Sales Representatives in the Pharmaceutical Industry - Essay Example

Selecting, Leading and Motivating Sales Representatives in the Pharmaceutical Industry - A USA and Canadian Perspective Sales representatives are individuals employed by certain companies to showcase and sell the products they create. Pharmaceutical sales representatives, specifically, have to have an excellent understanding in the different fields of science like biology and chemistry and should have a knowledge for some medical terms. Usually, these people who work in sales hold a bachelor’s degree in business or one of the life sciences. Sales representatives should have knowledge on the product they are selling and must be good conversational skills in order to market the product well and persuade the people to avail of what they are advertising (Ellis-Christensen, 2009). They usually earn $40 – 120, 000 a year and have a lot of bonuses like full benefit packages, allowances, and insurance. Pharmaceutical sales representatives have helped boost the sales of the companies that employed them, thanks to their impressive marketing skills in dealing with product advertisement and client persuasion. They have been of great help in promoting a company’s line of pharmaceutical products. An example would be a woman named Anne Fields. She has greatly improved the sales of Schering-Plough Corp in her 19 years with the company. As Vice President in Schering-Plough Corp, she led their 1, 500-representative primary care force. She has also gained a lot of field force management experience, including the oversight of hospital sales organizations. She also has an extensive experience in the field of training and motivating the company’s sales forces. Ms. Fields launched Schering-Plough’s full respiratory line which includes Claritin®, Clarinex®, and Nasonex®. Because of this background, she was gladly welcomed into MedPointe, Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical company in Somerset, New Jersey. Medpointe specializes in respiratory, allergy, cough and cold, central nervous system, and pediatric products and is backed by private equity investors like The Cypress Group. Medpointe will use Ms. Fields’ knowledge and skills on respiratory products marketing in promoting their line of products which includes Astelin®, Optivar®, and Felbatol® (Unknown, 2003). Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives and the Barring of Physician Access Sales representatives taken in by pharmaceutical companies have a major target market and these are the doctors and medical trainees but it is doctors that get the general attention. It is doctors that need the added information in the latest breakthrough in the pharmaceutical industry and, thus, needing sales representatives to feed them the latest updates when it comes to drugs and other forms of medication. These sales representatives carry with them product brochures, flip charts, and product samples and are armed with enough information and background on medical technicalities related to what they are advertising. But despite the great use of sales representatives in a doctor’s profession, their disappearance wouldn’t cause much of a loss to the industry. Doctors don’t solely get their information on drug updates from sales representatives. They have other means of gathering information on drug-related breakthroughs deeming the existence of pharmaceutical sales representatives close to useless. This weakens the chances of success for a pharmaceutical sales representative (Andaleeb & Tallman, cited in Wright & Lundstrum, 2004). Since 1995, the number of physicians has grown by 15 percent in the United States. In roughly the same time period, the number of sales representatives increased by 94 percent. With this tremendously uneven ratio between physicians and sales representatives in pharmaceutical companies, there’s bound to be an increase in the level of competition on the field. Sales representatives either call or visit the desired doctor or physician. But due to the numerous numbers of sales representatives trying to sell a line of products, the hospital phone’s incessant ringing is just brought about these sales representatives, causing a nuisance, limiting the physician access of many pharmaceutical companies. Doctors have noticed an increase in the number of calls in the past few years from pharmaceutical product marketers that they have found it very annoying. Visits have also gotten negative feedback from hospitals and their physicians. A study done by the Health Strategies Group in Palo Alto, California of the time spent by sales representatives during office visits showed that only 7 percent of them lasted longer than two minutes with a prescriber. A huge 43 percent didn’t even get past the receptionist at all. The study also showed that 40 percent of the doctors’ offices limit the number of sales representatives they see in a day. Another survey from Siebel Systems, San Mateo California said that 35 percent of doctors do not make time to see sales representatives at all. And with the implementation of the Washington, DC – based Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America’s (PhRMA’s) Code of Interaction which was published in July 2002, the competition for physician access has become even more difficult because this Code specifically bans the traditional “dine and dash” method used by sales representatives when dealing with a physician (Robinson, 2003). Sales representatives believe in the power of giving out product samples in product marketing but even this method seems to lose its credibility. When IMS Health, Plymouth Meeting in Pennsylvania did some sample tracking, they found out that only 36 percent of the samples handled by sales representatives actually reach the physicians. The remaining 54 percent end up being distributed by the sales representatives who didn’t get the chance of meeting the physician at all. Pharmaceutical companies must be able to know how to make the use of the on-field sales representatives more appealing and more effective in product promotion and they should be able to establish their importance in an established patient-physician relationship (Robinson, 2003). Apart from that, some doctors have a high level of distrust towards sales representatives. Among those who were asked regarding this issue, 44 percent of them said that they trust pharmaceutical companies. 