Sales Force
Competitiveness Study
Pharmaceutical companies increasingly depend on their field force (FF) to drive top line growth. The sales statistics alone cannot give the insights for performance or non-performance.
To gain a better understanding of sales performance, organizations must effectively track and manage key behaviours and activities of their Field Force.
In the age of branded generics and fast track new product launches, adding loyal customers is more important than sales per se. A high proportion of Field Force time is spent on low value added tasks (20% traveling between appointments, 20% waiting to see customers & 25% doing administration or attending meetings)*
Maximizing sales force effectiveness with the minimum ‘in clinic’ time available to achieve sales target is a major task.
A new paradigm:
o Fundamentally, sales force effectiveness is driven by the not just more calls – but more effective calls, to the right doctors at the right frequency.
o Efficiency Effectiveness.
o Move from mass market sales led approach to customer-centric targeted ROI approach.
o Improve the performance of the organization through
– Enhancing doctor (primary customer) satisfaction and loyalty.
– Enhancing sales force (employee) satisfaction & loyalty.
– Increased sales and marketing efficiency and effectiveness.
Doctors’ feedback will help evolve a benchmark (Sales Force Index) for in-clinic effectiveness of FF and understand doctor’s perception of client FF vis-a-vis competition on the basis of Key Performance Indicators.
The perceptual mapping of the company & its field force with respect to competition can be done on overall as well as doctor specialty wise.
In case of field force key parameters considered are quality of MR, regularity of communication and credibility of information whereas in case of company various parameters related to product, promotional inputs, certifications, R&D, clinical experience are considered.
The major competitors in each therapeutic segment are considered for comparative evaluation.
Deliverables:
o Sales force mapping.
o Sales Force Index (SFI) can be used for future benchmarking & tracking purpose.
o Measure effectiveness of sales force on key performance indicators.
o Perception mapping of field force vis-à-vis competition.
o Growth/career planning for sales force.
You have effective field force:
o when you have sales force with high compatibility/ability that outnumber the ones with low compatibility/ability.
o when you hire more compatible/able sales force into the organization than you lose.
o when your loyal customers scores are at the high end of the range.