Sales Force Effectiveness (SFE) is a strategic approach that enables pharmaceutical sales teams to optimize their efforts by targeting profitable customers and improving performance through structured strategies and practices. High-performing organizations emphasize doing the right things and doing things right, which involves refined sales management and a focus on core principles to address ongoing business challenges. SFE not only enhances organizational responsiveness to market dynamics but also fosters stronger relationships with physicians, ultimately driving sales growth and improving market share.

1. Muhammad Irfan

2. "Companies that use SFE
programmes can significantly
narrow the gap between the top 20
performers and the rest of the sales
force (Ledingham et al., 2006)."
Sales Force Effectiveness

3. Sales Force Effectiveness
•Sales Force Effectiveness is a strategy that
enables the sales force to target bulk of its
effort towards highly profitable customers and
limit coverage of less profitable physicians.
•It involves around sales team strategy, talent
management, remuneration and support
processes.

4. Sales Force Effectiveness
Sales force effectiveness (SFE) is driven by;
the decisions, processes, systems and
programmes that sales leaders are accountable
for.
Indicators and universal rules for sales success
are discussed, alongside examples of business
application, potential strengths, limitations and
success factors.

5. What is Sales force effectiveness(SFE) in the pharma context?
• SFE is all about keeping your company ahead of shifting market dynamics by
rapidly developing and evolving new sales models around physician access
and detailing channels.
• It’s very important to develop physician trust and confidence around all
aspects of the pharma business.
• SFE in pharma is also achieved when cross functional departments
compliment during the critical product launch phase.
• This helps management review on-the-fly performance analysis and keep up
compliance with the ever-increasing regulatory changes.

6. SFE Focus By High Performing Organizations
• High performing sales organizations both within and outside
pharma have come to recognize the significant upside
opportunity in eliminating as much noise as possible.
• They have elevated the focus on core principles of SFE to
address business challenges that persist across economic and
product lifecycles.
• So what are the fundamentals of SFE that high performing
pharma companies simply need to get right?

7. What mean of , “Getting it right”
• Firstly, high performing sales organizations do the right things. This refers to
their core strategic marketing and sales leadership capabilities. These
organizations are effective at sizing the prize, ruthlessly prioritizing organic
growth opportunities, and getting organized for success through the
appropriate allocation of resources
• High performing sales organizations also do things right. This refers to their
sales management capabilities. These organizations possess a fit-for-
purpose how we sell around here framework, complimented by exception-
free sales management disciplines. When it comes to capability building and
talent management, these organizations are incredibly effective at
minimizing new-hire ramp up, maximizing the employee ‘sweet spot’ and
eliminating performance decline.

8. Benchmark sales organisations:
“Do the right things” “Do things right”
1
SIZE THE PRIZE
& RUTHLESSLY
PRIORITISE
ORGANIC GROWTH
OPPORTUNITIES
Via …
TARGET MARKET
SEGMENTATION
IDEAL CLIENT
PROFILING
CUSTOMER VALUE
PROPOSITION
2
GET ORGANISED
& ALLOCATE
RESOURCES)FOR
SUCCESS
GO-TO-MARKET
STRATEGY
OPERATING &
COVERAGE MODEL
GOAL & ROLE
CLARITY
3
RUN TO A FIT FOR
PURPOSE ‘HOW WE
SELL AROUND HERE’
FRAMEWORK
SALES PROCESS /
MODEL
SALES ENABLEMENT
TOOLS
TECHNOLOGY / CRM
ENABLEMENT
4
RUN EXCEPTION
FREE SALES
MANAGEMENT
DISCIPLINES
MANAGEMENT
RHYTHM
GOVERNANCE/
REPORTING
PERFORMANCE
MANAGEMENT
5
MINIMISE RAMP
UP, MAXIMISE THE
SWEET SPOT &
ELIMINATE DECLINE
TRAINING / NEW
CAPABILITIES
PERFORMANCE /
SUCCESS PROFILING
REWARD &
RECOGNITION
Relative PharmaStrength
(v Cross-Industry Benchmark)
Variable for Pharma
(v Cross-Industry Benchmark)
Relative PharmaWeakness
(v Cross-Industry Benchmark)
FIGURE 1 Elements of the sales frameworkthatrepresent SFE fundamentals

9. Sales Leadership is about
doing the right things.
Sales Management is about
doing things right.

10. SFE vs Performance
Blackdot has identified five pharma-specific, immediately-actionable
opportunities that represent a return to core SFE fundamentals required to
drive more predictive and repeatable performance:
1. Understand what really defines sales performance (in the absence of
prescribing data)
2. Optimize the call coverage model (based on product maturity)
3. Fix broken linear sales models (in favour of a dynamic buyer-centric
dialogue)
4. Manage your teams’ performance dynamically (vs. a one-size-fits-all
approach)
5. Incentivize to drive behavior change (and acquire a true performance
culture)

11. What benefits can be derived from Pharma SFE?
• Ability to responds to pressures from customers, competitors & changing
economy.
• Management has greater control over the size and structure of the sales team.
• Promotes coaching, feedback, recognition, and training to the team.
• Sales Force can better target, prioritize, assess physician needs and develop
solutions around those needs.
• First line managers benefits from listening, persuading, and closing deals.
• Sales Force develop their competencies according to the current market needs.
• Growing physician satisfaction and loyalty resulting in repeat sales(RRx).
• Identify all factors really influencing prescriber behavior including messages
which are having the most impact on actual prescribing.
• Optimize all relevant resources for a brand or portfolio across multiple
geographies & activities.

