Increasing Medical Representative Productivity

Increasing medical representative productivity


The cost of finding new prescribers is a big expense for most Pharma businesses.

It has been estimated by market researchers that the costs and efforts required to develop a new prescriber is six to eight times more than making an existing prescriber generate more prescriptions for the same volume of business.

The reason is because existing prescribers already know the medical representative, his company’s products, and the company. All these factors make the medical representative more acceptable to the doctor. Moreover, the very fact he is a prescriber means there is a certain amount of rapport, which has developed between them, and can translated into more prescriptions.

What is rapport? Rapport is the process of building and sustaining a relationship of mutual trust, harmony and understanding.

Profitability will come from existing prescribers while we cannot be certain how many new prescribers we can attract in short term.

A recent marketing study reported that the sources of profit breakdown are as follows:

-70% from existing customers
-25% from targeted new or prospective customers
-5% from casual customers


Ask:

Are the medical representatives making the most of their relationship with doctors?
Are doctors prescribing the appropriate products from the company's product basket?

Fortunately, most businesses, whether it is Computer Software, FMCG or Pharma business, have the potential to increase sales by selling more to the existing customers.

Many of us have heard the old adage:

“The easiest place to make your next sale is where you just made a sale.”

What is the technique of getting more sales from existing customers? In relation to Pharma business, you attempt to generate additional prescriptions from the existing prescriber base and apply a growth technique known as:

Ø Cross Selling
Ø Upselling

Cross Selling in Pharma Industry:

· Cross selling is prescriptions generating activities that make a doctor prescribe additional products when he already prescribes a product or two.
· Example, if he is a gastroenterologist prescribing only our omeprazole we make him prescribes our mosapride, itapride, rabeprazole as well as pantoprazole from our basket.

Upselling in Pharma Industry:

It refers to the efforts in prescription generation to increase the quantity and quality of prescriptions generated by a doctor.

Example, if a doctor is prescribing say 10 prescriptions of pantoprazole in a week in non-ulcer dyspepsia (where the prescription life is for about a week to ten days), we make efforts to make him prescribe at least 15 prescriptions of pantoprazole in a week in GERD (where the prescription life is for about three to six months). Thus we increase not only the quantity but also the quality of prescriptions.

Cross Selling and Upselling are valuable business tools for increasing the productivity of medical representatives.

Many medical representatives avoid Upselling because they are afraid the doctor may get irritated and not prescribe or stop prescribing at all!

I have experienced that the opposite is true. Every medical representative can implement a successful Upselling or a Cross Selling program. But the current mindset has to change.

We have all heard about:


E=MC2

But what is

E=MC2= P

E = Cross Selling and Upselling Efforts
M = How Motivated you are
C = Customer Relation
C = Control – control the direction of Cross Selling and Upselling activities
P = Prescription Generation (Performance)


7 Tips for Successful Upselling and Cross Selling

1. Be well prepared before a doctor call. Do your homework thoroughly.
2. Know your customer. Become an amateur psychologist. Do not assume that you know what the doctor wants.
3. Spend 75% of your time in building rapport with the doctor.
4. Understand that the only reason you did not succeed in Cross Selling or Upselling is because 5. You were not convincing enough.
6. Distinguish yourself from all other medical representatives who meet him.

Do not talk about features – talk only of benefits.

Make sure that you “W.I.I.F.M.” the doctor – it is human nature to look after your own best interests. But whenever we are addressing a customer, they are asking themselves “What’s In It For Me?”. We must answer this question to be successful.



7 Top Sales Blunders

1. Allowing the doctor to lead the sales process. The best way to control the sales is to ask open ended questions.
2. Not completing pre-call research. 75% of your time should be spent on that.
3. Talking too much! Many medical representatives talk too much during the interaction. They espouse about their product, its features and so on. Make the doctor talk instead.
4. Giving the doctor information that is irrelevant. Do not share something, which is meaningless to them.
5. Not being prepared. Have all relevant information at your fingertips, including references, clinical trials, pricing, dosage, indications, contraindications and adverse drug interactions.
6. Neglecting to ask for a prescription. You need not be pushy but ask for a prescription in a non-threatening confident manner, with a positive body language and most of the doctors will respond favorably.
7. Failing to prospect. This is a common business mistake. When business is good, people stop prospecting thinking that the flow of prescriptions will continue.


Get Ready to Cross Sell and Upsell by Building Self Confidence

1. Believe in your product – believe in yourself.

2. Increase your self-confidence and you increase your Upselling and Cross Selling skills.

3. Cultivate your self-confidence.

4. Develop a building self-confidence routine. Eliminate all distractions, which interfere with your concentration on the doctor’s call.

Use self-praise to develop self-confidence. We are surrounded by negative influences – many of them exist only in our own heads – and combat these negative messages.


One important key to success is self-confidence.
An important key to self-confidence is preparation -Arthur Ashe