medicinman tm · pankaj mehrotra 4. how to communicate your incentive compensation plan .....16...

MEDICINMANField Force excellence

TM

September 2015 | www.medicinman.net

Since 2011

Peter Drucker, the father of modern management said, “The purpose of a business is to create customers.” Yet most pharma

companies are product and sales centric – they create products and sales strategies, rarely strategies to create customers.

If businesses cannot exist without creating customers, is it not imperative that businesses understand their customers – (both internal and external) better? Sadly, many if not most pharma companies actually understand very little about customers and their behaviour drivers.

As a company grows bigger and bigger, a smaller and smaller percentage of its top talent interact with customers. They understand little about their customers and their behaviour drivers. They understand their own field force even less and rarely

consider them as internal customers. In fact, field force people are typically among the least equipped, lowest-paid and have the least authority to create customers.

The outcome – customers and field force that carry on with little satisfaction, switching brands and companies at the drop of a hat.

Understanding the behaviour drivers of customers and field force is key to creating and satisfying customers – be they doctors or others in the value chain.

In the absence of this knowledge, a generic approach of offers and schemes are dangled before customers, who have less and less reasons to remain loyal. Field force people are dealt with a combination of carrot and sticks resulting in retention of the ineffective and attrition of the performers.

HOW WELL IS YOUR FIELD FORCE EQUIPPED TO CREATE CUSTOMERS?

1 | MedicinMan September 2015

Editorial

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Anup Soans is an Author, Facilitator and the Editor of MedicinMan.

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It is in this context that it is heartening to note that quite a few companies have taken up training and development of their field force in earnest. One company has put in place measures to supplement the efforts of field force to create satisfied customers through Clinical Practice Associates (CPA).

The members of the CPA team are taken from the field force and therefore have a ground level understanding of the challenges. They are selected on the basis of the desire to excel in therapy area knowledge as well as to equip field force people on a continuous basis. They do not have product or sales quotas but are accountable to their sales managers. In short, their objective is to understand what the customer behaviour drivers are as well as to ensure that the field force has adequate knowledge and confidence.

Another company has created a year-long program in association with a leading medical college to train and develop their Scientific Task Force members to understand the challenges faced by clinicians in treating diabetic patients who do not respond to conventional treatment.

What are your thoughts on field force learning and development? Write to me to know more and share your thoughts on how Indian Pharma can understand and equip their field force to create more customers. -MM

”

Understanding the behaviour drivers of customers and field force is key to creating and satisfying customers – be they doctors or others in the value chain.

In the absence of this knowledge, a generic approach of offers and schemes are dangled before customers, who have less and less reasons to remain loyal.

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1. Leading with Purpose ...................................8

Pharma managers must lead their team with a clear purpose - to make work meaningful.

K. Hariram

2. Healthcare and the Freedom of Choice ....10

Patients should be free to choose their healthcare provider rather than be dependent on the government. Only then will the cost of healthcare come down and the efficiency of the system increase.

Salil Kallianpur

3. Patient Access Part-I: A Conceptual Overview ..........................................................13

In a highly fragmented yet alluring healthcare market one of the ways to survive and thrive is to increase patient access.

Pankaj Mehrotra

4. How to Communicate Your Incentive Compensation Plan .........................................16

Once you have designed an incentive compensation plan for your salesforce, how effectively you communicate it will determine the buy-in and eventual success of the plan.

Amit Jain

5. Effective Pre-Call Planning Using Predictive Analytics ...........................................................19

Analytics and mobile can make the pre-call planning process dynamic and greatly increase the ROI of a call.

Dr. Palakodeti Ratnakar

6. BOOK REVIEW: Targetitis: The Current Organizational Disease ..................................22

A mindless drive to set targets and measure achievement can be detrimental to the health of the fieldforce!Vivek Hattangadi

7. Medical Rep or Salesperson? .....................24

Purely economic considerations have reduced the role of the Medical Rep from scientific partner to the Doctor to a mere salesperson. How can this be amended?

Hanno Wolfram

CONTENTS MedicinMan Volume 5 Issue 9 | September

2015

Editor and Publisher

Anup Soans

CEO

Chhaya Sankath

Chief Mentor

K. Hariram

Editorial Board

Salil Kallianpur; Prof. Vivek Hattangadi; Shashin Bodawala; Hanno Wolfram; Renie McClay

Executive Editor

Joshua Soans

Letters to the Editor: [email protected]

Sankar Mahadevan joined Zydus Cadila in 1996. Sankar has achieved his targets consistently from the very be-ginning till date without a break for nearly two decades. This is an unparalleled feat not only in Indian Pharma, but in any sector. Sankar has already made it to the Lim-ca Book of Records for his outstanding performance.

Sankar says that he had achieved this feat despite many challenges like division change, product reshuffling, strikes, accident and all other difficulties.

At Rs. 20 lacs yield per month, Sankar’s performance is the best across all divisions of Zydus Cadila – another milestone.

