Online Program

Scoring The Effectiveness Of Physician Sales Interactions

Keywords: pharmaceuticals, measurement error modeling, sales details

Pharmaceutical companies invest large sums promoting their products. Sending sales representatives to meet physicians is the most expensive promotional channel. Most of these physician interactions are ineffective, but which ones? We scored physician interactions based upon their effectiveness. This revealed the numbers and types of effective interactions. We found that 70-80% of the interactions were ineffective. The downstream benefits include: sales force sizing, structure, incentives, and training; promotional mix modeling; multi-channel promotion; and closed-loop promotion.

We analyzed two sources of information: self-reported physician interactions as conveyed by the sales representatives; and sales laptop data. The latter collects the duration and order that promotional slides appeared in front of the physician. We treated the self-reported data as measured with error and juxtaposed it against the sales laptop data, which was treated at truth. The scores identified factors related to memorability, such as product, selling team, day of the week, hour of the day, etc. Finally, the scores could be rolled up to the physician or sales representative level.