65 percent claimed that they are concerned about the tendency of these pharmaceutical sales representatives to hide certain necessary information from them regarding the product during their sales talk, despite the fact that these representatives’ goals are to give adequate information regarding the product to the client (Mackintosh, 2004). There is an increased level of suspicion in the direct-to-customer (DTC) form of advertising. Research showed that 52 percents of physicians disapprove of this kind of advertising (Singh, 2008). Some may believe that the relationship between a sales representative and a physician affects the physician’s prescribing behaviour research shows that it does have an impact on how a physician goes about his prescriptions. A study was done on medical interns and trainees and many of them have said that sales representatives’ visits were appropriate and beneficial. But the trainees have also said that these visits do tend to affect their prescribing behaviour. A few have reported that these visits may cause some change in behaviour among other people, specifically themselves, though they do not notice that they too have been affected. This could be both beneficial and not to their practices and training in the medical field depending on the motive and way the sales representative established a relationship with them, and the level of strictness of the policies laid out for trainee-representative interactions (Zipkin & Steinman, 2004). Other than doctors creating a barrier between them and the sales representatives, another force tries to build this barrier as well. The Ontario government has decided to join a national movement that offers physicians one-on-one drug briefings to limit the commercial biases brought by sales representatives during product marketing. They are planning to fund independent experts to go to the doctors’ offices to provide the necessary information regarding medical breakthroughs. According to them, this method bars the chances of physicians being misled through sales talk and could help in giving patients better prescription services. The proposed program aims to reach out to as many physicians as possible to offer expert information and advice on drugs, their classifications, types, and effects on the patients who will take them. Detailing is what a sales representative does while advertising a certain line of products to doctors. The Ontario government wants to take it to a less biased and more academic level stating in their documents that "Academic detailing provides balanced messages in the face of perceived commercial influence of pharmaceutical company detailing.” The study published in the journal PLoS Medicine in 2007 showed that 50 percent of the doctors who have received visits from sales representatives concerning an epilepsy drug said that they will recommend the drug to colleagues. Pharmaceutical companies have high drug prices and these are dismissed by doctors as long as the information given by the representative related to the drug is impressive enough, convincing him or her that it is an excellent drug to be prescribed to patients. This kind of behaviour has come hand in hand with the soaring drug costs in the past years. Russell Williams, president of Canadas Research-based Pharmaceutical Companies, argues that their sales representatives give physicians a detailed set of drug information and are bound by strict ethical rules when dealing with them (Blackwell, 2009). According to the numbers, 20 percent of the physicians in the United States and Britain now refuse to make an audience with sales representatives and over 50,000 jobs, a huge percentage of which is sales-related, are expected to be cut by the big pharmaceutical firms in the upcoming years. The United States has spent almost $30bn by the year 2006 on pharmaceutical promotions and globally, pharmaceutical direct-to-customer marketing totals have reached $5bn, which is 14 percent of the total marketing expenditure. If this trend continues on, along with the other factors presented, pharmaceutical companies will have a permanent barrier between them and the physicians and many sales representatives will end up losing their jobs unless new strategies are created to help them create better relationships with the doctors (Fernandez, 2009). Training Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives With the changing of the times, pharmaceutical companies must embrace these changes and gear themselves to a better marketing strategy in the future. With the issues they are currently facing with the traditional methods, sales representatives must now focus their attention to the importance of working with the knowledge of physician behavior and prescribing manners. What the physicians want and need in their sales representatives must be put into account in order to build a better rapport between both parties. The Health Strategies Group, the leading provider of marketing knowledge to the pharmaceutical companies, has helped many pharmaceutical companies and professionals in this aspect, helping give them the necessary information in order for them to reach their target market and offering them a look into the marketing world in a specific time span (Anonymous, 2009). This has helped many of those who turn to them for aid tremendously. Pharmaceutical companies must train their sales representatives to use a different kind of marketing strategy in order to get to the physician they desire. They must boost their level of confidence while competing on the field and motivate them to do better as they take on the marketing game using different strategies. Other than just being a mere product promoter, sales representatives must act as medical consultants to these physicians to increase their level of importance. Physicians must now look at them as a necessity in their line of work. These medical aid presenters must help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a physician. Increasing the sales representatives’ likeability will increase the possibility of physician access as well as the time they will end up spending with them (Robinson, 2003). Physicians of today are now faced with more and more patients as the number of different medical problems increase. Sales representatives will benefit in this if they help the physicians in making these connections more efficient. They will become more successful as they help improve patient-physician relationships together with their product advertising (Robinson, 2003). There are also various product promotional sites in the Internet but with its reputation being a “No Man’s Net,” it is highly doubtable that anyone would trust anything they find, especially if they will be needing help with matters that deal with life and death. A patient