Sankar has visited Germany, Switzerland Singapore, Bangkok, Dubai, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia – a remarkable feat for a Medical Representative.

Sankar was felicitated at the CEO Roundtable at MedicinMan Field Force Excellence event for his remark-able and consistent performance.

Sankar’s wife, Vidya is a Hindi teacher. She is a profes-sional singer as well as a dancer. Sankar and Vidya have two children Pavithra and Gokul.

SANKAR CROSSES ANOTHER MILESTONE!

Carrots and sticks are for donkeys only.

A Corporate Leadership study* showed that when an ineffective manager becomes an effective manager, there is potential to improve:

Ø Employee performance by 25%,

Ø Employee engagement by 52% and

Ø Employee retention by 40%

Conversely, lack of training for the role will lead to much frustration for managers and their teams as they adopt tools and methods that are ineffective.

Like carrots and sticks.

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Module 5. Planning, Organizing, Executing and Monitoring (POEM) - For Effective Time Management

Module 6. Understanding the importance of effective communication - for in-clinic performance

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As a Coach and Mentor, people approach me for guidance and directions relating to variety of situations, issues, conflicts and circumstances

between them and their bosses.

To mention a recent example:

A middle level manager of a region, who was reward-ed the previous year for an outstanding performance, was considered suddenly useless the next year and was threatened by his boss.

While the results of the previous year was considered as “outstanding’, the means and methodologies of getting the revenues was conveniently overlooked. Nature has its own way and so also the market. What followed the so called ‘outstanding year’ was a year of ‘out-standings’ (Overdue payments).

Throughout my interactions with industry people, a pattern of dictatorial approach by many senior managers clearly emerges. Almost always, all 365 days in a year, they seem to be managing by threat. There is hardly any ‘value’ contribution from such managers in terms of developing their people.

Will they be able to sustain this approach for long? God only knows!

When we sum up, few common factors that come out are:

1. High level of Ego... self-centric behaviour ...high level of insecurity

2. Operating from a “personality” ethic and not “charac-ter” ethic

3. Lack of clear vision and strategic thinking with action plans

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Pharma managers must lead their team with a clear purpose - to make work meaningful.

K. Hariram

K. Hariram is the former MD (retd.) at Galderma India.

He is Chief Mentor at MedicinMan and a regular contributor. [email protected]

LEADING WITH PURPOSE


4. Poor communication skills and inability to INFLUENCE & INSPIRE – the ‘what’ is told but never the ‘why’ and ‘how’.

5. “Killing meaning at work”,

The results of a multi-year research project is described in a recent book, “The Progress Principle,” which found that, of all the events that can deeply engage people in their jobs, the single most im-portant is “making progress in meaningful work.”

As mentioned in the article (“How Leaders Kill Meaning at Work”) that appeared in McKinsey Quarterly dated January 2012, senior executives routinely undermine creativity, productivity, and commitment by damaging the inner work lives of their employees in four avoidable ways. They are:-

Falling into Mediocrity trap – while organisations talk about excellence, their selling culture, sales management process and people management signals exactly the opposite through their words and actions.

Poor execution of strategies – senior managers don’t appear to have their act together on exact-ly where the organization should be heading. It becomes awfully difficult for the team to maintain a strong sense of purpose.

Firefighting all the time – Absence of coordina-tion and support within an organization leads to people disbelieving that they can produce some-thing of high quality. So the sense of purpose gets lost.

Setting unrealistic goals – Most of the times the annual objectives are unattainable and unrealistic that leads to low morale of the team members and the sense of failure grips everyone.

The leaders in any organisation should be in a better position than anyone else to identify and articulate the higher purpose of what people do or do not do within their organization.

A clear purpose with proper support to ensure achievement, backed by consistent everyday actions, will create the meaning that motivates people toward greatness. This will help anyone find greater meaning in their own work as a leader. -KH

K. Hariram | Leading with Purpose

”

“... of all the events that can deeply engage people in their jobs, the single most important is “making progress in meaningful work.”

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/leading_in_the_21st_century/how_leaders_kill_meaning_at_work

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/leading_in_the_21st_century/how_leaders_kill_meaning_at_work

10 | MedicinMan September

People talk a lot about “freedom” these days. Be it freedom from colonial rule or the freedom of expression, the freedom of the

Internet, the freedom to watch porn, to have con-sensual sex in beach-side resorts or the freedom to marry irrespective of faith. At the root of each of these passionate beliefs is the resentment of the State intervening in the freedom of personal choice. Why then, does this resentment dissolve when it comes to health and health care?

Health and health care is as much a subject of personal choice as is the right to choose what you want to watch on the internet or do in your free time. Would you like it if the State told you to consult this doctor and not that one? Or if they told you which hospital you could be treated in or to what cost your treatment should be limited to? And yet, that is exactly what a pharmaceutical industry lobby in India, demanded that the gov-ernment should do!

