Opinion

Why do remote reps use digital tools to interact with co-workers and traditional tools to interact with customers?

Meet Dave, a neighbor and friend. Dave is a career pharmaceutical sales professional.

Talking with him is like a graduate level class in molecular biology.

Clearly, he knows his stuff; and, judging by the corporate mementos in his office, he is effective.

Gartner’s Dale Hagemeyer described the life science rep of the future this way: “The Life Sciences rep of the future—the ‘information concierge’—is remote, mobile, social, and commands multimedia. They live where controlled, compliant content meets social media.”

Today, let’s focus on remote. Dave’s employer is a mid-market specialty pharmaceutical manufacturer with fewer than 500 employees.

Most of the sales team works from remote locations (home-based offices).

Their primary responsibility is to inform and educate oncology specialists about the indications for, approved use cases of, dosing and efficacy of their medicines in the treatment of very specific cancers.

Dave’s office is dedicated space carved out from his garage and is his connection to his company.

He has two telephone connections, landline and mobile, and two computing connections, laptop/tablet and iPad.

This is how he interacts with his direct reports, his management, and his support people.

When Dave is in the field—approximately 45% of his calendar time—he works from his car.

This environment features Rubbermaid containers and physical, printed material to educate, inform and support his customers.

It is from this environment that Dave is expected to be able to prepare for and ‘stage’ his interactions with healthcare professionals.

And, yes, all of these interactions are governed by a corporate code of ethics and very strict Federal and State laws.

Very indicative of the state of the industry, sales reps are remote and use digital tools to interact with their co-workers; however, many are still hidebound by traditional means of interacting with customers.

Jeff Gaus is the CEO of Prolifiq Software, a provider of mobile applications that help pharmaceutical sales representatives find, consume, share and discuss information that supports and accelerates their sales processes.

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