Are salespeople needed in an era of participatory medicine ?

The end of paternalistic medicine and the new era of participatory medicine is among us. Part of this new trend is that physicians are spending more time online and less time with drug reps. What does this really mean ? It means that for the most part pharma needs to abandon the way drug reps work but, more importantly, the way they get compensated. It leads to lapses in judgement to make numbers and is not relevant in a environment where Rx decisions are driven more by patients and insurers.

With more and more physicians spending less time with drug sales reps and the average call now below 5 minutes what effect can drug reps really have on prescription behavior ? Free samples may be a great enticement to meet with a drug rep but do they really lead to new Rx’s and do physicians believe what drug reps are “selling”?

The lapses in illegal marketing have a root cause of sales people trying to make numbers that obviously were pie in the sky. Senior managers cannot turn away as people make numbers and fail to ask “how did we get there”. That is doesn’t work today. Sales managers need to be held accountable for clear flagrant violations of legal sales guidelines. In fact pharma, who has let go a lot of sales people over the last year needs to completely reevaluate how sales people add value to the healthcare transaction model.

Not all salespeople are dispensable though. Salespeople who sell complicated drugs like Oncology drugs can provide value with their in depth knowledge of their physicians and the product but salespeople who sell everyday drugs like statins, diabetes drugs and high blood pressure drugs are finding that all too often they spend a lot of time in the waiting rooms.

Here are some ideas that pharma needs to consider:

1. Change the compensation model from volume based to relationship based. This means that the salesperson provides physicians within his territory with critical and important information on health conditions and medications. It means that the information provided is transparent with one goal: increasing successful patient outcomes.

2. Hire salespeople who have a medical background. Do we really expect people who are just out of college to have a peer to peer discussion with HCP’s ? The more difficult the class of drugs the higher the med education should be.

3. Use of CRM to work with HCP’s more based on the needs of the physicians within their territories. Physicians are spending more time online but that is not necessarily a good thing. It could because they are trying to sort through the tons of information on the Internet. Salespeople can be that “go to” person when a physicians wants relevant information on certain health conditions.

4. Accountability at every level: It’s time to be held accountable for everything they say and do with HCP’s. Salespeople need to be called in and educated, via case studies, on good sales practices within the drug industry. They all should have a company hotline to report possible violations without fear of reprisals from over zealous sales managers.

The number of physicians who were “rep-accessible,” defined as meeting with at least 70% of salespeople who come calling, dropped by 18% from last year, according to sales and marketing consultants ZS Associates. 58% of prescribing doctors now fall into that rep-friendly category, down from 71% in the previous survey. The proportion of physicians who see fewer than 30% of reps who visit now sits at 9%, up from 6% in the last survey.

Salespeople need to be information coordinators for physicians. They need to help physicians provide better patient outcomes and be a source for credible and reliable information on drugs. The model of being compensated on sales has gone the way of the dinosaur. It’s about becoming a leader in the exchange of information and a relationship based on trust and respect rather than making numbers.