At a recent event, the Organization of Phar-maceutical Producers of India (OPPI) asked the

government to increase public spending in the health sector. This would include subsidizing health insurance and providing universal health care. This sounds perfectly reasonable, doesn’t it? After all, shouldn’t everyone be able to access free healthcare? It isn’t really very reasonable, if you think about how it would actually be done.

The first thing the government would look for is the money to fund this mammoth task. And that money would obviously come from the taxes that we pay! Just as the industry would choose to re-sist a move by the government to fund universal health care through an increase in corporate tax-es, ordinary citizens should also have the choice to pay lower taxes from hard-earned salaries.

Pre-empting this, the National Health Policy recommended a ‘sin-tax’ – a tax on fast food, to-bacco, alcohol, aerated drinks and other such - to fund healthcare. Do you think companies who sell these products will pay that money - or will you? And do you think the money collected through an indirect tax is enough to fund free healthcare for 1.25 billion people and more?

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Patients should be free to choose their healthcare provider rather than be dependent on the government. Only then will the cost of healthcare come down and the efficiency of the system increase.

HEALTHCARE AND THE FREEDOM OF CHOICE

Salil Kallianpur

Families wait outside the government-run BC Roy Hospital for Pediatric care in Kolkata. Image by Sami Siva. India, 2014.

http://www.jointlearningnetwork.org/news/pharma-industry-demands-increase-in-public-spending-on-healthcare


The next step is prioritization. Should money be spent to build new medical colleges, or hospitals, or primary health centers? Isn’t it more important to give away free medicines? Maybe health insurance for everyone is an urgent need too. See the confu-sion? There are just too many things to do, and the money is too little.

Instead, I believe the OPPI – as a powerful industry body – should focus on getting the government to simplify if not simply do away with healthcare laws in their present form. For example, if the laws that require licenses to set up hospitals and medical colleges are simplified, they could attract many more players to the health sector. The result will be more colleges and better trained doctors and paramedics.

Today, despite the attractiveness, even the big-gest home bred industrialists running multi-sector conglomerates, fear to tread into this space because of over-regulation. Yet, CEOs of pharma companies have rarely – if ever - called for a simplification of or doing away with the law.

Simple economics tells us that markets immediately respond to increasing demand. The healthcare space in India is bursting at its seams with demand. Why then is supply still regulated by the government? Open it up! Allow anyone who wants to enter the space to come in and set up shop. This will reduce an enormous amount of workload on the government and pressure on the health budget as private capital is infused into the sector. The increased competi-tion will also drop prices, improve quality and allow consumers the freedom to choose instead of being told what to do.

To be sure, a lesser regulated sector will definitely attract the greedy. This is why I do not advocate public-private partnerships (PPP). PPPs are as full of cronies as a crony capitalist organization is, and is as full of opportunists as the government is. The private corporate sector also, is full of people looking to bend the law and make a quick buck.

As a representative of the industry, the OPPI must work to make the word “profit” more respectable than it currently is, while also clearly distinguishing it from “profiteering”. To distinguish one from the other, we need a less-burdened government to run an efficient justice system. What I am advocating for is minimum government and maximum gover-nance. With a more efficient justice system and more providers of service, power moves to the consumer

Salil Kallianpur | Healthcare and the Freedom of Choice

”What I am advocating for is minimum government and maximum governance.


and he is free to reject cronies and cartels and opt for those who serve him well. That is the power of choice.

Shifting the burden of providing healthcare to private players will allow the government a lot of bandwidth to ensure such a market. The OPPI should remind the government of what its Chief Executive promised the citizens of India.

In a country driven by electoral politics and vote-banks, the most dangerous part of large-scale welfare is that it cannot be rolled back. Look at the newspapers to see how many countries with welfare went belly-up. To continue funding such welfare, the government slowly but surely will begin to control everything else. Is there any part of the state-con-trolled apparatus that you like? Why should you expect healthcare to be any different then?

State provided insurance will probably be worse. The sums for which you are insured are ridiculously low and rarely keep up with evolving prices. Look up the fines that convicted criminals have to pay! If we still follow a penal code made in 1860, what are the chances of the health policy keeping pace with escalating health costs in the future?

When the insurance sector opens up to competition, the few players who have formed powerful cartels will be forced to break them, resulting in cheaper and better insurance schemes. Also with lesser taxes and benefits to pay, you have more money in your pocket to decide how to use it. Think of it as a 50% increment every year!

With reduced involvement of government, cronyism and cartels will reduce. Pricing mechanisms that are “set-up” or “rigged” will be set free to respond to market realities. More hospitals, more doctors and paramedics and lower medicine prices; health insur-ance that does not ditch you when you need it the most - isn’t this the stuff patients’ dreams are made of? Why does the OPPI not think of this approach to improve access to healthcare?

The OPPI’s appeal probably reflects a point of view that it is the role of the government to provide healthcare. Not so! It should be the role of anyone capable, to provide it. Instead of asking for access to free healthcare, the OPPI should instead ask for free access to healthcare. The government’s presence hinders that. I would resent having to entrust my healthcare to it, if I had the freedom of choice. -SK

Salil Kallianpur | Healthcare and the Freedom of Choice

”

The OPPI’s appeal probably reflects a point of view that it is the role of the government to provide healthcare. Not so! It should be the role of anyone capable, to provide it.

