With higher competition and changing preferences in the mode of interactions, it has become a big challenge for the pharma companies to engage with the HCPs and promote their product. Pharma companies must re – evaluate the strategies that enables sales rep to engage with Health care professionals (HCP). As we all know most of the companies are adapting multichannel to gain commercial success, an Omni channel call plan i.e. engaging with the right customer at the right time over the right channel is also important for the sales force to reach maximum number of HCPS and to evaluate the accurate outcomes and to increase the customer conversion rate. It is not possible to get the strategy right unless proper planning is done so execution can happen seamlessly. Call plan done by sales team gets into date wise customers to be met. But stopping there will not help, we need to get into the channel type and even decide what will be discussed in the call.
How to make a Call Plan involving Omni Channel?
Let us first look into what all needs to be considered in the call plan when Omni Channel strategy is being adopted. Instead of focusing on finishing all the dates of the month to submit a plan, focus will be on the HCP. For each HCP the dates when calls will be done, the channel type that will be adopted for each call, the Brand that will be focused on each call, the order in which the brands will be detailed and finally the content that will be showcased when it is F2F or Remote detailing.
Before we go further on how to get the combination right, let us look into the different Channel types – F2F, Phone Call, Email, Remote detailing, Webinar, SMS/WhatsApp Message.
Pharma companies that plan to execute Omni Channel in the field must do their field effort planning keeping in mind the channel mix. They must empower the sales team with right Call Plan to engage with the HCPs using right channels. As we are focusing on channel mix let’s take 3 channels i.e. F2F, virtual detailing, and E Mails and measure the effectiveness of each channel.
This can be done in two ways. One method that is by now, in practice in some countries, is to measure the effectiveness by measuring the outcome of the effort using a channel. Typically, for a group of HCP s, one can correlate the incremental Rx or Sales that can be attributed to a channel in a time window. This is possible only in countries where this data is available in a granular manner. For example, if through statistical analysis, it is derived that F2F generates delta of X sales, virtual detailing only 0.5 X and E mails 0.3 X, these are the weightages assigned for each channel.
But if the sales data is not available in such granularity then companies have to resort to HCP’s response to a “call”. This response can be measured by taking many factors into account. Some of the response indicators would be: Duration of a call, number of slides seen or heard by the doctor, time spent on each slide, and likelihood of brand adoption. By measuring these across channels, we can plot the responses and again arrive at weightages for effectiveness. There is an in built assumption here: i.e. better the response, higher the delta in Rx or sales.
In both the methods above, companies typically arrive at Call Equivalence weightages, with F2F taken as 1. Another factor to be considered is Time Equivalence Weightages. Here the Pharma company will set how much time will be needed for each channel type and will be division specific. Once these weights are arrived we can formulate an Omni – Call Plan for a period where companies have to develop their own methodology, based on channels, their measured effectiveness, total time available for a field rep, number of HCPs in his/her list, and “unproductive time %s” in waiting/travel”. Broad idea will be to maximize the “Equalized calls” for his group of doctors. Equalized calls means, absolute number X Call equivalence weightage. This in no means discounts the importance of F2F calls which still gets the maximum result. But considering the minimal time given by HCP and technology adoption by HCP it makes sense to leverage the various channels available. It will also make it the interaction interesting for the HCP.
Doing this for each HCP would be difficult. Options would be plan extensively for A class doctors and for the rest it can be on the basis of Speciality. There has to be clear analysis of the doctors who have greater potential and those for whom penetration is high.
Since we are talking about Omni Channel and perhaps unified messaging, we need to look at channel combinations rather than individually. The plan will also have to cover “F2F + Other channels”, as a combined effort for detailing each brand planned for detailing.
This call plan has to be a Co-Creation, between Field Rep, Line Manager and Brand manager. Brand manager will play the role of converting brand objectives in a geography into an executable plan. Once it is co-created, the CRM tool can be used to capture the plan in totality. The plan will typically have, for each HCP, absolute call numbers, brands, ideal duration to spend on a call and a statement of objectives for the brand.
This plan will carry much more data than a traditional “number of calls” plan. Field reps will need training to be able to develop a good plan. Actual plan preparation is ideally done on a CRM tool (if the CRM allows such planning) or an external plug-in tool developed for this. This is where applying AI, statics, etc. will ensure we get the mix right and achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness.
I need to thank my colleague Krish as some excerpts in this blog taken from our 2nd podcast. Do visit our website to listen to this – https://kea-crm.com/videos_podcast
Benefits
- Customers get the right amount of focus
- Brand promotion can happen in a way that helps company’s strategy
- Helps Medical Representatives to plan properly so they can grab their customer attention
- Key Message gets delivered with maximum impact
R. Priya
Senior Vice President
priya@vsmsoftware.com
VSM Software Pvt. Ltd.