Why The Pharma Sales Rep Isn’t Dead.

Despite years of tighter compliance rules, restricted physician access, and massive investment in digital engagement, pharma sales representatives remain relevant because physicians still value useful human interaction with industry. The lesson isn’t that pharma should return to an era of free lunches and promotional giveaways; it’s that companies may have underestimated the value of knowledgeable reps who can provide context, answer questions, navigate access barriers, and help practices address real-world treatment challenges. At the same time, evidence that industry interactions can influence prescribing reinforces the need for transparency and strong ethical guardrails.

STAT recently covered a new 13-year follow-up study. Physicians who were surveyed in 2011 as medical students and residents were surveyed again in 2024. Of the 294 who participated in the follow-up, the study included 283. They found that the amount and types of gifts doctors received remained pretty constant over this period. However, the ways that doctors obtain information have changed drastically. This is something that all pharma commercial leaders need to take note of.

Not that giving doctors free meals helps sell drugs. No, we are not saying that pharma needs to go back to giving doctors pens and nice dinners to help drive sales. What we are saying is that, despite all the technological advancements and changes in medicine, Humans still want to interact with each other when it comes to pharma.

Doctors Don’t Want More Information

We’ve tried to solve the doctor-access problem with technology. Sending doctors emails. Creating portals for them to visit. Offering webinars. Remote Detailing. Using various digital technologies to help create better touchpoints with HCPs. HCP Programmatic Ads, etc.

There is no doubt that we, as an industry, have gotten very good at using these tools to reach physicians more efficiently. However, physicians don’t want more information. They want helpful information when they need it. That’s the key here.

According to this new study, interactions with pharma appear to have stayed fairly steady. Another interesting statistic is that about 25% of doctors didn’t know whether their facility had rules about interactions with pharma. However, respondents felt there should be restrictions on physicians receiving things from pharma.

These two statements may seem contradictory, but they really aren’t. Doctors can believe that we should limit what pharma can give them. But still enjoy talking to us.

Your Rep Isn’t Competing With Another Rep Anymore

Don’t take this study and assume the way we’re selling today is the best option. Today’s sales rep competes with everything a doctor can turn to for information. Medical databases. Journal articles. Studies. Other physicians. Medical Conferences. Google. AI. Their facility.

So how do you get a doctor’s attention for 5 minutes when they have all of these resources at their disposal? Your rep has to offer something a digital platform can’t.

Knowing their patient population. Knowing where their patients are falling through the cracks. Understanding what questions physicians have about your therapy. Do they have issues with reimbursement? Patients not filling prescriptions? Not being tested? Not knowing who to prescribe to? These questions let your sales rep offer more than a product pitch.

People Will Always Influence Others

There is no way around this, but research shows that when doctors interact with pharma, they change their habits. Many studies have reached this conclusion. Including this recent study. It found that detailing, educational offerings, and gifts influenced physician practices. Of course, this study has caveats.

Which is why we need to be transparent and continue to follow strict compliance standards. But humans will always influence each other. When you are purchasing enterprise software, you talk to humans. When you are investing your money, you talk to humans. When you are buying medical devices, you talk to humans.

In the Pharma industry, we influence others who will affect patients’ lives. So we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard. We need to ensure our interactions with physicians are science-backed and beneficial to them.

Stop Measuring Calls

I believe that we need to start measuring our field forces differently. If we keep measuring our commercial teams by number of calls, target reach, and how many messages they delivered, we are doing it wrong. No physician will care that you reached 87% of your targets last quarter.

They’ll care whether they learned something beneficial when they spoke to you. We need to start asking our field teams questions like this. Did you help your customer find the right patient for your therapy? Did you help them gain access to your drug? Did you educate their facility on reimbursement? Did you provide them with information that helped them see patients? Did your interaction help decrease the time between test and treat? Would the customer say that it was worth their time to speak to you?

These are just a few examples of questions that we could ask our field teams. These are much harder metrics to collect but would better represent what we are trying to do in the commercial world.

Lunch Isn’t What We Should Focus On

We will always hear about the meals that doctors receive from pharma. There are many reasons to limit this, and we agree.

But I think we need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture here. Despite these changes in how we communicate with doctors, they still want to speak to us. The types of gifts doctors received were highly consistent in 2011 and 2024. We aren’t saying give doctors more lunches. We are saying give doctors better reps.

Reps that can offer them more than just sales pitches. Help them understand their patient population and how they can better serve those patients. We have spent millions of dollars trying to better engage with doctors through digital channels. And we need to continue to do that.

But at some point, we thought efficiency and engagement were the same thing. Just because something is more efficient doesn’t mean it is better. We can show a physician 1000 ads for less than what it costs to have a sales rep talk to them. But is that more effective?

I don’t think the future of pharma is sales reps vs. digital. It’s creating a combination that lets us run digital strategies more efficiently and have sales reps who can better serve our customers.

So next time you read that the pharma rep is gone. Look at what doctors have to say about it.