There has been a dramatic change in North American SFE. The size of the Sales Force has been cut significantly by all of big pharma. This trend seems to be continuing this year, with big pharma announcing even more cut backs are to take place.
Rising health care costs have resulted in smaller profit margins for many firms which have forced Pharma re-think their strategies. They have had little choice but to examine the Sales Model and analyze the importance of becoming more customers centric.
This notion has been a catalyst for a number of changes in Pharma. For example Reps will now focus on what they gain from a call rather than how many they make, data analytics is gathering more and more momentum and Key Account Management is the new buzz word.
Will a new sales model create organizations that are leaner and more efficient?
Well you'd hope so...
Well you would hope that that's the way pharma are going. But how slowly it will take is another thing. I have felt for a while that something fundamently has to change in the pharmaceutical or healthcare market for pharma to change something that has worked for them for years and is still highly lucratic for them. You've heard it many times before but why fix something that isn't really broken?