Salil Kallianpur is an executive in the pharmaceutical industry currently working for GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals. This article

is written in his personal capacity and is not endorsed by his employers. The views are personal.


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PATIENT ACCESS: A CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDINGIn a highly fragmented yet alluring healthcare market one of the ways to survive and thrive is to increase patient access. This is the first in a series of articles on Patient Access by the author.

In the Indian healthcare market, it is becoming a challenge for pharma companies to grow top and bottom lines due to intense generic competition,

pricing pressures due to government regulations and presence of price warriors. Unethical CRM practices and well entrenched regional players add complexity to marketing planning exercise. You will agree that the news about MCI action against few erring pharma companies is just the tip of the iceberg. Sales and marketing functions of more than 5,000 Pharmaceu-tical organizations faces challenge of brand differ-entiation which ultimately leads to unethical CRM practices for physicians and promotional schemes for and chemists.

The major challenges faced by Healthcare organiza-tions are as follows:

1. Drying up of R & D pipelines: 2014 R & D pipeline analysis shows that only five companies worldwide are developing more than half of the pipeline of products relevant for the disease burden of develop-ing countries – Novartis being the leader.

More than 50% of the industry’s R & D efforts targets only five diseases: lower respiratory infections, dia-betes, cirrhosis of the liver (mostly for hepatitis) HIV/AIDS and malaria.

3. Recruitment and retention of skilled field force: Booming Indian economy is opening new employ-ment vistas for youngsters. Thousands of technical colleges are producing millions of graduates every year and yet healthcare organizations are finding it difficult to attract good talent.

Pankaj Mehrotra

Part 1

Pankaj Mehrotra is a Product Group Manager at GlaxoSmithKline

Pharmaceuticals. His views are personal.


Pankaj Mehrotra | Patient Access: A Conceptual Understanding

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“...there is lack of trained team to devise robust tools to map the needs, wants and desires of patient population speaking more than 780 languages living in 6 different town classes spread across 29 states in 7th largest country of the world.

3. Problem of plenty: Currently there are more than 110 brands of Metformin plain; 660 brands of Aceclofenac and its combinations; 250 brands of Paracetamol plain and more than 47 brands of plain Clobetasol Propionate topical preparations, making the task of brand differentiation for sales and market-ing team extremely challenging.

4. Long gestation period and poor ROI: Efforts to increase reach and coverage to new geographies/ therapeutic segments faces the resistance of well-en-trenched players requiring long-term manpower and promotional resource commitments. A classic example is the fate of rural marketing divisions. In the past 5 years, more than 20 big pharma companies launched dedicated rural marketing divisions in India. Howev-er, lower ROI compared to parent divisions, logistical issues and lack of management’s long-term backing, resulted in stagnancy or disbanding of operations in more than half of such initiatives.

Today, the responsibility of sales team is identification and coverage of potential customers and ensuring brand availability at all stages of distribution channels. The job of marketing function is to identify right mole-cule, customer segment and promotional tools which can influence the decision making process.

The current marketing planning relies on market research tools like sales and prescription analysis and customer-facing team’s feedback with HCP insights to identify opportunities and design or refine marketing strategy. The time has come for Sales and marketing teams to re-look at the market research tools rather than treating HCPs as the only player in a market where the rules of business are getting redefined every passing day.

You will appreciate that the influence of patients and care givers on the decision-making process is not factored in in the planning process as currently there is low awareness about the impact of such factors on choice of treatment from the time of identification of need to treat to the treatment journey. Moreover, there is lack of trained team to devise robust tools to map the needs, wants and desires of patient popu-lation speaking more than 780 languages living in 6 different town classes spread across 29 states in 7th largest country of the world.

One of the ways to survive and thrive in highly a frag-mented yet alluring healthcare market is to increase patient access. As of now, the common strategies used


Pankaj Mehrotra | Patient Access: A Conceptual Understanding

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The evolving patient access concept focuses on all 3 stakeholders in treatment decision-making process viz. Patient, care givers, HCP.

to increase patient access were tier pricing, strength-ening distribution process and augmenting reach and coverage by adding field sales team headcount.

The evolving patient access concept focuses on all 3 stakeholders in treatment decision-making process viz. Patient, care givers, HCP. There are 6 major steps in increasing patient access:

1. Patient Journey mapping: Understand access and influencers

2. Disease Awareness: potential to increase patient footfall and diagnosis

3. Acceptance of need to treat so exercising appro-priate therapeutic/preventive options

4. Availability of product and knowledge

5. Adherence to treatment so reducing recurrences

6. Affordability: factoring in the total value of treat-ment

Healthcare organizations can increase “access” of information needed to diagnose and treat patients to establish trust in the minds of HCPs and caregivers by making them “aware” about “availability” of right ther-apeutic options closer to the consumers with “afford-able” products that offer the right value proposition will continue to win the “acceptance” of stakeholders. -PM


One of the key factors for Incentive Compensation programs to succeed is clear communication and presentation to different stakeholders in a struc-

tured manner. A company can design a great incentive plan but if it fails to communicate it effectively, it doesn’t necessarily meet the desired end objectives. The sales team does not understand the plan and misalignment disengages the salesforce.