who needs medical aid may turn to the Internet and browse through certain prescription drugs advertised online but he or she will not immediately go for what is offered there. He or she would only use the Internet to gather necessary information but only to that extent. In times like this, a patient would trust only what his or her physician would prescribe. Taking this into knowledge, pharmaceutical sales representatives have now developed the idea of creating patient-physician channels to make the access between both parties easier. This will be through noncommercial and nonpromotional physician-hosted websites that patients would visit often and are comfortable enough to actually post personal feedback regarding medical issues like their preferences and drug side effects. By participating in such a project, pharmaceutical sales representatives will be able to come face to face with the patients and will get the chance to ask them questions. Through these, sales representatives can know the answers to the patients’ questions as well as relate this to the patient’s physician. With this kind of information, these pharmaceutical marketers will be able to know more about the patient, creating patient profiles with data that they can in turn share to the physicians. This will lead to a better relationship between physician and representatives making the physicians want to meet with the sales representatives with the analyzed patient data in order for him or her understand his or her patient more, allowing him or her to know about what the patient wants and needs (Robinson, 2003). By actually following this certain strategy, there is a huge possibility that pharmaceutical sales representatives will be more confident in their line of work as they are able to increase the efficiency and importance in the medical industry. Conclusion on Canada and the US’ Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives The method of sending out numerous sales representatives just to advertise is no longer effective in these times of recession as Steve Arlington, author or Pharma 2020: Marketing the future report, and global pharmaceutical and life sciences advisory leader at PwC, has stated. Pharmaceutical companies still do claim that their current methods are efficient enough but James George, managing director of strategic consultancy Iris Concise, says that this approach has reached its expiry date in pharmaceutical marketing (Fernandez, 2009). Traditional methods of product promotion have gone obsolete posing the challenge to pharmaceutical companies to take new strategies to keep their sales up as medical breakthroughs continue to spring forth. Pharmaceutical companies must greatly emphasize that a medical marketer’s existence is essential in the field of drug research and advertising. Companies in Canada are facing problems like provincial differences, hospital formularies and cost control. Unlike other countries, Canada has to adhere to the provincial approaches they currently have. These problems with their product marketing are also affected by the differences in culture in the different Canadian provinces (Richardson, 2008). And with Ontario’s move of joining a national movement to lower the drug costs, the barriers just seem even more difficult to handle. But this highly depends on the outcome which will be based on the physicians’ reactions and outlook on the government’s cause. Dr. Lexchin hopes that the academic detailing program will not be offered by the province of Ontario itself alone. If the physicians perceive the independent experts or detailers as government officials, they will think that the government’s main aim is to lower drug costs and ignore their advice and still end up listening to pharmaceutical sales representatives (Blackwell, 2009). In the American context, many pharmaceutical companies are training their sales representatives to be better marketers by reforming their advertising strategies to help them keep their jobs. They have studied physician prescribing behaviour and have created certain strategies to get past the physician barrier that was created due to the traditional product promotions sales representatives of the past have used. Though some models and strategies are still theoretical, they all pose a bright future for the pharmaceutical companies, most likely increasing their sales and making the physicians end up looking for the sales representatives themselves, as James Robinson had predicted with his method of developing a better relationship between physicians and sales representatives (2003). Unlike Canada, sales representatives in the US seem to be doing a lot better, based on what studies show but Canada’s pharmaceutical companies are coming up with ways to improve their current state in the industry. References Anonymous (2009). Health strategies group expands focus of pharma sales force effectiveness service under new vision and name. PR Newswire, New York. Blackwell, T. (2009). Ontario aims to counter drug firm sales pitches; Meet With Doctors National Post. Don Mills, Ont.: Jan 30, 2009, A.1 Christensen, E. T. (2009). What does a sales representative Do? Retrieved on July 29, 2009 from http://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-a-sales-representative-do.htm Fernandez, J. (2009). New Marketing Models: A bitter pill to swallow. Marketing Week. London, 18. Mackintosh, A. (2004). Innovation in pharmaceutical marketing strategy: How to overcome the 30-second dilemma. International Journal of Medical Marketing, 4(1),15-17. Richardson, D. (2008). Overcoming pharmaceutical sales force challenges in Canada. Retrieved on July 30, 2009 from http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS104750+01-Apr-2008+MW20080401 Robinson, J.T. (2003). Changing the face of detailing by motivating physicians to see pharmaceutical sales reps. Product Management Today. Singh, R. (2008). Network connectedness of pharmaceutical sales rep (FLE)-physician dyad and physician prescription behaviour: A conceptual model. Journal of Medical Marketing Vol 8(3), Palgrave Macmillian Ltd, 257 – 268 Unknown (2003). Mark Spiers and Anne Fields, pharma sales & marketing veterans, join MedPointe Pharmaceuticals. PR Newswire, New York, 1. Wright, R. F. & Lundstrom, W. J. (2004). Physicians perceptions of pharmaceutical sales representatives: A model for analysing the customer relationship. International Journal of Medical Marketing, 4(1), pp. 29-38. Zipkin, D. & Steinman, M. (2004). Interactions between pharmaceutical representatives and doctors in training: A thematic review. San Francisco, USA Read More