Targeted investments in the front office delivered revenue growth
Insights from recent KPMG life science sales leader research
Based on recent KPMG Research, COVID had a drastic impact on our industry and how we sell to our customers:
- 87% of organizations believe that the changes they were compelled to make to their sales model are here to stay
- COVID has directly impacted how organizations are going to market, with significant changes to sales models including:
- Implementation of a hybrid in-person/digital sales model (70% of organizations)
- Increased remote and digital interactions (66%)
- An emphasis on changing sales processes (61%)
- Organizations are getting better at executing these evolving sales models, with their response to COVID improving each year from 2020 through to 2022
Source: KPMG, Sales Leader Pulse Survey, 2022
To understand the impact and after-effects of COVID on life sciences sales organizations and front office functions more broadly, KPMG conducted a pulse survey in 2022 of 100 industry commercial and sales leaders responsible for driving revenue growth. Respondents were split evenly between biotech / pharma, health IT, and medical devices, with the research gauging their experiences in three key areas:
- Which investments in their sales organization had the greatest impact
- Which healthcare trends impacted their sales organizations most
- What key levers can be used to drive above-normal sales ROI and revenue growth in the future
In this first in a series of blogs exploring the survey findings, I concentrate on the first point above, specifically related to:
- How COVID forced sales models to adopt a hybrid approach
- How leaders invested heavily in technology to enable this hybrid way of selling
- Where technology investments made the greatest impact throughout the pandemic period
The move to a hybrid sales model
How has COVID impacted the sales model from a technology perspective?
Growing organizations invested more, and it paid off
This shift to a hybrid model and emphasis on new technology required investment. In analyzing the different investment levels of organizations in response to COVID, it’s apparent that leaders made greater increases in their budgets (33% increased spend in year 1; 25% in year 2) than laggards.
The result of this increased investment is clear to see – 100% of leaders, resoundingly believe that their technology spend provided a positive return on investment.
Critical technology investments at the start of COVID
What technology investments did you make in 2020?
Investment focus throughout the pandemic
As the pandemic moved into its second year (2021), AI saw the most dramatic increase (+13%) from 2020, while CRM upgrades had the most significant decrease (-10%).
As well as seeing the highest increase in spend, AI was also seen as one of the most important areas of investment in 2021. Leaders, especially, emphasized AI and anticipate that AI will be the most important sales tech investment in 2023.
What technology investments did you make? (2020 vs 2021)
Recommendations
The pandemic has had a profound effect on our industry. Sales models have evolved as a consequence of COVID. Life science organizations must invest wisely in those areas which are going to have the greatest impact on their sales success and revenue growth.
For sales leaders in particular, you should consider the following to give your organization the best chance of success as the industry evolves further:
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1. Look at hybrid models and low or no-touch sales channels
COVID, and the subsequent investments in technology have changed the game; sellers need to adapt their sales models to fit with customers’ revised expectations in the ways they want to buy. This means new processes, jobs, talent profiles, and ways of working across business functions and silos to remain competitive.
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2. Assess your tech stack:
Leading organizations are transforming how they go to market with enabling technology and data investments; COVID accelerated this trend and gave far-sighted leaders an opportunity to shift investments. Ask yourself some fundamental questions:
- Do you have the right technologies?
- Is your tech stack overly complex?
- Do your sellers have the insights they need to be successful?
- Are you breaking down silos and democratizing data and tools?
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3. Power the model with data and AI:
These are by far the most important and most common investment areas where leaders got the most value; not doing this puts you at a significant disadvantage against more agile and focused marketing, sales and service teams.
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4. Create easy and informed seller experiences
As customer expectations and go-to-market strategies evolve, so must sales enablement to keep up; a complex landscapes of tools and "rear-view mirror” reports will no longer cut it within the sales organization - leading organizations are rationalizing their technologies and using data to create insights that sellers use in their day-to-day activities. These organizations are transforming their commercial operations functions from cost-centers to strategic drivers of growth.
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5. Integrate marketing, sales and service planning and operations
Leaders are breaking down traditional silos between front-office functions to create better alignment between demand generation, sales, and customer service investments. In doing so, not only are these companies coordinating their investments across customer segments, they are orchestrating intentional end-to-end customer experiences enabled by seamless customer-facing employee experiences.
KPMG Customer Advisory can help you improve the ROI on your sales investments – enabling you to effectively manage winning sales strategies, processes, and talent with connected insights.
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