Companies generally perform periodic assessment of their sales incentive plans to gauge the fairness perception of the salesforce and take steps to course-correct for new strategic needs. Incentive Compensation plan communica-tion however is not often given its due importance during IC program development. This impacts the overall effec-tiveness and success of the sales incentive program.

1. Business Objective Alignment

Ø What is the underlying business objective and how can the sales force be aligned to that objective? As part of the plan communication process, this is the most im-portant question. Any ambiguity on this front is surely a recipe for the incentive plan failure. It is desired to keep the communication simple, link plan elements to sales strategy, be clear about changes from the existing plan.

Ø What is the appropriate messaging for different stake-holders? How can communication help achieve it? Several desired results need to be tackled while creat-ing this messaging such as change awareness, incen-tive plan education, fairness perception, behavioural change.

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HOW TO COMMUNICATE

YOUR INCENTIVE COMPENSATION

PLAN

Once you have designed an incentive compensation

plan for your salesforce, how effectively you communicate it

will determine the buy-in and eventual success of the plan.

Amit Jain

”Amit Jain is Co-founder and Director

of Operations at Aurochs Software, an incentive compensation solution specifically

designed for the pharmaceutical industry.


Ø How can sales front-line leadership be involved in the design and communication process? This step ensures that the sales leadership buys into the new plan design and are comfortable aligning report-ing medical representatives to broader business objectives. Sales leadership can be involved either through qualitative interviews or by conducting plan design workshops with them. If plan buy-in is achieved effectively with sales leadership the plan acceptance will be greater by the salesforce.

2. Communication Channels

Ø What are some of the channels that can be used for plan communication for different stakeholders? These channels may be pages within company intranet, emails, focus group discussions, sales leadership meetings etc. It is advisable to use multiple channels to provide context and to put emphasis on the why’s and how’s of a new plan. It is also important to define the roll-out strategy in case multiple channels are employed for this purpose.

Ø How can we disseminate underlying incentive plan objectives and information to the broader sales leadership and to the operations group support-ing ongoing IC operations? The objective should be to empower sales leadership and the opera-tions group to resolve field queries in an efficient way. There are several ways this can be achieved – involving different stakeholders in the plan design process, creating detailed performance measure and payout calculation flows for easy understand-ing. It is really important to explain plan excep-tions to both sales leadership and the operations group for speedy resolution to field queries.

3. Support Avenues

Ø What are some of the additional avenues available to the sales force to improve their understanding of the plan? These may be achieved by online documentation, easy-to-carry plan design/ pay-out table leaflets with crisp messaging, eligibility conditions sheet, what-if pay-out calculator etc.

Ø How can we measure the success of the commu-nication process? Feedback about a plan roll-out is critical and must be gathered in the form of surveys or medical representative interviews. Such a feedback loop can help companies understand which areas of plan communication they lag in and make appropriate adjustments.

Amit Jain | How to Communicate Your Incentive Compensation Plan

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What is the underlying business objective and how can the sales force be aligned to that objective? As part of the plan communication process, this is the most important question.


Ø A medical representative’s immediate man-ager may be one of the best resources for the representative to learn more about the plan. Hence effort should also be spent in making the front-line leadership plan advocates and act as the first line of support.

The plan ideally should be communicated within 2 weeks from the start of the performance period. Plan education is not a one-time process howev-er. Ongoing plan communication can help align behaviours to business objectives better by encour-aging field representatives to take full advantage of the various opportunities in an IC plan.

After plan communication, it is equally important to provide clear and concise performance reports for salespeople to track their performance with clear direction. These reports can act as ongoing motiva-tors for the salespeople and can help them course correct their selling strategy if required to do so. This constant monitoring and tracking helps with the better understanding of the IC plan, engages the salespeople and motivates them to perform better. - AJ

Amit Jain | How to Communicate Your Incentive Compensation Plan

”

Plan education is not a one-time process however. Ongoing plan communication can help align behaviours to business objectives better by encouraging field representatives to take full advantage of the various opportunities in an IC plan.


As pharmaceutical companies shift to multi-channel approaches and scrutinize promotional spend, it is more important for the sales force, which has the most direct customer contact, to maximize their effec-tiveness during sales calls. The way to improve direct customer interactions is to use mobility enhancing features —mobile tools and predictive analytics that provide real-time information and productivity – at low operating cost.

To achieve the full potential of analytics and mobility, pharmaceutical companies need to follow a broader and interconnected strategic approach with a core set of execution activities. Defining, developing and implementing a holistic analytics-led mobile strategy for the sales force can help pharmaceutical companies drive sales efficiency and productivity, improve the customer experience and maximize cost management initiatives.

