Further Product Information

OVERVIEW

With the ever increasing pressure to ensure maximum return on investment, sales force effectiveness (SFE) is becoming a high priority area in the global pharmaceutical industry. Sales force represents the largest spend in sales and marketing and yet study after study shows that the returns gained from this spend is not particularly strong and one recent IMS report found that pharma sales force effectiveness declined by 23% in the recent period of 2004 to 2005. Better metrics must be used to measure both the effectiveness and financial impact of SFE for this very significant budget.

The startling discovery that this comprehensive report uncovers is that the very metrics currently being used to assess sales force effectiveness are in fact themselves aiding its decline. Traditional pharmaceutical organizations are rigorously tracking and managing sales activity, but still falling short. Data emerging from the research concludes that current metrics are more focused on efficiencies than effectiveness - and do so to their own detriment.

This report dissects current SFE metrics and their limitation for the pharmaceutical industry in the United States, Europe and Japan. The report then discusses appropriate metrics to solve these problems and goes on to demonstrate implementation methods and issues.

Sales force effectiveness is a difficult concept to measure, but doing so can push pharmaceutical companies past today’s hurdles and into increased productivity and sales.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr Andrée Bates is the Managing Director of Eularis, a company that applies sophisticated analytical processes to quantify the sales impact of specific marketing programs for pharmaceutical brands. These analyses determine the financial return for individual sales and marketing activities as well as the optimal synergistic combination of activities (and budgets) to have maximum market share growth. Eularis offers brands and their agencies the bottom line facts: what messages, what activities (and what budgets) - in what combination - will provide what market share for your brand.

Andrée’s career has encompassed academic, clinical and pharmaceutical positions internationally. She has gained wide recognition within the Healthcare Industry internationally for ROI and marketing effectiveness measures in pharmaceutical marketing. She is the author of many publications on this topic in peer-reviewed journals. In addition, Andrée has lectured on e-detailing ROI in the Pharmaceutical MBA program at INSEAD Business School and on marketing ROI at the Center for Pharmaceutical Marketing Studies, Erivan K. Haub School of Business, St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia.

CONTENTS

SECTION 1: Background - The Scale of the Sales Force Effectiveness Problem

SECTION 2: Assessment - Current Metrics Used and their Contribution to the Problem
a. Sales Force Size and Share of Voice
b. Sales Calls Per Day
c. What’s Missing
d. Future Measures

SECTION 3: The Problem With Sales Tools

SECTION 4: Changing the Focus
a. Customer Focus
i. Targeting
United States
Europe
ii. Relationships
iii. Call Quality
b. Message Focus
c. Continuous Monitoring

SECTION 5: Problems Specific to Europe with Sales Force Effectiveness
a. Western Europe
b. Central and Eastern Europe

SECTION 6: The Japanese Market: Sales Force Effectiveness Issues

SECTION 7: The Right Metrics to Solve the Problems
a. Efficiency versus Effectiveness
b. Targeting
c. Effectiveness Measurement: Moving Beyond ‘Recall’ and ‘Intent to Prescribe’
d. Sales Force Optimisation

SECTION 8: Implementation Issues
a. Productivity
b. Action Plan
c. Emotional Buy In
d. Where does ‘e’ fit in: The Role of eDetailing
e. CRM and other Technologies

SECTION 9: Results Analysis
a. Case Studies

SECTION 10: Ongoing Monitoring

SECTION 11: The Future?