The pharmaceutical sector faces the challenge of optimizing its sales and marketing strategy

While sales force optimization is a challenge that has been faced by all sectors to which sales networks are critical, for the pharmaceutical industry, this challenge has become a vital necessity.

The laboratories face growing pressures that intensify the struggle to be competitive in the sector. First of al, the regulatory environment of medical visits is becoming increasingly strict. Also, control of sanitary costs that Public Administrations have made their goal has translated into an increase in fiscal pressure on the pharmaceutical industry and, similarly, into a clear support for the commercialization of generic medications.

To this increasingly strict environment is added the extremely complex process of research, launching, and commercialization of the product. The R&D activities developed by the laboratories, starting with the first research work on a molecule, until the medication finally sees the light of day, usually last an average of about 10 years. Given that the maximum time allowed by law to exploit a medication with a registered brand name is 20 years, the pharmaceutical industry has only an average of 10 years to get the most out of a medication, before it irrevocably becomes a generic specialty.

Public Administration’s support of generics –because of the savings they entail- together with the “sales war” these medications have unleashed –any laboratory, regardless of its size or know-how, can “copy” a generic medication-, has doubled the pressures on the sector: in Spain, the growth of generic medications is exponential.

In this context, the laboratories are finding few channels in order to maintain a sustained growth rate… After investment in R&D, the sales force almost always constitutes its largest budget item, which is why every laboratory is focusing its attention on it, as a means to optimize costs.

Faced with radical decisions such as the staff re-structuring, Customer Intelligence actions are increasingly becoming the alternative the majority of laboratories are adopting. The decision of the big pharmaceutical companies to optimize their sales networks not only follows criteria related to mere economic efficiency, but it also directly affects the well-being of the patient, who is able to access better service and attention.

Customer Intelligence actions act fundamentally in two fields:

• Sales Force Effectiveness: the primary goal is to know the “customer”; in this case, a peculiar “customer”, since we are dealing with the physician. Increasing sales network efficiency becomes a matter of prioritizing visits to the doctors with the greatest prescriptive power, using targeting and profiling actions, and an analysis of the prescriber’s affinity with the product. This exercise in analysis and segmentation of current and potential “customers” must be done market-by-market, and product-by-product, since the target profiles vary greatly according to the medical specialty and the specific pharmaceutical. The majority of laboratories tends to direct its sales efforts to a physician “selection”, on which the visitors focus. The principal of selection is theoretically valid, but the problem is that this group of “selected” physicians must necessarily be composed of the doctors of high value to the laboratory, and this value analysis is not always carried out. Sales force “coaching” is absolutely critical: it is not at all a matter of imposing on the visitor who, how often, and with what messages he or she can visit, but rather it is a matter of involving him or her and collaborating in a more effective sales process for the company and its sales objectives.
• Marketing Effectiveness: this constitutes a channel that runs parallel to the aforementioned in order to optimize resources and results. It is a matter of opening the pharmaceutical to “multi-channelism”, making use of alternative channels to the traditional visit. SMS, telephone, and Internet contact are showing favorable results with products that previously had low sales, since physicians save time and are more receptive. It’s no secret that many of them admit feeling overwhelmed by the conventional visit model.

Daemon Quest has ascertained that Customer Intelligence techniques in the pharmaceutical sector are increasingly common; in fact, six of the laboratories that are applying Sales Force Effectiveness programs were ranked among the top positions in terms of sales growth last year, according to data recently disclosed by IMSvii.