Martin Symons, General Manager of Recordati Pharma Ltd, believes that his company operates from a “privileged” position. A family-controlled company with more than 50 years in the business, Recordati is small; that, in addition to their comparatively simple portfolio, keeps the company lean and nimble, says Symons. Recordati’s perspective as newcomers to the UK market provides valuable insight into a system many others know too well to see as clearly.
Position of privilege
What makes Recordati “privileged”? Says Symons, Recordati’s main product was one that was bought back from the licensee, so from day one the company had an existing, modest turnover. Because the company doesn’t take much money from the NHS, it’s able to maintain a low profile, and the two-product portfolio allows the company to remain fast and focused.
And the company has worked hard to keep itself lean: much of the medical, regulatory, warehouse and payroll responsibilities are outsourced, and the company has only 65 reps evenly distributed throughout the UK, one rep per area. Finance, medical information and marketing are done in-house.
There are lots of benefits to being small and focused, says Symons. The company can move very quickly and there is a strong, shared sense of purpose among employees. The company has a common culture which encourages high levels of motivation and loyalty. Because Recordati is small and stable, the structure is simple and transparent with clear roles and responsibilities for all. All of these elements speed reaction time – decisions can be made and acted upon quite quickly, giving Recordati a genuine advantage in the changing pharma marketplace.
Lessons learned
However, according to Symons, there were some elements of business that Recordati neglected during its UK launch. First, the company didn’t fully understand the influence of non- and new prescribers (particularly “non,” says Symons) on the market. What Symons calls the “geography” of the NHS wasn’t sufficiently taken into account either. Variances between the UK and other EU countries or within the UK itself had far greater impact than Recordati was prepared for, and the changing roles and behaviors of GPs in the UK also caught Recordati off guard. The company, says Symons, was therefore “inadequately developed to maximize company ROI in the UK.” To meet the company’s needs in UK, Recordati is addressing both its quantitative and qualitative concerns.
The first concern, and the one which Symons says still needs further attention, is quantitative – that is, getting the right number of people in the right places. On the qualitative side, Recordati has already done some hard work, and the results show that the work is paying off. Says Symons, there are some areas where the company has done good work, and possibly others could benefit from Recordati’s experience.
The company has a shared philosophy: to treat the NHS as a single customer. The local environment is divided into patches, and one rep is responsible for all the interfaces with customers on their patch. Says Symons, they practice local mapping so that reps can identify who does what in their areas and what roles they play. Job titles, Symons claims, don’t provide enough information. Reps get to know their patches very well, and they use that information to develop a plan and deliver on that plan. Recordati reps are not hired or encouraged to be “super reps” or “hybrid reps;” they are 360° salespeople responsible for all the accounts in their area.
Recordati, says Symons, has a clear profile for hiring sales reps and regional managers. They know who they want to hire. This is possible, thanks to a clear and “rolled-out” sales model. Finding the right people means getting reps and managers with adequate skills, knowledge and confidence so that the company has a solid base from which to operate.
Another necessary component to Recordati’s success is appropriate and adequate performance measures of the sales reps. Primary measures include sales growth, relative market share and relative sales growth, compared to the company average. Secondary measures include success on delivery of their plan, achievement of interim objectives and activity levels.
Training to fill in the gaps
In order to optimize the company’s position and correct overlooked issues, says Symons, Recordati put itself through some training. To better understand the NHS, Recordati brought a company called NHS Pathways on board to help deal with the non-prescribing population. With help from Pathways, Recordati was able to identify 12 of its own reps who already possessed the right attitude and useful knowledge. Those reps, along with their regional managers and members from the head office, underwent a one-week training in “How to speak the NHS language.” They studied the unique drivers that apply pressure on the NHS. Additionally, they whittled down their accounts list to 71 key accounts and devised six detailed action plans for handling this streamlined list.
Training plan two involved teaming up with Portland Partnership – a company with both pharma and non-pharma experience. Together the companies carried out a “needs audit” of reps and managers to determine what skills, attitude and knowledge were missing from the employee pool. When it came time to devise sales models, a field force consultation group of six or seven reps was assembled. These reps, nominated by their peers, worked with Recordati and Portland Partnership to determine the best strategies. Not only did their local knowledge and expertise inform and improve the plan, the fact that the sales force was able to contribute in a meaningful way provided buy-in on the program by the people who would be working most with it.
The sales models
Ultimately, Recordati ended up with sales models that encourage the reps to take a genuine interest in the needs, issues and situation of the customer. “We want reps to engage in adult conversation about products and services,” says Symons. It is the company’s position that the rep and the company do whatever is necessary to meet the customer’s agenda, even if that means that Recordati’s products are never mentioned in a detail. What the company does not want is for reps to manipulate questions to the customer in order to elicit the desired answer. Reps are discouraged from simply “telling” the customer about products and services; instead the emphasis is on letting the conversation dictate whether or not the rep ever produces sales material. Sales is about meeting the customer’s needs – not fulfilling the company’s agenda.
Reps have target, coverage and call rate goals to meet. Each rep is provided with a list of (potential) high prescribers, around 120 names. Reps consult with their regional managers to determine the best ways of engaging with that list, and they are held accountable for their actions with the people on their list. If a rep goes “off list,” he or she must provide a good reason for doing so. The reps are accountable for the number of calls and visits per annum they make from their lists and the percentage of the list they cover. They agree to and account for their on-target coverage and provide explanations if their coverage is low or high.
With this sales model, the pressure on reps is greatly reduced, says Symons. They are able to spend more time; they get to listen more and “sell” less. And the customers are responding. As doctors feel more confident that their needs are being heard and addressed, they respond with more scripts.
To test the success of their model, Recordati looked at three reps. One rep was a “rookie,” one had less than two years’ experience, and one was an experienced rep with more than five years in the field. As one might expect, the more senior the rep, the higher the numbers of calls per day and face-to-face visits. But all three reps returned sales numbers that were well above average for their areas.
Is this so new?
According to Symons, none of what Recordati is doing is really “new.” Instead, it’s a return to an older model of doing business, one in which sales are generated by focusing attention on the needs of the customers rather than on the pharma company’s bottom line. Says Symons, pharma is just now returning to “normal business to business selling,” with all its frustrations and delights. Pharma is restoring the balance between quality and quantity in a “back to the future” return to the ideologies of industrial selling 30 years ago. Don’t care about numbers; instead, care that you deliver quality, Symons says.
Author: Shannon Perry, journalist, eyeforpharma
