eyeforpharma recently had a chance to speak with David Wright, director and senior partner at Imonic, about how pharma can most effectively use Key Account Management. Wright will be leading a one-day workshop on April 1, 2008 on how to develop and implement successful Key Account Management strategies for enhanced customer access, higher-quality customer engagements and an increase in sales success just prior to eyeforpharma’s 6th annual Sales Force Effectiveness Europe 2008 congress in Barcelona, April 2-4.
eyeforpharma: What do you see as one of the biggest KAM challenges for pharma?
Wright: In my view, it is the ability to manage contact networks across the pharma company into really cohesive groups . To explain that – basically once a pharma company sets out its account strategy – e.g. the plan of attack for a specific PCT or secondary care trust – ideally that would be part of its account planning process. It then sets about identifying the influencers, specifiers and stakeholders it needs to access and engage.
If the pharma company is clear then on its objective, it will begin to hone in on a specific opportunity and identify what we would call the decision making unit (DMU) for that particular opportunity. The DMU is basically a network or cluster of contacts and stakeholders that will determine the outcome of a specific opportunity.
So as an example, we had a recent successful experience where an NHS liaison manager was seeking to get his products prescribed within a hospital clinic. The DMU in this case consisted of a hospital consultant, two specialist nurses and, because the clinic was on the radar of the PCT at the time, (as it was the subject of a practice based commissioning offering), the DMU also contained a PCT prescribing advisor and a lead GP at a major practice in the area. So the pharma company, through the NHS liaison manager, identified the DMU and by sharing the account plan, used the relevant sales individuals to gain access to each of the DMU contacts.
The purpose was to ascertain their level of power within the DMU and to understand their position – for example, were they opposed to this sort of treatment, were they supportive of it or were they a ‘fence sitter’? The account team then quickly got the nurses on side – they had been largely ignored by competitors,– and made a good case to the consultant. They also found, in this example, that the PCT prescribing advisor was a little too far removed to understand what was going on within the clinic.
So, the lessons learned are that the account plan clarifies the strategy – the NHS liaison manager acted as the overall coordinator or account manager – but the organization worked well, although not without difficulty, as an account team.
eyeforpharma: can you summarize why in your experience this is a difficulty for pharma today?
Wright: This scenario poses a significant challenge for most pharmas because: (1) they don’t have account plans to communicate to field teams giving clarity of purpose and (2) DMUs often contain individuals working for different parts of the NHS – spanning PCOs (primary care organizations) and secondary care trusts. They’re also dynamic networks, so once you enter the network, you find out that there may be someone else in it or someone you thought was in the DMU actually turns out not to be. And third, because the DMUs are dynamic and often contain individuals reporting into different parts of the health organization or the NHS, the pharma company must adapt to engage them in a cohesive manner – all singing from the same hymn sheet with the same outcome in mind. So that’s a real challenge for pharma, because their structures often don’t allow that very easily.
eyeforpharma: If pharma wanted to learn from other sectors where would they find examples of similar DMU challenges?
Wright: In many areas of KAM, in fact in almost all sectors, the DMU is relevant because for any significant spend item there is always a cluster of individuals, or DMU, that make the decision. However in many sectors, all the contacts and stakeholders within the DMU belong to the same organization, hence they don’t have conflicting motivations like they do in pharma.
As an example comparison there are two sectors, in our experience, that are like pharma – where business is won by influencing a disparate mix of contacts and stakeholders. We’ve worked on KAM initiatives in the PFI area – PFI being Private Finance Initiative – for large infrastructure companies where building a major public facility and gaining increased sales meant influencing key individuals within the primary contractor, construction consultants who were independent, the inspectorate body for the project and the government liaison officer. So, as in pharma, an equally disparate and fragmented decision making unit results.
Another example would be our work in aerospace, whereby KAM strategy to be the supplier of choice for products on a new aircraft involves a hierarchy of suppliers (Tier 1, 2 ,3 ), program managers, and national air worthiness agencies, before even getting to the end customer – like Boeing or Airbus. So managing the DMU well for such an opportunity can result in design specification of your products and, hence, ongoing supply contracts (subject to performance) for a minimum of 15 years of aircraft production, plus a healthy after-sales market.
These are just two examples where successful management of a disparate DMU can also reap high rewards.
Wright will be exploring and giving tips on how to manage DMUs at the KAM workshop in Barcelona. For more information or to register for the Implementing Key Account Management for Pharma workshop, April 1, 2008, visit www.eyeforpharma.com/sales2008/KAM.shtml.
