Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18518

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Electronic Source

Wokasch M
Who is Killing the Pharmaceutical Sales Position?
Pharma Reform 2010 July 29
http://www.pharmareform.com/2010/07/29/who-is-killing-the-pharmaceutical-sales-position/

Full text:

The role of the pharmaceutical sales representative (Chapter 9 in Pharmaplasiaâ„¢) has been waning for some time. The internet is full of discussions about the sales representative (“detail person”, “detail man”, “detailing”) position being dead, dying, or even obsolete. Some discussions are defensive while others are unrealistically optimistic about a return to the traditional role. At the same time, Pharmaceutical companies are trying to balance the challenges of physician access with the fact that pharmaceutical sales has been one of the most impactful marketing tools available. More importantly, the pharmaceutical sales representative was probably the best way to inform, and yes, “educate” physicians about prescription drugs, especially new products.

There is a lot of blame to go around for why pharmaceutical sales is struggling for survival. There is a rarely talked about and hidden reason but first here are a few of the more obvious and frequently complained about reasons for why pharmaceutical sales representatives find themselves either unemployed or wondering if they will still have a job at the end of the year:

Some have also postulated that the advent of electronic communications and internet availability of medical and drug information have made sales representative obsolete. I believe electronic communications should not be seen as a threat or replacement for pharmaceutical sales but rather could be a future necessity for handling the large volume of data available and to explain the complexities of new treatment options.

Some have suggested sales and sales management brought it upon themselves with questionable sales tactics and the hiring of less than professionally or scientifically qualified sales personnel. While these may have ultimately contributed to the continuing demise of this important position, I believe you have to dig deeper to uncover the genesis of this unfortunate evolution.

Some have blamed management for just about everything and in this case, you don’t have to be very specific, from C-level to front line managers. Unreasonable expectations and “stretch” sales forecasts drove a lot of sales organizations and individuals to do “whatever it took” to meet those sales goals. Sales management complied with these expectations and was bound and determined to make their incentive bonuses and ensure their place at the annual sales incentive trip. Again, “whatever it takes” to make or exceed your numbers.

Marketing often built those sales forecasts out of hubris and pushed the sales organization to deliver while also provided the marketing message and resources to do “whatever it took” to deliver the sales. Think of the virtually uncontrolled, unlimited (by standards for most other industries) funding for tchotches, lunch and learns, speaker programs, and of course, samples and literature (marketing materials). Of course reps were encouraged to fully deploy and leverage all their resources.

Some people like to blame the regulatory environment (constraints on what reps can say and do) while others point to a less tolerant healthcare market (increasingly difficult physician access and institutional limitations on promotion). These, however, while real, were more a response to increasingly aggressive and sometimes questionable (unethical or illegal?) activities rather than being inherent in the market.

No doubt, pressure on sales representatives to make their numbers was and is intense and often requires incredible selling skills and creativity to compensate for the realities of marginal product profiles given the market expectations and sometimes even harmful side effects of the products they were selling.

This leads us to one of the less obvious sources for why I believe the sales representative position has become threatened with extinction. And that is, the lack of credible clinical data and appropriate regulatory labeling to support the commercial claims needed to deliver the forecast sales numbers. Sometimes the clinical data and marketing messages provided to the sales organizations have even been inaccurate, intentionally misleading, or even concocted.

Solid credible clinical data and regulatory approved labeling to support commercial claims mitigates the need for overly aggressive and questionable sales activities and reduces the regulatory constraints that bar sales representatives from having meaningful clinical discussions with physicians. It is hard to imagine the level of sales that might have been achieved had the talented, skilled sales representatives been armed with better clinical data and stronger, more definitive regulatory label claims.

Research teams pushed (and senior management was pushing even harder) for approval rather than building comprehensive product profiles to support the commercial expectations. The get-it-to-market drive for approval to attain indication- based label claims without differentiation or consideration for what sales representatives will be able to say or use in promotion unfairly puts sales representatives in an awkward, boring, professionally compromised, and near impossible selling situation.

So before you blame or criticize sales and sales management for jeopardizing the pharmaceutical sales position, look at the clinical data they had to work with. You might find that they did a better job than might have been expected and you might find the reasons they felt compelled to go to such extremes in some cases to make their sales numbers.