Navigating the Shifting Landscape: How Pharma Can Adapt Their Sales Model for Success

The pharmaceutical industry continues to undergo significant changes to adapt to the evolving healthcare marketplace.? Faced with increasing complexity, regulatory changes, and the rise of value-based care models, pharma companies must rethink their traditional sales approaches and adapt their commercial models to remain competitive and drive growth.

As leaders face many options and competing priorities, keep in mind the following 3 tips:

1. Focus on an Account Based Strategy

Cross-functional collaboration with input from marketing, sales, medical, market access, and others is needed to develop a strategy targeted to larger organized customers (integrated delivery networks, payers, and large medical groups).? These entities play a more central role in treatment decisions, formulary access, and prescribing behavior.?

Key Actions:

• Segmentation and Targeting: Define target customer segments and prioritize them based on market potential and strategic importance.
• Value Proposition: Develop a compelling customer-centric value proposition for each target segment, highlighting the unique benefits of the company’s products and services.
• Go-to-Market Strategy: Outline the go-to-market strategy, including product positioning, pricing, distribution channels, and promotional activities.

It is the responsibility of the senior team to clearly outline the strategic direction and align so each functional group knows their role in executing, moving beyond traditional product-focused detailing with more strategic account-based approaches.

2. Build strong key account management capabilities

Account management is more than just creating an account management role (Key Account Manager, Account Executive). A key account requires developing organizational capabilities in an agile fashion which allows for delivery in both the short-term and long term.? These capabilities include analytics and insights, customer experience, contract strategy and management, as well as integration with omnichannel execution.? ?

Key Actions:

• Current and future state assessment: ?Determine what capabilities are needed that will support the development of customer-centric value propositions and solutions.? For example, is there a need to develop the Health Economics and Outcomes function to conduct research and gather real-world evidence?
• Determine the field structure and creation of specialty-based roles and teams.? For example, field reimbursement, nurse educators, channel-specific market access specialist, etc.
• Develop a process and a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to allow for compliant account planning, information sharing, and the management of interactions by diverse customer-facing roles.

3. Build a Resilient Field Force

Another imperative for adapting the sales model is to build a resilient field force.? There may be multiple roles responsible for calling on various health care stakeholders across various channels. Effective key account management also requires breaking down silos and fostering greater collaboration across sales, market access, medical affairs, and other customer-facing teams. By presenting a coordinated face to the customer and leveraging the full range of company capabilities, pharma organizations can differentiate themselves, deliver more value, and co-create solutions that drive better outcomes and improve efficiencies.

?Key Actions:

• Define roles and competencies:? Clearly define roles and responsibilities for each field based role and their respective departments.? Outline the specific behaviors needed for account management.
• Invest in the right learning and development programs that elevate skills through a comprehensive curriculum that blends product and disease state knowledge with account management, access and reimbursement, and customer engagement skills. ?
• Tie learning to account management best practices for uncovering needs, profiling accounts, co-creating solutions, and working across a field matrix organization.
• Articulate a compelling case for change, while also equipping managers with the frameworks and tools to coach their teams to deal with ongoing change and work more effectively in the evolving marketplace. ?

Ultimately, transforming the sales model requires a holistic approach – one that addresses strategy, structure, processes, and people. Pharma leaders should start by defining a clear vision for the future commercial model and aligning the organization around a shared set of objectives. From there, they can design the supporting organizational architecture, including sales roles, resource deployment, incentive structures, and performance metrics.??

The pharma companies that will thrive in the coming years are those that proactively adapt to the changing customer landscape. By embracing more strategic, account-centric sales approaches, building the right organizational capabilities, and effectively leading change, they can unlock new opportunities for growth and competitive advantage. While there is no one-size-fits-all model, taking a thoughtful, holistic approach to sales force transformation will be key to navigating the shifting landscape and driving success in the future.