The sales force agenda	January 2009

In 2009, pharmaceutical sales forces will continue to shrink while relying more on technology as a means to reach the physician audience.

By Steven Niles

Smaller, more virtual sales forces will be the major trend in physician detailing in 2009. A virtual sales force takes a variety of forms, including closed-loop marketing and online promotional tools that combine e-detailing with more sophisticated human interactions.

Marketers are going beyond basic e-detailing and providing more enhanced offerings that combine the human experience with the technology experience, according to Bill Drummy, chairman and CEO, Heartbeat Digital (heartbeatdigital.com).

“They can get the information on the product but facilitated by a medical science liaison or a sales rep who can actually be participating and guiding the conversation,” Mr. Drummy says. “Marketers are moving in that direction quite aggressively.”

The use of the tablet PC for detailing is being hailed as the first true opportunity for closed loop marketing. The technology has great potential, but marketers must take care in integrating closed-loop marketing into the overall marketing mix.

“It has the potential to lead companies to repeat many of the mistakes of the past 20 years, as it considers only one slice of the marketing mix – the sales force – to determine prescribing response,” says Mike Luby, co-founder, TargetRx (targetrx.com). “Companies that flourish going forward are going to be able to integrate feedback on the full breadth of the marketing mix to determine the forces that are moving their markets and deploy their sales and marketing resources to the areas of greatest opportunity. This holistic, multi-channel approach is true closed loop marketing, and I believe the companies that establish leadership positions here are going to reap huge benefits.”

The new 2009 model

2008 may be remembered as a year when the pharmaceutical industry began to turn away from a “more of the same” 1980’s marketing model, according to Jeff Tangney, executive VP, sales and marketing, co-founder, Epocrates Inc. (epocrates.com). He believes that the challenges the industry now faces – including looming patent expirations and drying R&D pipelines, rise of co-pays and recessionary fall in consumer spending, more restrictive government pricing and loosening of parallel imports, and fewer blockbusters and more niche indications – have forced painful changes to the strategies of the past several decades.

“For those who successfully navigate this change, this is not all bad news,” Mr. Tangney says. “In the 80’s and 90’s, IBM and Microsoft each faced seismic market shifts with the dawn of the personal computer and Internet explosion. But both managed to turn their ships strategically, remain true to their core competencies, and come out on top in an even bigger industry. The age of personalized medicine and wired physicians offers pharma similar upside, and those who can adapt quickly to that will come out on top.”

Mr. Tangney believes that the organizations Epocrates works with, including all of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies, are more driven by return on investment and results than ever before. The Internet has allowed them to stay more in touch with their customer needs and to personalize their marketing messages.

“Today’s physicians are integrating technology in ways that could not have been predicted even three years ago,” Mr. Tangney says. “Smartphones, especially the iPhone and BlackBerry devices, are providing real-time access to complex information from formulary coverage to dosing calculators to treatment protocols. Trusted electronic sources will increasingly become physician’s primary choice for on-demand information.”

2009 will be a pivotal year for the rebirth of pharmaceutical sales and marketing, according to Mr. Luby. Although a new model is not likely to fully emerge in the next year, the industry will see the most radical attempts at change to date.

“With sales force reductions in full swing, pharmaceutical companies now need to determine how best to manage a full marketing mix to maximize effectiveness with healthcare professionals,” Mr. Luby says. “This includes how to complement sales efforts with other channels and also how best to address the ‘white space’ created by sales force reductions.”

Digitas Health has been doing a lot of work focusing on non-personal promotion. “Pharmaceutical companies are feeling challenged by the limited time reps get in front of physicians, so our marketing clients are turning to us for non-personal promotion programs,” says Cara Levinson, VP, manager/account planning operations, Digitas Health (digitashealth.com). “We are working on quite a few rich multimedia video programs that engage the physicians and deliver the data and messages in an impactful way.”

As marketers focus on non-personal promotion, Mr. Luby cautions that while companies are throwing resources into lower cost channels relative to the sales force, often they miss an appreciation of the needs of the targeted healthcare provider.

“So the same, often ineffective, messages that are used with the sales force get beamed out to physicians through other channels,” Mr. Luby told Med Ad News. “This execution is really ‘impersonal’ promotion, which is not what I believe is needed.”

A number of factors are driving the virtual sales force trend, according to William D. Cooney, president and CEO, MedPoint Communications Inc. (medpt.com). For one, physicians are using the Internet more, not just in the evening, but during practice hours as well. Second, the use of evidence-based medicine has made it complicated for physicians to know the best practices for disease states that encounter infrequently. In such situations, they rely on getting information on demand in order to make good decisions.

Finally, Mr. Cooney believes that the economics of the pharmaceutical industry and medicine are such that physicians cannot take the time to entertain sales calls, yet they still need information on new brands and new therapeutics. And most of the time, the best source for that information is the drug developers who brought that drug to market.

“We see the virtual rep as becoming a reality,” Mr. Cooney says. “The whole idea that physicians can have someone who can provide a lot of the same information and resources that sales reps do, but via the Internet and on demand. We’re rapidly moving toward the paradigm that physicians want information when they want it, not when you want to give it to them.”

Companies that are able to provide physicians with an easy, on-demand approach will be shocked by the physician receptivity, according to Mr. Luby. Similarly, the companies that figure out how to use alternate forms of personal promotion, providing the right message to the right physician with a consistency across multiple marketing channels, will see big gains.

“It is clear that the majority of physicians want and value information from pharmaceutical companies,” Mr. Luby says. “Where pharmaceutical companies have struggled is in segmenting physicians and then determining the messaging that is going to be compelling for each unique segment.”