This white paper provides answers to many of these key questions including how to define a comprehen-sive strategy to integrate mobility and predictive an-alytics into sales processes and to develop a detailed implementation roadmap.

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Dr. Palakodeti Ratnakar

EFFECTIVE PRE-CALL PLANNING USING PREDICTIVE ANALYTICSAnalytics and mobile can make the pre-call planning process dynamic and greatly increase the ROI of a call.

Dr. Palakodeti Ratnakar is Asst. Vice President and Head-Global Life Sciences Sales

& Marketing practice in Tech Mahindra and has over 2 decades of experience in Strategic

Planning, Market Intelligence and Portfolio Management in companies like Dr. Reddy’s

Dr. Palakodeti Ratnakar| Effective Pre-call Planning Using Predictive Analytics


Introduction:

The days of turning up for a sales call with no advance planning and not much knowledge about the physician are long gone. To compete and succeed solid pre-call planning information is critical. Pre-call planning enables the representatives to qualify sales leads, target physicians, and have an efficient engagement.

According to the Miller Heiman effectiveness study1, 63.4% of sales leaders agree that their teams do not qualify leads as well as they should. Additionally, 55.9% of sales leaders agree that their sales team wastes time pursuing poor sales leads and opportunities. Good Pre-call planning is essential to qualifying leads and ultimately garnering better prescription share.

Today, pharmaceutical sales forces primarily use laptops or traditional tablet PCs to access enterprise CRM solu-tions, read e-mail, or present digital, interactive promo-tional materials. But these tools have their limitations—namely weight, portability, and costly hardware and software support. Mobile provides added flexibility and new features that can significantly improve medical representatives’ productivity.

The Increasing Cost of Sales Calls

Based on data gathered by Cahner’s Research2, as re-ported by the Direct Marketing Association, the cost of a sales call has been steadily climbing by an average of $9.60 a year since 1980, when it was just $126.00. At this rate, it is reasonable to expect the cost of a sales call to reach $580.00 by 2020. As this cost continues to rise, it becomes increasingly important to find ways to maxi-mize the return on the investment in sales calls. Proper pre-call planning helps to minimize the time to close, shrink sales cycles, and increase close rates thereby playing an important role in increasing ROI.

Pre-Call Planning: Why it is Essential to Sales Success Today

Mining the right information about a physician is the key to his mindshare. And it is at the core of the solu-tion-selling sales strategy – an approach that stresses a high comfort level between physician and medical rep is essential.

The days of turning up for a sales call with no advance planning and not much knowledge about the physician are long gone. To compete and succeed solid pre-call planning information is critical.

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Dr. Palakodeti Ratnakar| Effective Pre-call Planning Using Predictive Analytics


Diligent pre-call planning enables to learn about a physician’s concerns, requirements and other key influencing factors that can play an important role for a productive discussion with the physician. As complex products and services drive longer sales cycles and cost-per-call continues to climb, this ensures that calls are productive for both the medical representatives and the physician.

Online Business Information Resources: The leading edge of Pre-Call planning

Today, online business information resources are playing a pivotal role in enabling sales organizations to obtain better, faster, more pertinent information for qualifying leads. Less time-consuming than net-working, attending seminars or other ways of getting business information, online business information resources include all the statistics and information sales people need on one web site, where they can find them instantly. Representing the latest evolution of pre-call planning, these resources have become essen-tial for an effective Physician-Rep interaction.

Predictive analytics of Pre-call Planning

Multi-dimensional analytics can help the marketing team to react immediately to the needs from the sales force with instant alerts and actionable insights, greatly improving efficiency and productivity. Capturing how long physicians are observing the detail, the ability to accept requests for extra information in real time and respond to these instantaneously can help to measure the detail’s effectiveness and potentially the return on investment.

With an integrated CRM system, Pharma sales reps can record the information that shapes the direction of business and establish effective pre-call planning. Information on physician prescribing pattern and mol-ecule choices captured from structured and semi-struc-tured databases allows the representative to have a 360 degree view of the physicians in their target list.

Medical Representatives will have an opportunity to influence physicians with improved quality of detailing, personalised messaging, faster fulfillment of needs and instantly reverting with desired medical information requests and latest clinical trial reports with the help of mobile applications. -PK

”

Diligent pre-call planning enables to learn about a physician’s concerns, requirements and other key influencing factors that can play an important role for a productive discussion with the physician.

References:1. Mulcahy, Susan (2002), Evaluating the Cost

of Sales Calls in Business-to-Business Markets. Newton, MA: Cahners Research.

2. Miller Heiman Effectiveness Study, 2004


‘T ARGETITIS - The Current Organisational Dis-ease’ is a book by David Jenkins, published by Management Books 2000 Ltd. I recently

borrowed it from the British Council Library.

