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Pharmaceutical Sales Forces: Panic Attack? A Study By The Joy Scott Group

Posted on: Monday, 30 April 2007, 12:00 CDT

When Wyeth announced a major cut in its sales force in December 2005, the pharmaceutical industry reaction was mixed. Was this an isolated case endemic to Wyeth - - or, a signal of a new era in pharmaceutical sales and marketing?

In August 2006, Pfizer, the largest drug company - - widely renowned for its genius in sales force structures and strategies - - created a tidal wave of questions, issues, and concerns, with its announcement of a 20% layoff of its U.S. sales force before year-end.

Within days, senior executives from virtually every large pharmaceutical company were asked if they had plans to follow suit.

To paraphrase comments from Pfizer executives, market research indicates that physicians do not need or want frequent sales visits (i.e. details) from representatives with virtually nothing new to say about a prescription drug, especially one which has been widely, safely and effectively used for years.

Undoubtedly, this is true. Nevertheless, recent research extracted from the Detailing Quality and Relationship Study, offered by The Joy Scott Group, suggests that, samples and repetitive information aside, there are many ways a pharmaceutical company representative can be of considerable value to a doctor and his or her staff.

As might be expected, physicians rely on pharmaceutical representatives to learn, not only about a specific drug, but also new information about the disease state or conditions for which the drug can be prescribed. In fact, an average of 85% of physicians surveyed across twenty-five specialties, claim that the extent of a representative's knowledge about a specific disease state dramatically affects MDs' confidence in prescribing that particular drug.

In today's world of health-care delivery, this conclusion is logical and likely to become an even more important issue over time.

Consider that physicians are treating an aging population which presents multiple concomitant diseases states - - this alongside the amazing pace in which science is successfully learning about genetics, physiology, how and why diseases attack the human body.

Pharmaceutical sales representatives are very well-trained in the drugs that they detail, Pharmaceutical company executives might want to ramp up the timing and nature of disease-state news and information to be understood by its representatives and imparted by them to physicians.

In this study, physicians were specifically asked, "Absent anything new to inform you of, how would you suggest a representative could make the best use of your time?"

The predictable response might be, "Leave drug samples - - and go!" This was not, however, what was found in reviewing verbatim responses from surveyed physicians. Instead, physicians, and their office staff, need and want more information and support with Medicare Part D, patient assistance programs, patient compliance issues and objective patient information services (e.g. literature, web-sites, CDs, etc.).

We also learned that the vast majority of physicians not only expect but hope the representatives will nudge the physician's memory with specific questions. We received a plethora of specific questions the doctor "hoped" an individual sales rep might have asked.

A major component of this study was to inquire how representatives from individual companies, assigned specific products, were performing in these areas.

Obviously, aggregated responses vary by company and drug category. However, overall, the study suggests that most physicians are - - and, will continue to be - - responsive to those representatives with the "right stuff".

The Detailing Quality and Relationship Study was designed by The Joy Scott Group to dissect the detail with the objectives of evaluating the quality of the detail and the detailer, and to assess the doctor/detailer relationship.

Source: Business Wire

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