APRIL 2023LIFE SCIENCES REVIEW8IN MY OPINIONn the age of digital transformation and the COVID-19 induced acceleration of online customer interactions, sales forces remain one of the biggest commercial expenses for the pharmaceutical industry. Every year, pharma companies spend $10B to $15B on salesforce in the US alone. This fact shouldn't be surprising considering that "personal selling" could contribute up to 20 percent of incremental drug revenue. But from a brand marketing standpoint, a sales force is an expensive channel which is hard to optimize because sales reps are usually employees of the company and can't be turned on and off like an email campaign.Over the last ten years, pharma brand teams have been experimenting with various digital channels, attempting to get closer to an omnichannel approach to outbound marketing. Omnichannel promotion is important not just to reach physicians with more than one medium, but it can also decrease the reliance on salesforce resources and sustain or expand sales margins. As a result, the number of total sales reps has declined over the years, but the overall marketing effectiveness hasn't improved as much as the industry had hoped it would. Year over year, pharma companies continue to shed their field force headcount while struggling to replace it with automated non-personal engagement with the customer.Moving from Selling to Building RelationshipsComing to pharma from a B2B healthcare technology background, I have always struggled to see a sales rep as one of the marketing channels. PUT YOUR FRONTLINE TEAMS IN THE DRIVING SEAT THROUGH A PERSONALIZED, CUSTOMER-CENTRIC APPROACH By Tatiana Sorokina, Solutions Director, Data Science & Artificial Intelligence, NovartisTo me, a marketing channel is an email, a text message, a mobile app or a TV commercial. In the B2B world, sales and account teams are viewed as strategic partners who don't just sell a product, but offer a solution to a customer's pain point. I always liked to imagine pharma's commercial, medical, and patient account experts forming a dream team to build a kind of relationship with a physician that addresses her needs holistically, from learning about new clinical trials happening in her therapeutic area, to choosing the right treatment regimen for her new patient, to dealing with insurance companies and streamlining patient approval for a prescribed drug. It has been very encouraging to see new initiatives happening in non-pharma industries that get us closer to this new model. Imagine customer account teams operating as mini-businesses that are held accountable for the revenue they bring to the HQ. At the same time, Tatiana SorokinaI
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