers make of the sales calls they have received, as well as what they will do as a consequence of seeing the representative, is vital to measure performance of the brand and sales team.  

"Within this, we measure the representatives selling skills across key parameters that correlate with sales success. These include personal congruence, needs identification and rapport, communication style, close and commitment, information transfer, and goal clarity."  

It's also vital to understand the views of the sales teams. We can assess their understanding of the selling task and critical success factors in campaign delivery to find any gaps or areas for development. This can help to offer a complete picture of sales prowess as well as campaign delivery.

In the outsourcing world, Innovex takes into account the cost of delivering sales as well as the sales themselves. Alan Alexander asks: "Are we measuring sales results or the cost of achieving those sales? In other words, are we meeting a predefined return on investment on sales force spends?

"We look at what resourcing should be and where, for a product or portfolio at a point in time. Then we measure ongoing performance, using web-enabled CRM, and recommend how the resource could be regionally tailored or differentially resourced."

To maximise effectiveness, Innovex can offer temporary representatives for vacancy management roles or 'try before you buy' opportunities for headcount positions.

Elfed Robbins speaks for the targeting approach when deciding what the right size of the sales force might be. Pharma companies will always want to maximise the potential of their sales forces, whatever its size, and identifying the right target is critical to achieving excellent results.

It is essential for companies to optimise their sales and marketing investments by clearly determining who are the key target physicians, based on the strength and breadth of their influence with their colleagues.

The potential for mapping influencer networks has been illustrated by a recent project involving the rollout of Physician Connect across 14 European countries, demonstrating the capabilities and importance of understanding relationships between influential clinicians and key opinion leaders at regional, national levels and across borders.

Sales forces can also get a clearer view of their business by sharing and integrating physician data and sales force metrics. As a result, they will be able to assess the success of their marketing strategies in near real time and to make decisions about the priorities for their sales forces, which will help them to drive their businesses in the correct direction.

A new approach

One of the most radical approaches to sales force optimisation over the past few years was Takeda's decision to restructure its entire sales force in 2004. Takeda's traditional primary care and secondary care sales forces were let go, with the removal of the three-product detail and the replacement of its field presence with a team of regional account directors.

So, has this move significantly changed the ROI model  or is the jury still out?

Julian Tompkins says: "On balance, this bold move has made a lot of people sit up and think and the evidence suggests that while few have fully followed suit, most are considering a partial move in this direction.

"The idea of differential resourcing, upskilled account managers and a varied promotional mix will become an established way of working for more companies in the not too distant future."

Samantha Hamilton Stent thinks Takeda's action hasn't radically changed pharma's approach, but does offer some useful tips for the future, especially for training.

"Takeda's move has encouraged the industry to explore and analyse the sales team construct, and this is important because historically pharma has been reluctant to be radical.

"We can't assume that the Takeda model of autonomous outsourced regional account directors can be the new paradigm in pharma sales because, although it may fit Takeda's products, market and company size, it won't necessarily be best fit for all.  

"What seems to be important in the Takeda model is strong local knowledge which enables opportunities to be surfaced and responsiveness that delivers value for the customer and sales for the company.  

"If pharma develops, coaches and nurtures sales teams within the evolving customer focus model to be locally responsive to the new customer groups and ways of working, it's possible to have the best of both worlds."

So finally, what are the critical success factors for sales force optimisation? Getting back to basics, thinks Alan Alexander.

"Fundamentally, it is about getting the appropriately trained sales representatives in front of the correct doctor with the required marketing message at the targeted frequency, monitoring results and then fine-tuning the tactics. This requires access to up-to-date data, which must be analysed appropriately and acted upon."

John Hosken is principal consultant at Information Advisers and also a qualified business coach. For more information e-mail: jhosken@hotmail.com or visit:

www.john-hosken.com