An article in Wall Street Journal put the price tag on rep-based pharmaceutical promotion at $12 billion. $12 BILLION! Why do the companies spend this kind of money? Well, the answer is, competition. Companies, inorder to maintain the sales growth trajectory plotted for wall street, need to make sure that their message gets through to the physicians. So, in early 90s, when the wave of big-block buster medicines hit the markets, companies beefed up the sales forces. I know this because I was there. In 1991, I had a sales territory comprising of several zipcodes, all to myself. Then in 1992, they gave me a “pod partner” A pod partner is nothing but another sales representative selling almost identical set of drugs. At first it was fine because I bought into the corporate spiel that the pod partner would help me grow my business. But then increasingly, the customers who used to see me regularly started making excuses for not seeing me. Often their excuse would be that my partner had just been there, and therefore the doctor would not need to talk to me that day. I began to realize that instead of helping me, the POD partner was really getting in my way. This demotivated me and took away any ownership of results I had in my own performance.
That was then. Today, the situation is ten times worse. Companies have any where from four to six representatives covering the same territory. The representatives may carry different portfolios but the portfolios are very very flexible. Companies today don't think twice about changing the rep portfolios to suit the needs of the corporation – whether it is to launch a new product or to gain an incremental $100 or $200 million worth of sales before the end of the year. As a result, doctors are bombarded with reps touting the same drugs, some times many times during the same day! Their reaction? Increasingly the doctors see the reps fewer and fewer times, and for shorter and shorter periods. Average call time has gone down from 4.5 minutes to less than 30 seconds. Average number of face to face interviews have gone down significantly, and the number of physicians who will not see representatives has gone up dramatically.
And what is the industry response to the inability to get the marketing messages across? More reps. Mama Mia! Doesn't anybody understand that the model is inefficient? The docs to rep ratio has been getting worse and worse, and today what used to be the most efficient way of communicating your message, has become the most inefficient way of wasting money.
My advice to the industry is...go back to the old days and take some lessons from then. The old adage is true: its not the number of times you tell the message that sell the products, its relationships with the customer that sell the product. Its not the "share of voice" that generates the sale, its the "quality of voice" that generates the sale. Here is my five point plan to fix this problem:
1) Give the reps something to be accountable for. Having more than one rep per territory leaves all four, and no ONE accountable for sales
2) Hire and retain experience. Too many of the young and beautiful prance around like they know the business, the science, and the customer - when the truth is otherwise. Hire people who are experienced, who come from science back ground, and then train them well to discuss weighty matters
3) Give reps an opportunity to build relationships - and don't promote them out of the territory, incent them to stay in the same territory for life long.
4) Train the reps to add value: a 30 second call does not add value to anyone let alone a medical graduate who is used to erudite discussions. No wonder docs think reps don't add value
5) Stop competing with each other on value less markers like "share of voice". Focus instead on "quality of voice"
Well, the industry better get its act together before they are forced by the market forces to do so. The current model of communication is broke and it ain't gonna fix itself. There is still time to develop better models of communication to get the message out.
