Sales people becoming less effective

Dec/07/2007 09:43 Filed in: HCP Marketing
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75 percent of pharma rep sales calls don't involve a face-to-face meeting with a doctor, according to research by Leerink Swann & Co. Industry executives acknowledge increased demands on physician's time, including paperwork required by health insurers. The changes are partly in response to a backlash against overly aggressive marketing of the past decade, when many executives believed the company with the biggest sales force would have the highest sales. From 1999 to 2001, U.S. drug companies expanded their sales staffs, on average, by 42 percent, according to the most recent research available from Datamonitor.



"A lot of practices across the U.S. basically said 'we don't want to see you anymore because it's too much of an interruption,'" said Dr. Dave Switzer, a family doctor based in northern Virginia who gives unannounced salespeople a minute of his time. Perhaps the most important driver in the effort to improve selling techniques is the bottom line. Revenues are shrinking industrywide as many blockbuster drugs from the past decade lose patent protection. Dwindling sales recently led the industry's biggest player, Pfizer Inc., to cut its U.S. sales force by 20 percent or about 2,500 salespeople. Rivals such as AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb also have reduced U.S. sales staff in recent years.



AstraZeneca and other companies are focusing on Web-based visits between doctors and salespeople. The appointments are made for the evening or weekends, and a sales representative gives a presentation through an online video link or over the telephone while directing the physician to Web pages. DUH !!! More and more physicians are turning to the Web but companies that live in the past, like Lilly, don't know how to reach these physicians. They would rather people right out of college, teach them canned sales pitches and send them out to sell.


Representatives used to carry pages of company studies and medical journal articles. Using tablet PCs, sales people can present their information faster and direct the doctor to company Web pages. The tablet PC is perfect for pharma salespeople but alas very few pharma sales people have access to this technology and when they do it is not set up toi optimize the physicians time. Another lesson that pharma will have to learn the hard way but then they can always layoff more people.
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