I've recently come back from the eyeforpharma Sales Force Effectiveness USA Conference in Philadelphia - it was a great event focusing on some of the big sales force issues facing US pharma today.
What caught my attention was a speech from Mark Gleason from Aptilon Health about some of the stuff they are doing to respond to the lack of face time reps have with doctors and the increase in internet use. We're talking online interactions between reps and doctors that (according to their research) increases facetime and sales.
Certainly the research Mark provided was convincing and showed that doctors, in the most case, prefered this way of communicating with reps and to me, it had very few downfalls. I see absolutely no reason why more pharma companies aren't going down this route for a more customer-centric solution to selling their products and providing after-sale care. And indeed, the more companies that start doing this, the more customers will respond and if Mark's research is correct, they will soon be demanding e-communication over face-to-face meetings.
Could Mark and his team at Aptilon be starting a pharma revolution?
eReps
Surely a strong part of the argument for eReps should be the "green" benefits. After all, does it really make sense for reps to be roaming around their territories using petrol and spewing carbon to visit docs who don't really want to see them? When you get right down to it, it's worse than ineffective - it's irresponsible.