David Jenkins has written this book in a provocative manner. He closely looks at the current lamentable organisational disease of targetitis and its cure. In a lighter vein, targetitis can be described as the setting and chasing of targets, more than are necessary for the effective functioning of an organization. Targetitis is also the bane of Indian Pharma.

After so many years of association with Indian Phar-ma I find that its high priests are fanatic about their religion - their religion called ‘efficiency’. They control this religion by the setting of targets. The employees (not just the sales force) find extreme difficulties in first, understanding them and second, meeting them. Efficiency is given precedence over effectiveness.

This book examines common ways of setting cor-porate targets. David Jenkins makes a case that the primary purpose of orthodox management is to get hold of compliance. Do targets set artificial divides between what needs to be done to match these paper targets and what needs to be done to meet business goals? Does the checking mechanism waste resources?

He asks, in a confrontational manner, whether data is fiddled with to seemingly meet these targets.

At least for Indian Pharma, I can say confidently – quite often!

E

Vivek Hattangadi

TARGETITIS - THE CURRENT ORGANIZATIONAL DISEASEA mindless drive to set targets and measure achievement can be detrimental to the health of the fieldforce!

Vivek Hattangadi is a Consultant in Phar-ma Brand Management and Sales Training

at The Enablers. He is also visiting faculty at CIPM Calcutta (Vidyasagar University)

for their MBA course in Pharmaceutical Management.

[email protected]

Book Review

Vivek Hattangadi | Book Review: Targetitis - The Current Organizational Disease


The C-Suite is obsessed with the desire, the almost messianic urge, to identify and set targets. They demand more and more sets of figures from brand managers and sales managers to peruse at review meetings. And to do what? Set more targets!

An exasperated young brand manager once men-tioned that he has been reduced to an Excel Sheet Manager.

One outcome is that the weight of producing and reporting statistics and targets is burying organizations in being efficient rather than effective. The progress of the organization and even decision-making is getting stunted by directives and targets.

Brand managers of Indian Pharma have been forced to immerse in the business of statistics, percentages and figures rather than concentrate on the market reality, listening to customers and bringing in innovation. I adore Akio Morito of Sony. Had he, like the Indian Pharma brand managers, immersed himself in statistics and tried to figure out what percentage of cassette tape-recorder ‘pie’ he could take, he would have never made Walkman such a big success. Instead, he walked around, visited stores where cassette tape-recorders were sold, spoke to people, listened to what people were saying when buying a cassette tape-recorder and he knew exactly what people wanted. This is the secret behind the marvel called Walkman.

It is widely touted and believed that setting over-ambi-tious targets forces people to work harder and longer. Advocates of this method say that it stimulates creative thinking, increases motivation and excites people to reach greater heights!

But, is that really the case?

David Jenkins says that by setting ever higher and higher goals, this route could increase frustration, smother stimulation and decrease motivation. Over-stepping the mark could lead to disinterest and cynicism. Rather than having supposedly ‘empowered’ people through the process of setting targets, collect-ing statistics and analysing results, it might, perhaps, have led another form of centralization and control.

These and many more vital topics are explored in this book. [David Jenkins concludes that the best targets are generally set by the people who have to meet them - and not dropped from on high,] and that where there is no alternative to targets being imposed, the relevant team should be left to decide how they should be met.

Critical reading for all organisations - and, indeed, for the C-Suite of Indian Pharma! -VH

”

... the weight of producing and reporting statistics and targets is burying organizations in being efficient rather than effective.

What the Pharma CEO Wants from the Brand

ManagerA Book by Prof. Vivek Hattangadi

Available on Flipkart(click to purchase)


In the early days of the pharmaceutical industry, field force people visiting and discussing thera-peutic issues with doctors were called ‘Medical

Representatives’. Their task was to represent their company’s expertise in the treatment of specific diseases. Medical Representatives had a very clear mission: “No one knows more about therapy than we do!”

Physicians kept their doors wide open and more of-ten than not, medical representatives were welcomed with: “Dear colleague, would you prefer coffee or tea?” ‘Calls’, as one would say today, lasted 15 to 30 minutes on average. The objective of that visit was simple: Any question a physician might have had, was to be an-swered. Doctors discussed their problems in scientific depth and breadth with their ‘therapeutic advisors’.

Medical Reps fully respected that symptom assess-ment and diagnosis was solely and completely the cli-nician’s domain. [Finding a diagnosis was even called the art of a medical doctor. Yet, vast knowledge about therapy and the ability to advise and consult physi-cians on the right drug to prescribe, was a domain of well-trained and equipped medical representatives.] If there was any kind of flu, bacterial or virus epidem-ic, Medical Representatives gathered experiences from other doctors and shared them with doctors during their visit. Scientific literature and the latest publications in renowned magazines were integral part of discussions. It was absolutely clear that, once asked, they proposed the optimal therapy. It was not mandatory nor expected, that Medical Representa-tives suggested “their drug” as being the best option.

E

Purely economic considerations have reduced the role of the Medical Rep from scientific partner to the Doctor to a mere salesperson. How can this be amended?

