Changing what we measure to achieve a more customer-focused organization

We recently had the chance to chat with Tony Potter, head of sales at Solvay, about his experiences in Australia’s pharmaceutical marketplace. Tony will be speaking on new metrics for achieving genuinely customer-focused organizations at eyeforpharma’s upcoming Sales Excellence and Business Intelligence for Pharma Australia conference in Sydney, September 1-2.

eyeforpharma: What would you say are the key challenges and opportunities in sales in Australia (and beyond) at the moment?

Potter: If we keep doing what we’ve always been doing, we’re going to eventually self-implode. We’ve really got to start looking at doing things differently, because although what we are doing is still working, it’s not going to work forever.

We’re in very rapidly changing times, particularly from the standpoint of regulation of our industry, from the spotlight being put on us by the general media and the people who are “outspoken against the industry.” We need to try new things and adapt the sales model so that we are engaging more effectively with our customers in a way in which they want to be engaged and in a way which is acceptable to the public scrutiny that’s happening not just here, but around the world.

eyeforpharma: Do we really understand what our customers want/need?

Potter: There are some companies trying hard to assess what their customers want and how they want to be engaged, but as an industry we’re still struggling with it. We tend to look at things from a point of view of what we want – what our corporate leaders want, what our marketing teams want and as sales teams we implement that.

I think as sales professionals we need to start to push back a little. Sales is the interface between the company and the customer and if we’re not feeding back what’s working and not working effectively to let the model evolve to a process that is working best for both sides – both the company and the customers – then we’re still part of the problem.

I think if you ask any sales rep out there in the big wide world if they engage effectively with their customers they’ll say yes, but it’s more along the lines of want their company wants them to do than it is based on the view of the customer. I think there are sales people who have that innate ability to effectively engage with their customers and they’re the ones who are the most successful and may be doing things that aren’t quite exactly on company strategy. But they’re effectively engaging with their customers, providing a valuable service and their customers see them as a resource and value the interaction that they have.

The situation that we’re in is something we’ve evolved into. Twenty years ago, when I started as a sales rep, there wasn’t the amount of regulation of what we could and couldn’t do and there wasn’t the amount of monitoring of what reps did. The sophistication of SFE just wasn’t there. As long as you hit your sales targets, it was essentially up to you how you did it. There weren’t as many reps on the road – and the results you got were really down to you personally.

The share of voice model has grown, the amount of time customers are willing to give to reps has diminished and that’s fueled the perceived need to put more people on the road, so it’s been this massive growth in number of people out there, which has diluted the relationship there was between the customer and the rep.

Reps used to be known as the “X” product rep and were the person to go to for information about that product. Now, with multiple sales teams promoting the same product, I think the customers are a little confused as to who is the go-to person. And with the increased number of short duration calls and snatched time with the customer at the counter or at the sample cupboard, the amount of value in that interaction has reduced dramatically. There are still good quality calls where a rep and a doctor sit down together and talk about the products in a good, meaningful way, but with the need to chase numbers, to chase metrics – that’s been lost a bit I think.

eyeforpharma: Will the kind of folks we’re putting out there change?

Potter: I think we probably need to really look at the sort of people that we’re employing as sales people. I’ve never been one to say that a person with this sort of a qualification and that sort of a background is the right sort to be a medical rep. I’ve seen very good medical reps from all sorts of backgrounds. It’s about being able to do the job and impart information effectively and achieve what needs to be achieved.

When I started as a medical rep twenty years ago, pharma sales was a plumb job. It was the pinnacle of sales. Pharma was was seen as being a great and respected industry to join – it had a high reputation – and it was at the top end of the remuneration scale. But we haven’t kept up with being the cream on the top of the milk. IT, financial services, etc. have overtaken the pharma industry in the race for well-educated sales folks. So although the people who have come into the industry are, in general, still very good, we haven’t had the same pool of people to fish in. The change in perception has changed with the attention of the media and how pharma companies have interacted with customers.

I’ve been involved here with the rewrite of the Medicines Australia code of conduct – the next edition will become effective probably at the end of the year – and in being involved in that committee, I look back at some of things that were going on within the industry when I started and we just couldn’t do those things now. But back then, we didn’t think a thing of it and neither did the customers. They thought it was great you were taking them to football or playing golf with them or giving them things. But as things have evolved, people have made noise about what they think the industry has done wrong and the media’s become interested and it’s ramped up.

If I talk to people who aren’t in the industry, they’ve got a little awareness, but it’s usually from the media – perceptions that companies are bad, it’s all about profit. But if you tell them this is what we do now and how it’s all changed, they feel reasonably OK about it. But still there are a good number of people who are keen to knock the industry.

