Sales

Nicole Gaupset, national sales manager, hospital division, sanofi-aventis, on how to up-skill sales reps for the shift from primary to specialty care.

Nicole Gaupset, national sales manager, hospital division, sanofi-aventis, on how to up-skill sales reps for the shift from primary to specialty care.

Many companies seeking new growth strategies in an increasingly difficult pharma landscape are switching from a model dominated by primary care blockbusters to more specialty products. But selling in this new environment requires expanded skill sets and new approaches for reps used to catering to primary care physicians, says Nicole Gaupset, national sales manager, hospital division, sanofi-aventis.

In primary care its very much a one-to-one, individual interaction that occurs, she says. Within the specialty or hospital environment, though, its really more of a communitya networkworking together to benefit patients. But that network has a lot of layers and complexity to it.

Adapt the selling approach

The differences between the two sales environments are pronounced at every level, from the customers, decision makers and influencers to who pays, the sales data and the business analysis that needs to occur. Gaupset says the selling approach must be adapted to meet the hospital settings very different needs.

That means moving toward a Key Account Management (KAM) environment that ensures companies and their reps understand what the customer wants and the demands of their business, she says. Theyre not just looking at producttheyve got a lot of KPIs, a lot of processes and commitments theyre making whether that be at the specialist level, the pharmacist level, even at the CEO level. Were seeing more and more that they dont want to have just the one-on-one interaction. They want to know multiple layers of your organization.

From the rep to the medical manager, people in marketing and sales and up through the organization to even a senior level, customers are looking for multiple touch points into pharma organizations, Gaupset says. And they want the sales rep or company to add value by providing solutions to the issues theyre facing.

Becoming effective in the hospital market

But in 2007, external and internal analysis of sanofis performance on serving the needs of its hospital clients showed there was still plenty of room for improvement. There were certainly differences in opinion between sales and marketing on the interactions that were occurring and also a general lack of confidence about whether our teams actually had the skills required to be effective in the hospital environment, she says. Thered been structural changes and wed lost a level of expertise. And although we had new roleskey account managers and medical liaisonswe werent in a position to optimize those resources.

The companys hospital specialist reps received product and therapeutic area training, but no tailored business planning skills. So in 2008, Gausets team set out to ensure it was providing its hospital reps with the skills and resources to be really effective in the hospital market.

Culture of accountability

Gaupset says two important aspects to the key account management transformation of their training approaches for hospital reps were creating a culture of accountability at all levels of the business and the focus on multiple touch points. You also cant disregard that you need to retain your talent and inspire your teams, she says. 

So the other thing the company did was put more emphasis on listening to the field force. The best thing about the field force is that theyve often already identified the problem, they just need someone to tell, Gaupset says. So we developed and instigated a representative council and they identified a couple of areas we could focus in as well, including the need for improved communication among divisions and departments and increased opportunities for ongoing development, particularly KAM negotiation skills.

The hospital specialist reps (HSRs) role was changing, Gaupset says. They suddenly had all these resources they could draw on to benefit them in the strategy they were implementing within an account, but what skill set were we giving them to plan well? When should they use the marketing team, the medical team or the medical liaison roles? What about KAM? How were we going to coordinate all these people, so its wasnt just a flurry of activity and they could actually achieve something at the end?

So the company reviewed its job descriptions, Gaupset says, to ensure it was drawing out the right competencies and focusing on those areas in the development of its people. We made certain that we aligned our performance agreements to actually weight more heavily the emphasis on demonstrating business acumen and good customer relationships, while not forgetting the importance of sales results.

Hospital skills development

Also in early 2008, sanofi employed an expert trainer to coordinate hospital skills development. In doing that, we also needed a development program wrapped around it and so we negotiated with business support and marketing to invest in a specialized HSR development program, she says. It was important to get those funds from marketing because in many situations, they were asking us to do more. They were asking us to have greater impact in the hospital environment, they recognized things were changing and we needed to ensure we were providing the right skills to our reps.

The core development program includes comprehensive product and therapeutic area training integrated with adequate time in the field to understand those skills, an introduction to hospital selling, a business skills course designed to give HSRs a greater understanding of strategy and the financial implications of good targeting and segmentation as well as business planning training to help reps understand hospital processes and reporting.

Gaupset says it is important to keep reinforcing those skills. First line managers can play a key role in supporting these kinds of programs and ensuring reps are being up-skilled, she says, so sanofi made sure they were involved in the development of the programs themselves, ensuring they had the skill-set to help up-skill and coach in the field once the reps had been through the program.

The company also integrated new concepts and language into the business plan to take the push beyond the classroom and ensure that the mindset became real and live on a day-to-day basis. With any training or development program, you need to have follow-up to ensure theres some consolidation of the learning, Gaupset says. By documenting training goals in reps development plans, they continue to be reviewed and progress thats been made is identified.

Fine-tuning skills

Once reps get out into the hospital environment, Gaupset says, they understand it better and quicker and become effective in a shorter space of time. Over a six- to 18-month period, however, sanofi continues to follow up with standards around quizzes and accreditation of the sales process, integrating some external online courses around business performance, time management and influencing skills to help embed the learning achieved from the first induction program, she says.

And finally, to fine-tune their skills, reps in the advanced development program are given training in KAM negotiation skills and executive client interviews to really ensure theyre equipped with the skill sets needed to have good discussions with customers within the hospital environment. Theres no question that the customer is the focus in everything we do, and it is a staged approach to ensure that were giving our reps the skill sets that are required to be effective within the hospital setting.

The firm has also implemented a program to recognize and reward behaviors important to the new hospital selling structure, including teams working well together, implementing good strategies, good business plans within the hospital setting as well as company values around creativity, innovation and having the courage to think big.

Moving beyond the product

You must move beyond your product and think more broadly about what you could actually be providing to the customer, Gaupset says. We also now have an online business plan, which means when you talk about those multiple touch pointswhether its the HSR, the medical liaison, the KAM, the sales manager or the marketing managereveryone is able to see the actual business plan for that particular hospital and the integrated action steps of the different roles they are playing within that account.

The conventional wisdom, Gaupset says, is that companies can only change their engagement score 10%15% across a year. But thanks to its new HSR training and development programs, sanofis engagement score in the hospital business unit actually increased 35%.

Our customer perception survey conducted for our KAM team at the end of last year had us rated #1. And our turnover has reduced, sales targets have been achieved, and were getting some incremental gains in our market share in the past six months. The really encouraging thing is that the business plans, that we all struggle with, are being used regularly. Weekly updates have really become the way our reps integrate what they do out there on the road.