MEDICAL REP OR SALESPERSON?

Hanno Wolfram

Hanno Wolfram, is the founder and owner of www.Innov8.de, a Germany based

company offering consulting projects for pharmaceutical companies.

”


Physicians trusted Medical Representatives and they were seen as part of their family. Physicians were eas-ily accessible and Medical Representatives were their source of in-depth therapeutic knowledge. Medical Representatives visits were a welcome interruption of the daily routine of asking and listening to patients.

Then one day, the pharma industry was taken over by

economists. Medical doctors, pharmacists, chemists,

biologists and other disciplines in leading positions

were replaced. Focus and perspective of pharma

industry turned 180°: Medicine or the physician were

not the focus. Instead it became all about Profit and

Loss, Sales and Market Share.

Inside an “ethical pharma” company, marketing and

sales experience was almost non-existent. Few chem-

ists, medical doctors, biologists, or pharmacists serv-

ing as line or divisional heads knew, what marketing

and “sales” really meant. Profit and Loss and return on

investment became the most dominant drivers of the

pharmaceutical industry. The vocabulary was re-de-

fined and the whole industry was held hostage by the

vocabulary applied.

Since then pharma companies started doing what

all other businesses were doing, “Best practice” and

“Benchmark” became an integral part of the new

vocabulary.

The Medical Representative was renamed, reshaped

and mutated to a salesperson. The field force became

the sales force and what has formerly the “Medical

Information” department was called “Sales Depart-

ment”.

Sales reps did no longer consult and advice, let

alone listen. They had a message to convey and a

positioning statement to repeat. Repeat? Yes, repe-

tition became another key word. In any call the “key

product message” had to be mentioned a number of

times and of course the physician had to be called on

repetitively. Once a week detailing was the order of

the day.

The change in “ethical pharma” was enormous and so

was the suffering of physicians.

We need to recall that physicians by nature and ed-

ucation are philanthropists. It therefore took a while

till they started to close their doors to this industry’s

sales people.

When the era of copy/paste started, pharma copied methods and techniques from FMCG.

Hanno Wolfram | Medical Rep or Salesperson?

”

26 | MedicinMan February 2015

Of course some of the therapeutic advisors of the

early days were still on duty. Now, these formerly nice

people, discussing problems with a doctor at eye-lev-

el, asked the doctor for more scripts because they

needed their bonus to feed their family and keep

their job. Their ‘selling skills’ were trained regularly

and the last step of any call was called “closing the

deal”. “You give me five new patients and I invite you

to …” was standard. Words like ‘target’ ‘group’, ‘target-

ing and segmentation’, or ‘segmentation and target-

ing’ (still often unclear in their meaning and sequence

in the 21st century!) had been introduced.

The other learning from FMCG was that pharma needed to know and respect their customers. All of a sudden, physicians were called ‘customers’. Since they do not buy drugs from pharma, the word is wrong and misleading. After the so-called customer was identified, needing a CRM was a logical consequence.

‘Selling’ drugs to physicians, being called ‘customers’ and ‘closing deals’ with them led to bribery, caused billions of dollars in fines and resulted in a heavy decline of pharma’s reputation across the globe.

We must be fully aware that the field force’s target – the Doctor – decides if value is delivered. Currently most of them do not see value delivered by field forces and consequently the targets close their doors even more. In the US, a very free and sales-friendly nation, less than 50% of all physicians today are ac-cessible for the pharmaceutical industry at all.

The pharmaceutical industry’s field force is the only living contact with physicians and other stakeholders. Many new tasks are eagerly waiting to be taken over by the field force. New, value adding tasks are waiting to be created and adopted by the field force.

Selling drugs to physicians will be missing in the list of valued tasks. -HW

The field force remains the most expensive and the most precious population in any pharmaceutical company.

Hanno Wolfram | Medical Rep or Salesperson?

27 | MedicinMan December 2013

O god! What to do my target has increased.

How much can I eat more?

When my capacity is half for sure,

What to do now my incentive chances are diminished.

I had sweated hard to achieve my yearly target.

In return I have received another pile of hope.

For achieving it there is not any scope.

Oh god! It seems even job, I have to forget.

You have to increase your hunger

When market is growing, why can’t you?

Even crows now instead of pellets use straw.

Choose the right product for right customer.

Implement the strategy solely take a vow.

Above stork’s patience and eagle’s prey target can’t grow

O god! What to do my target has increased! - A poem by ‘Kaviraj’

This poem is composed by Kaviraj. It addresses the issue of sales targeting in the pharma industry. In first 8 lines

medical representative is arguing that his target is too high. In the next 6 lines, the manager explains that the target

is not very high and it is achievable and tries to lift the morale of his team.

Amit Kumar works with Cachet Pharma as Brand

Manager and is popularly known as “Kaviraj”

among his friends since his school days .

Poet’s Corner

medicinman tm · pankaj mehrotra 4. how to communicate your incentive compensation plan .....16...

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