12. Sales Force Effectiveness Benefits

13. Understanding what Physicians value

14. Adopting Customer Centric Approach
• A customer-centric approach focused on how best to deliver value to the
physician will guide these efforts.
• Based on field data, segments and territories, pharma companies must paint
an individual, centralized picture of each physician and then use this
information to create appropriate and relevant communications.
• It is crucial for pharma companies to make sure that physicians receive the
information they need at the right time and in their favored format.
• This customer-centric approach enhances the role of the sales force. They
become trusted partners in a two-way dialogue, which increases their
influence and improves job satisfaction.

15. Adopting Customer Centric Approach
• Sales force is the single largest spend in sales & marketing for pharma
companies. Yet study after study shows that the returns gained from this spend
are not outstanding.
• All these activities lead to sustainable and valuable relationships with
physicians and thereby increase profits and market share for pharma
companies.
• Improving sales force effectiveness may seem overwhelming at first; but
persistence, continual monitoring, and regular re-assessment are the key
drivers to gain maximum market share growth.

16. Physician Prescribing Trend

17. New industry models & their implications on
Sales Force Effectiveness
• Many leading pharmaceutical companies are now rethinking their definition
of;
• sales, marketing, corporate affairs, medical affairs and other disparate groups.
• In some companies there is a clear move towards a much more holistic and
integrated approach to sales and marketing — one in which
• sales force effectiveness is not viewed as just the responsibility of the field force,
but as an integral and interlinked part of a much wider picture.
• Sales force effectiveness typically meant three things to a pharmaceutical
company:
• Increasing the number of calls with physicians
• Increasing the length of calls
• Effectiveness of the messages delivered within the calls.

18. • Almost no pharma company was looking at sales force effectiveness from
the perspective of
• how the roles of people it should be selling to — those who influence prescribing —
were changing, and how their individual needs were changing. Today that position
has reversed.
• The dominant themes in sales force effectiveness nowadays are more
related to aligning the sales force approach with the new realities of the
healthcare environment.
New industry models & their implications on
Sales Force Effectiveness

19. 3 areas are emerging as driving the new approach:
1. Aligning marketing and sales to match the healthcare environment
• In the new healthcare environment, prescribing decisions are influenced
by a wide range of stakeholders.
• To maximize sales opportunities the pharma companies must take a
coordinated and consistent approach to each of these and other key
groups.
• Interactions and messages will be optimized for each group based on
their role in healthcare decision making and on their specific needs.
• The field force must not work in isolation, but instead be aligned around
the organization of its healthcare customers.

20. 3 areas are emerging as driving the new approach:
2. The use of analytics to drive sales force approaches
• Old-fashioned segmentation models which simply target high
prescribing physicians will be replaced by more advanced and more
impactful models.
• For example, a more statistically-driven approach that targets under-served
physician segments is more likely to get a positive response to sales visits – and
can add a vital few percentage points to sales.
• Segmenting physicians and other new stakeholders into behavioral and
attitudinal segments will allow for tailored messages to be developed
and more meaningful interactions to be held.
• This concept of differentiated detailing can be enabled and brought to
the next stage with the help of innovative technology.

21. 3 areas are emerging as driving the new approach:
3. Content-driven interactions between sales reps & customers
• The sales force visit must once again come to be seen as a valuable
interaction by physicians.
• Instead of being seen as a passive transmitter of corporate marketing
messages the sales force must be able to provide high levels of valuable
technical product knowledge and understanding.
• Physicians will want to be treated as partners, not marketing targets and
this will lead to a major shift in the current profile of the field force.

22. Utilizing new technologies for Pharma sales excellence
• A Pharma SFE can immensely help companies formulate growth
strategies.
• Using advanced predictive models to evaluate sales force
effectiveness by varying organization size, hierarchy, geography,
workloads by incorporating business rules and constraints for finding
out the Key Result Areas(KRA).
• Below are some of the indicators to find out whether your company
needs to implement SFE. If your company is facing anyone of the
below indicators; then its the right time to go for a SFE.

23. • Losing market share Quarterly, poor sales results, low margin pressures
• Post-Merger or re-organization of company
• No client relationship management system
• Under performing sales team
• Rising cost of travel, training and meetings
• High or growing attrition rate in the sales team
• Unable to manage existing relationship with Doctors when a new rep replaces the old one
• New product launch into the market
• Track and take preemptive measures to tackle market competition
• New approaches to client satisfaction – behavior of customer-interaction needs to change
• Inefficient Daily sales reporting wasting time and accountability.
Utilizing new technologies for Pharma sales excellence

24. Conclusion
Sales Force Effectiveness (SFE) tools provide key insights into the effectiveness of;
• messaging,
• materials,
• sales tactics and
• insights to sales force on doctor prescribing behavior.
• It’s all about having the right data, performance management, and
communication tools working for you as an enabler to meet Sales Force
Effectiveness in Pharmaceutical industry.