When it comes to sales force effectiveness, do we believe that one-size-fits-all? As the sheer size of a typical pharmaceutical salesforce comes into focus and as budgets are under pressure like never before, the pharmaceutical consultant may find that senior management is beginning to ask questions, just like this. While it is always true to say that the 80/20 rule is a fantastic indicator throughout the business world and we know that a certain proportion of our sales force is going to be highly productive while many are not, it’s high time that the typical sales company and pharmaceutical consultancy addresses exactly how salesforce effectiveness is – well, just not effective.

If we begin to think about the metrics that we used in the world of business, we find that we often applied a very general approach to all these issues. There is far too much generalisation and far too little segmentation, resulting in “below par” results. We can see evidence of this when we look at high-volume prescribers, who represent a favoured port of call due to the fact that they seem to have unlimited budgets. Often, an approach to this particular doctor will be based on an assumption that he or she is inclined to spend in this particular niche, without regard to that individual’s particular circumstances, triggers, drivers, likes, distastes or motivators. This is not a very educated approach, as the professional does not run on autopilot and this is definitely not what pharmaceutical marketing training seeks to tell us.

We need to focus on industry intelligence, casting our net wide to find out how competitors interact with particular professionals. Far too often a broad brush approach to this issue is used and we need to be far more specific when we are working out who to target. Results may have been incurred, but the results could have been far better and perhaps more fruitful if the professional had been approached from a different angle. In the quest for the correct tactic and approach, we need to analyse the group behaviour of a broad range of end-users, instead. We cannot assume that a particular course of action is going to work and we need to dig deeper to really find out what drives a decision-maker to make that decision. Once these groups have been segmented, they can be placed into appropriate categories, potentially leading to far more productive results. The pharmaceutical consultancy must embrace diversity and move away from a rather general, middle-of-the-road approach to pharmaceutical marketing training in the modern day.

In the past, it may have been acceptable to buy potentially valuable “intelligence” data, lists and resources from traditional sources. These could well be the same lists used by competitors and this practice could well have contributed to the overload experienced by certain doctors, due to that style of targeting. It is inconceivable that we could be relying on this style of approach considering how much is at stake and the pharmaceutical consultant really needs to steer senior management toward a better way of analysing data, to come up with a much better solution. Think how certain members of the salesforce may have accrued a lot of intelligent data, simply due to their experience and interaction in the field. Use this kind of intelligence wisely.

Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of L2L Consulting, specialising in enabling pharmaceutical companies to achieve new heights of productivity and performance, throughout all levels of management and revenue generating activities.

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