Author
Alex Tolmasoff, Director, KPMG Sales Transformation and HCLS Lead
6 ways to accelerate your pharma sales model
How pharmaceutical sales models impact revenue growth
In our first two articles for pharmaceutical and biotech commercial leaders, we discussed the challenges for revenue growth and the shortcomings of traditional commercial models.
Now it’s time to look at approaches for a sales model refresh.
While some commercial or market leaders are taking a piecemeal approach to counter the challenges outlined previously, strategic sales leaders should drive transformation across their models using these approaches:
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1. Evolve from “sales ops” to customer operations
- Shift from reactive to proactive, internal to external, narrowly to broadly empowered commercial operations function across sales, marketing, and service - driven by a mission to deliver leading customer experience (CX)
- Move away from teams with limited compensation and sales tools, to full-fledged commercial operations teams that coordinate CX, deliver insights & analytics, lead M&A integrations across the front office, and manage the marketing, service, and sales tech stack
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2. Create differentiated experiences for patients and providers
- Conduct patient journey assessments to understand where commercial field teams (e.g., sales reps, MSLs (Medical Science Liaisons), diagnostics partners, clinical educators) can intervene with which customers and what behaviors need to be reinforced / changed to positively impact the patient and provider before, during, and after treatment
- Use customer journeys to create a shared set of front office processes and enablement that lets the organization orchestrate customer touchpoints and focuses teams on where they can make the biggest difference
- Take advantage of data, digital tools, and CX metric-driven approaches to create seamless provider and patient experiences, measure the quality and value of these touchpoints, and continuously experiment and improve your go-to-customer approach
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3. Shake up customer segmentation and go-to-customer models
- Refresh customer segmentation models based on modern technology adoption, market trends (e.g., customer consolidation), and new ways of working post-COVID
- Coordinate sales activities by account to build stronger relationships and value-added messaging for a single, unified point of contact and messaging for providers
- Leverage medical science liaisons (MSL) and clinical-in-a-box digital resources and tools to supplement field teams and avoid accelerating cost of sales
- Create and sell value-added services that differentiate from a simple product offering (e.g., benchmarking support, practice audits, SKU consolidation)
- Empower sellers with customer data and account insights, modern digital tools, and high-end provider data and insights
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4. Create a career program that wins the war for talent
- Launch a strategy to keep your top sales performers through pay, progression, and culture, while keeping and upskilling the large and highly valuable group of moderate performers
- Be proactive in your approach to talent and anticipate demand for specific capabilities (e.g., by therapeutic area, functional discipline, facility with technology / data, selling skillset)
- Recruit new talent with a focus on knowledge and experience gaps to address the increased demand of sales roles with a clinical and / or economic background
- Create dedicated MSL and clinical support talent tracks for digital and in-person channels, as these roles are hard to recruit and retain
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5. Revamp incentives to grow the full suite of product offerings – profitably
- Balance profitability, new product sales, and growing base business by reviewing incentive structures, such as base pay, quotas, and commission metrics
- Evolve incentives so the sales team’s actions are aligned with overall commercial strategy across the product lifecycle
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6. Make digital and virtual selling table stakes
- Accelerate sales technology adoption and investment to increase seller effectiveness (e.g., automation, just-in-time enablement, rich account, provider, patient data) and provider experience (e.g., provider education, patient support materials, seamless ordering, online communities)
- Improve the connection between sales, service, and marketing teams via digital marketing, nurture campaigns, and AI-driven sales and marketing “next best action” activity guidance
How can KPMG help?
As you focus on the challenges ahead, KPMG can help you improve the ROI on your sales investments by informing sales strategies, processes, and talent with connected insights. We can help you create winning customer interactions and sustainable revenue growth.
Meet our team
Walt Becker
Principal, Customer Advisory Leader, Sales Acceleration Leader, KPMG LLP
Alex Tolmasoff
Director, Customer Advisory, KPMG US
Walt Becker
Principal, Customer Advisory Leader, Sales Acceleration Leader, KPMG LLP
Alex Tolmasoff
Director, Customer Advisory, KPMG US