Download 20087191419200.New Challenges of the Pharmaceutical

New Challenges of the Pharmaceutical Marketplace and the Salesperson’s Role
A fast paced changing environment is causing the
pharmaceutical industry to implement many new strategies.
What these changes will mean to the pharmaceutical
salesperson and their role, is our topic of discussion.
We
hope that this article will help the representatives to
understand why and how to work with these new strategies.
The job of the pharmaceutical salesperson is becoming
more and more difficult.
Along with a rapidly changing
workplace, we also face a new marketing environment that is
placing pressure on the industry to justify promotional
expenses.
This will necessitate modifying our advertising
and promotion strategies.
These changes require a new
approach to selling pharmaceuticals, an approach that
focuses on service and education for both the patient and
the healthcare professional.
Not only is the salesperson
having to address areas such as therapeutic advantages,
pharmacoeconomic data, and disease management, but these
have to be discussed in new settings, such as managed care
facilities, and with new “customers,” such as consumers
(patients) who are more informed and educated than ever
before.
The government is also becoming a more important
customer everyday.
All of these factors will have a
profound effect on the job of the salesperson.
First, increased emphasis will be placed on promotion
in the form of patient education materials, medical
education, clinical meetings, and symposia.
The focus will
be on helping medical professionals in their practices and
making their jobs easier, otherwise known as value-added
selling.
Examples of this are as simple as providing a
physician with a clinical reprint, journal article, or
patient education DVD; it may be as complicated as
facilitating the physician’s attendance at a medical
symposium or actually presenting educational material
yourself to a group of healthcare professionals.
Regardless of the medium, the salesperson remains the most
effective means of promoting pharmaceuticals to physicians.
Second, features and benefits of products will no longer
suffice in terms of promotion.
Since growth through price
is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, our discussions
will have to focus on the clear therapeutic advantages of
our products and pharmacoeconomic data that demonstrates
favorable cost-benefit ratios.
It is not difficult to
demonstrate that drug therapy is more economical than
hospitalization, surgery, and other procedures.
Oral
contraceptives prevent unwanted pregnancies; antihypertensives lower blood pressure and the risk of
cardiovascular complications.
Antibiotics treat
infections; antidepressants can help patients avoid the
tragedy of long-term institutionalization.
The
pharmaceutical salesperson has an impressive story to tell,
and it gains strength in today’s economic climate.
Third, the salesperson will become more involved in
the physician’s practice by providing educational materials
that will help in disease management.
While disease
management itself is not the job of the salesperson, we can
provide physicians with the information necessary to
prescribe the proper medication for the proper patient at
the proper time.
necessary
It is not only appropriate, but also
for the salesperson to help the physician identify the
patients who are the best candidates for our products.
A fourth challenge to the salesperson is the managed
care market.
Whether we are dealing with clinics owned by
private insurance companies or governmental social
programs, we will need to address all of the issues of
economics, cost-benefit ratios, medical education, and
quality of life that we have addressed historically in
other settings.
This may necessitate a different emphasis
on the message, but the message will stay essentially the
same: drug therapy is frequently the most cost effective
treatment for many patients.
A fifth issue for the pharmaceutical salesperson is
the consumer, or today’s patient.
Patients are better
educated than ever before, demonstrating more awareness of
and interest in pharmaceutical products, even asking
physicians for specific products by name.
The Internet,
direct to consumer advertising, etc. have all increased
patient awareness.
This adds another layer of complication
to the salesperson’s job, because we must now instruct
physicians and other healthcare professionals on the
importance of patient counseling in reference to the use of
our products.
We also need to provide more patient
education materials. Since physicians are no longer the
only people who counsel patients concerning pharmaceuticals
and their use, we must now add the nurse, physician
assistant and the pharmacist to our promotional efforts in
regard to patient education.
Finally, it is inescapable that governments are assuming a
larger and larger role in healthcare, and we must be
prepared to develop a working relationship with the
government bodies.
The only way to foster this working
relationship is through good communication.
We need to
make the government aware of the value of our products in
disease management; the cost-benefit ratio of our products
compared to hospitalization, surgery, and other medical
procedures; and the role our products play in enhancing
quality of life for the patient.
The salesperson may
become a key player in this working relationship by helping
government agencies understand that the best healthcare
system is one where government and industry work together
to ensure the finest patient care possible.
Emphasis on value-added service, more and better
educational materials and accurate communication in old and
new settings, pharmaceutical sales will increasingly depend
on the effective interpersonal skills of a well-trained
sales force.
The salesperson will continue to play a key
role – perhaps the key role in the changing environment of
the pharmaceutical marketplace.