Organizations across the pharmaceutical industry have adopted new tools to increase sales efficiency in the past two years. These tools include sales force automation (SFA) software to better manage reps and customers, and mobile solutions like smartphones and tablets to increase connectivity and improve physician detailing. Gartner reports that pharma organizations are embracing mobile technologies at an even clip with the general market, which is significant when considering that 22 percent of North American enterprises have already deployed tablets and 78 percent of the rest plan to do likewise by the end of 2013.
But new tools have not proven to be a silver bullet for pharma sales. While sleek automation and solutions may differentiate one sales representative from another, they don’t necessarily get reps past the receptionist or help sway physician preference if access is granted. A study that compared physician satisfaction with different detailing methods found that 16 percent of physicians were extremely satisfied with old-fashioned paper detailing, whereas 15 percent expressed the same level of satisfaction with laptops and 12 percent with iPads. Mobile technologies, in other words, aren’t knocking physicians off their feet compared to other detailing methods.
One reason for this is because pharma customers are an experienced lot when it comes to mobile solutions. Physicians rank as one of the fastest demographics of mobile uptake. Three-quarters of U.S. physicians already own an iPhone, iPad, or iPod. While this makes them more likely to be comfortable with mobile detailing, it also makes them more likely to be critical of slow presentations, poor formatting, and inexperienced reps. As one physician put it in the Harrison study, “It’s the information that counts, not the format.”
A second challenge is that reps have not wholeheartedly embraced the mobile revolution. Some reps view these devices as a tedious addition to their jobs—more data to track, summarize, and feed back to their managers. Others worry that mobile devices and SFA software are merely ways for managers to track their locations and record their activity. One thread on cafepharma, the online rep chat group, titled “Beating the iPad” explores ways for pharma reps to abandon the device so they can’t be tracked, including tossing the iPad in a microwave or giving it to a day labourer at the Home Depot.
Mobile solutions, of course, can do more than simply track locations or offer glossy screens for presentations. They can empower reps with more information and the means to deliver true value in real time. Likewise, they can offer customers experiences that personally respond to their needs. In order to realize this promise, however, a new mentality is needed—a mentality that switches the paradigm from managing reps and the messages they push to enabling them with a full mobile arsenal that responds to customers on a case-by-case basis and delivers information that is “timely, relevant, and in context.” This blog post lays out the key tenets to this new model—defined here as “ mobile sales enablement”—and the path to integrating it with the proper tools.
Mobile Sales Enablement
Pharmaceutical sales forces traditionally are built from the inside out. A drug is brought to market, the marketing department creates a brand around it, and the sales department creates an internal deck that captures the essence of the brand message and the keys for delivering that message to customers. Sales reps, be they equipped with paper details or iPads, are instructed to go out and deliver the internal deck to external sources, sticking to the manual as closely as possible.
Sales force enablement flips this approach on its head. Instead of telling the world what the brand team thinks the world wants to hear, mobile sales enablement suggests that companies should listen to what the world is asking for, then enable sales reps to respond to those demands by harnessing mobile solutions that deliver real customer value in real time. In other words, let physicians manage you, and enable your reps to respond to those physicians as expeditiously as possible. Gartner likens this approach to the difference between a concierge and an influencer. An influencer walks into an office and tries to push a message. A concierge asks what someone needs, then tries to sway his or her opinion based upon expertise.
New tools are a critical ingredient in helping reps execute this concierge approach. Reps need the right tools so that when a physician requests specific information, they can supply it in real time. Likewise, reps need predictive modeling capabilities so that even if physicians don’t specify needs, reps can anticipate what they want and deliver “the right message through the right channel.” Furthermore, reps must be outfitted with tools so they can easily call upon all client-facing employees within their organizations (like medical science liaisons) and relay those employees’ insights without delay. And they need to have less administrative burden so that their focus switches from data summarization to optimizing physician details.
These various facets represent sales enablement in a nutshell. Once organizations have implemented the basics of the approach, they can look to more advanced frontiers within the sales enablement model. For instance, face-to-face detailing opportunities are increasingly difficult to secure these days. Mobile sales enablement, therefore, also entails fostering solid relationships with physicians beyond their offices. Twenty years ago everyone had to watch a TV program when it was scheduled, or else they missed it. Now we have DVR technology that allows us to record shows when we’re out of the house and watch those shows when it best fits our schedules. Plus we can race through ads we don’t like, making the experience of watching TV even more catered to our schedules and preferences. Sales enablement suggests that modern pharma sales reps need to be the DVR players of drugs, recording relevant materials and offering portals to presentations that physicians can watch when they want, during a detail or beyond the confines of their offices.
The right tools enable this.
Immediate Customer benefits of Mobile Sales Enablement
- Increase meaningful productive interactions as Mobile Sales Enablement will allow the ability to communicate and facilitate the right information to the right customers at the right time.
- Increase human to human and human to brand interaction through impactful customer relevant dynamic content delivery.
- Provide Customer Centricity- due to the feedback loop for the sales rep- accessing previous service, sales and marketing interactions per particular customers, enables a detailed sequential selling/educating and better response to the customers needs.
- Create trust in the quality of the sales rep experience, through consistent streamlined customer focused execution using a standardized delivery of the interactions. Accomplished through consistent appearance/functionality and user experience via the Mobile Sales Enablement interactions as part of the larger multi-channel communication integration.
- Enhance provider/rep relationship via by increase in quality/agility of the interaction, speed and level of service based on the customers needs.
- Increase sales team training and executing delivery on their individual brand portfolios due to the standardized template, functionality and navigation. Resulting in increase productivity and close more business through more effective electronic interactions.
- Enable the creation of customer centric rep visibility to the conversation flow/content, initiate follow-up communications based on specific actionable requests from the customer.
- Increase sales productivity through transparency to actionable customer insights, near real-time interactions, and automated and simplified of pre and post call information (preparation, presentation, call recording and follow up in one connected system).
