A sudden drop in pharma sales; what should be followed by sales professionals ?

A perfunctory glimpse at the sales figures (monthly, quarterly and annual sales charts) may not bring out any apparent ground for the sharp drop at drug sales. The question may arrive here is: Why the good stand sales team, falls behind in sales even when the competition was not got changed in market? Has it brought anything commotion with drug representative’s or medical practitioners or what are other possible reasons?

All we know that in a pharmaceutical company, the sales / marketing team is responsible for drug promotion (which comprising a President, VP, National, Zonal /Regional sales manager, Area manager, National/Group Product Manager, Product Manager, Medical Representative, Marketing executives and so on) with the regular field activities they build strong relationship or good rapport with medical practitioners, drug distributors, retailers and etc. They’re groomed to understand company business process, its product, mix of products and they expected focus for all brands.

Its known fact that in many instances, drug players which have the right mix of product-line at the right monetary value, they do well in market, if the field sales representatives have understood about medical practitioner’s predilections and the degree of competition implied in the market. The medical doctors who determine the products are genuine, they begin with prescribing of those medicine products. Depending on the product efficacy, its ease of availability as well as the performance of the particular drug product in the market the sales figures rises. Few of these move on to turn market leaders.

Over the years, the sales charts move upward even if the sales representatives get a little slack. All major (Domestic and Multinational) drug players in particular stand up a good swing over their product line as result of to their sales & marketing team promotion techniques as well as market approach. However, what causes for a drug company for the sudden falls behind in sales? If we analyze it further there are several reasons for this condition.

The most commonly observed reasons are, usually related to attrition rates among sales & marketing team’s also administrative problems associated with drug production or drug distribution.

When sales people leave the company, the local chemists, doctors and distributors are left neglected. The medical doctors don’t receive regular updates of certain drug products and the product slips off from their memory.

These kinds of challenges are similar to sales challenges those are faced in other markets and these should be holistically addressed by several levels of senior management personnel’s among the sales & marketing of a pharmaceutical company:

• By providing better working provisions for executives,
• Offering them good incentives,
• Creating a healthy or friendly work atmosphere to the sales people, &
• Permitting them to flourish, are the key principles of retaining highly performing sales managers / medical representiaves and bringing a good mileage from them.

The absence of the company sales representative from the market for very long period will makes an ambience of precariousness about the availableness of specific drug product. This permits the medical practitioner to prescribe competitor products, whose sales professionals are been making a regular visits to the doctor. Likewise, if the sales representative is regularly visiting to the doctors but the specific product is out of stock for prolonged periods in the market, then the medical doctors are pushed to change over brands and this about turn may be irreversible even after medical practitioner ‘popular’ drug product comes back in to the market.

Support from doctors

It takes a lot of time for a medical practitioner to switching to new (or) start prescribing newer brands. Even so, after the initial months of product launch if doctor identifies that the patients progressively getting cure of diseases, drug meet their requirements, then the doctor’s faith in the newer drug rises. After some time, the product is well entrenched in the doctors mind set and the visiting company field sales representative has very little to do however to show their presence and insure that things takes place swimmingly. Once in a while, when the medical practitioners are away from their clinic for longer times, they may miss persistence and the memory of some of the newer brands may go by out of their mind. Discontinuance in medical practice takes place due to several reasons:

Very senior medical practitioners’ may come up all sudden illnesses causing them unable to move forward with their medical practice. In such situations, the clinic may be substituted temporarily for another medical practitioner of the same specialty or the hospital may be appointed with other younger or senior medical practitioner. Even though the newly appointed physician may use up prescribing tips from the senior medical practitioner, it’s not necessary for this newly appointed doctor to adhere to the product predilections of the original medical practitioner. Pharmaceutical companies who have been getting monumental support from such kind of clinics are inclining to confront all major challenges in sales.

In recent days the situations like: there are many newly germinating medical treatment procedures like organ transplant surgery, spine surgery etc procedures are increasingly being carrying out and all medical experts going out to learn these newer medical procedures or sharpen their existing clinical skills; trend is also increasing where many medical practitioners are attending various short term continuous learning medical programs to enhance their academic or current clinical knowledge; during this period learning period, the clinics generally operated by another medical practitioners (on temporary base). For the drug companies whose brand the medical practitioner prescribes very well, it should be a big worry when the (permanent) doctor is away from clinic for a long break. A few of the other major factors, will result a sudden drop in sales figures, are:

Regular patients of the doctor who all aware of non-availability of doctors will look after to find the best alternative medical practitioners during the time period whenever the main clinic remains closed; Still if there is a replacement of doctor (s) these medical practitioners will have fewer patients also the number of prescriptions will drop sharply due to this reason.

As described above, the new doctor who operates the same clinic may not have the same drug predilections as like of the senior medical practitioner, the pharmaceutical brands preferred by them could vary. As soon as the regular medical practitioner turns back to the clinic after a long break, it will take some time for this doctor, about ‘patient pool’ to return for medical consultation. This will affect the brand sales.

Additionally, the doctor(s) on their return to clinic after a long time on continuous learning may find other newer drug products to prescribe owing to their recent training programs. There are high chances are there where the doctor may change working style and may focus on another segment of patient pool.

A medical practitioner who retuning after recovering from an illnesses or any other reasons of long break may lose grip on some of the medical products which they were used to prescribing earlier. Competitor drug products which are introduced in market recently by newer medical representatives may find favor to these doctors if the latter product promotion is good.

The doctors will need a sometime or a few weeks after a long break for clinical practice to pickups; as regularly visited patients may stay away or who chosen an alternative physician for their medical emergencies.

For the sales & marketing manager whose eyes are on the sales chart, this can be a thwarting. Furthermore, the medical practitioner may not spring up loyalty to the earlier brands if these doctors at present molded by someone from competitor company. This is a major challenge to the medical representatives and to their managers to attempt to bring back the medical practitioner on their track!

The sales & marketing managers has crucial role to play in influencing the prescription of the substituted medical practitioner. Anyway, they have to assure that when the original medical practitioner turns after long break, the same support is provided to their popular medical brands as before. When the sales representative meets a physician who has just came back from a long vacation, the medical representative has to intensify their efforts to get the doctor to prefer the brands. If the medical practitioner is a highly experienced or very senior practitioner with a high ‘market value,’ the medical representative should bring their super boss for sweet chats.