We’re particularly scrutinized in environments where the government is the monopoly purchaser – and it’s viewed that the taxpayer is paying for the marketing and promotion for pharma products and if that wasn’t going on, then the cost of the medications would be cheaper. The reality is, is that that’s probably not the case. I always say in Australia there are two things that are monopoly funded by the government: one is pharma (and healthcare in general) and the other is defense.  – On the defense side, there is a huge amount of wining and dining and lobbying and perks that go with trying to win big contracts, but because that’s a relatively small number of people getting that attention, it’s not a big deal or big news. We’re talking about 20,000 GPs and thousands of specialists prescribing medications paid for by the taxpayers – and a perception that a pen with the brand name or some other gift is going to somehow change a doctor’s prescribing. But I’ve never come across any doc who’s going to inappropriately prescribe a product. Yes, they might, because of the promotion we do, prescribe one product over another where there are two similar products, but they’re not going to inappropriately prescribe a product just because they’ve been promoted to.

eyeforpharma: So what should we do differently? What’s the goal? New metrics or KPIs?

Potter: We ought to be looking at balancing the quantitative metrics we look at – such as frequency, call rate, etc. – which are easy to measure and measure by individual medical representative. And we need to foil those against more qualitative information that looks at the interaction that we’re having with our customers that suggest that those interactions do provide value– that we are approaching things from the customers’ point of view less so than the company point of view.

There’s still going to be a need for the company point of view to be put across, but it needs to be done in a way so that we’re really talking to those customers who need what we’re offering. I think we’re going to become more specific with our targeting – and target based on our customers’ needs rather than our needs. And really I think “up-skilling” our reps more so that they really are experts, not only on their product, but on the disease state that they are involved with and also more on the general day-to-day operations of the customers that they’re talking to.

It was interesting, I was in a meeting the other night and we had a bit of a debate about the expression that we want to “partner” with our customers. In reality, we like to think that we are partnering with or customers, but the fact is we never will. At best, we’ll be seen as a resource to our customers – but in general we’re never going to get in there and be partners in their business. And do we want to be? That could open us up to even more scrutiny. We need to be more focused on the customer so that we provide more value (and I know these are all buzz words right now!) to them - and it’s not what we see as value, but what they see as value.

eyeforpharma: Does it mean sometimes we go in and never even mention a product? Do we have to give more than we get for a while?

Potter: Absolutely – I think particularly in the area of educational meetings. To be putting on a meeting in the evening that we are asking our docs to come along to in their own time, away from their families, away from things they’d rather be doing – if that presentation is giving them something that’s going to help them practice medicine better, then they’ll look at that as being a lot more valuable. But if we’re just merely putting a talking head at the front of the room to spout about our product, then I don’t think it really works – they look at that as just being a glorified promotion. However, if it’s about how to treat difficult areas of medicine – even how our product and others are fitting into that treatment regimen – then customers are going to go away better informed and able to treat patients the next day, that’s different. I’ve had meetings where no product is mentioned and those things are appreciated by the customers – and in general in those situations, they will start asking what about this product and that one.

It’s investing in the longer term. It’s about looking beyond the short-term targets to the long-term returns – through the lifecycle of the products – and providing the value that customers want so that they are keen to interact with the industry. I think in general customers are willing to interact with the industry because they see us as being a useful resource. In general, they see us as experts on the products we’re selling, and that it’s up to them to make a balanced decision on where those products fit in.

But I think we can do things better and it’s all about providing more value and what they see as being value. And that’s not a one size fits all answer either – we have to have to ask customers what they want from us.

eyeforpharma: Does it change the way we assess the success (or not) of our reps?

Potter: Absolutely – things like call rates are extremely rudimentary measures. It’s something I honestly only look at when things are going wrong. Obviously, if someone’s not doing anything, then they’re not going to achieve what you’re asking of them.

From my point of view, I really don’t mind if they’re achieving their sales targets and they’re doing 10 calls a day and someone else is achieving their sales targets and doing four calls a day. Does it really matter? But the person who’s doing three or four and not achieving, well that’s different.

But no doubt, call rates are a very rudimentary measure – and it’s starting to go out of fashion a bit. From a qualitative point of view, if you look at a measurement like share of increases – in other words, of all the interactions a customer has received, how many are going to lead to an increase in prescribing because of that interaction?  That means far more. We look at “increase score” – so out of 10 calls that my reps make, what proportion are going to lead to an increase in prescribing? 

That’s a value-based, qualitative measure – but the problem is that sort of measure can’t be attributed down to an individual sales person level, so from a KPI point of view, yes we still need to look at those quantitative measures, but also more globally at our sales team to see what value they’re delivering to improve what our team is delivering. That’s where the front-line manager’s assessment really comes in of how our reps are delivering value to their customers – that’s really where those KPIs are going to become more defined.

To learn more, be sure to hear Tony Potter speak at the Sales Excellence and Business Intelligence for Pharma Australia conference in Sydney, September 1-2. For more information or to register, visit the conference website at www.eyeforpharma.com/au. 

• Login or register to post comments
• 1247 reads