Indian Pharma’s ways of interacting with customers was already dysfunctional, as more and more companies pushed more and more feet-on-street to capture the doctor’s scarce time and attention. The Covid-19 crisis has exposed not only the dysfunctional sales operations which came to a stand-still but also the ineffective marketing operations that remained clueless on how to respond to the situation.
Instead of understanding and responding to the dire challenges faced by patients, doctors and hospitals , Indian Pharma companies pushed the tired and worn out face-to-face push model on to the digital space with webinars, WhatsApp and What-not!
As a result, we have witnessed strong reactions from individual doctors, hospitals and medical associations during the initial period of lockdown. A good number of HCPs reached out to social media to voice their disapproval. Medical associations wrote to companies, asking them to exercise restraint in meeting doctors. Unfortunately, we can still see such responses even after eight months of the crisis. And many companies are still in denial.
However, a good number of pharma business leaders certainly don’t think that Indian Pharma customer facing teams will ever go back to working in the way they did, during pre-Covid-19 times. Covid-19 has accelerated the change that was to happen in next three to four years in the customer facing roles. As Indian Pharma’s customer facing roles are changing fast, many companies are realising that the digital or hybrid model needs a completely new approach and new skills sets. You just can’t have the sword wielding horse-riding soldiers to man the modern weapons of warfare like the weaponised drones.
The Shift from Sales to Scientific … A Shift from Face to Face to Hybrid
The Covid-19 restrictions have substantially reduced doctor-pharma interactions and other stakeholders. This has given a unique opportunity for MSLs and Medico-Marketing teams to demonstrate their value and power and of the much needed scientific operations.
COVID-19 has accelerated the shift in how pharma was engaging with HCPs, professional organisations and even patients in India from a sales to more of a scientific, unbiased and balanced marketing communications. As one of the business leader from a prominent MNC said, “For the first time we are seeing a certain shift in HCP’s preference for scientific communication for innovators companies. MSLs and scientific operation teams will be playing a key role in the near future.”
Many Indian Pharma leaders now have realised the unique value scientific operation (MSL & Medical Affairs) will be fundamental and the key driver of HCPs engagement to regain their trust.
This means the traditional Sales Rep’s role needs to evolve in line with these trends and HCP preferences. Pharma leaders will have to invest and define a new purpose as more educative and trusted partners ensuring ethics and compliance. “We may also redefine boundaries of HCPs engagement and commercial operations by reducing or removing incentives for customer facing teams on sales and more focused on building engagements and relationships,”
The key to success of customer facing teams is in building new skills and focusing hard on how to operate this new hybrid model effectively. To make digital or hybrid engagement to work is by realising its virtues and maximising them.
Our deep dig interviews with many stakeholders including the customer facing teams provided interesting insights. Doing things digitally can enhance the experience for HCPs. For example time and exclusive attention in a digital call is 5 to 18 minutes more than face to face calls provided pre-appointment is taken for these calls and by giving them access beyond the sales interface. Interestingly commercial leadership focusing on connecting referred person to HCPs. As another business leader says For the past two months, we’ve had our medical team including medical directors, advisors, MSLs, etc talking to three, four, five, six HCPs in half an hour either one-on-one or in a small group calls . It’s the most rewarding use of time.”
We at MedicinMan decided to take a quick pulse of pharma people in India if companies able to get more interaction time with HCPs by using hybrid sales model. We used social media platform like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and also Credoweb for this quick polls:
To know more, join Digital Excellence Pharma Academy, a joint initiative of MedicinMan and CredoWeb to Upskill Indian Pharma sales and marketing people at all levels from customer facing teams to business unit heads, Medical Affairs, HR, Training, SFE and other functions.
Register on: https://www.credoweb.in/discussion/general
The current pandemic may continue for an uncertain period of time – estimates from 12 to 24 months – by which time certain fundamental behavior change would have been cemented, with regards to consumers adopting technology as has already happened with other areas, be it banking, transportation and other conveniences (Ola, Dunzo, Swiggy, Amazon, PayTM, Swiggy and a plethora of consumer services).
Indian Pharma will need to adapt business practices to deliver treatments and services for patients by increasing investment in digital technologies and supply chain management.
Keeping these challenges in mind, MedicinMan in partnership with CredoWeb, set up the Digital Excellence Pharma Academy (DEPA), as a knowledge sharing platform with thought leaders from Indian and global pharma to share experiences, insights and case studies.
Register on: www.credoweb.in to become part of the Digital Excellence Pharma Academy
Deep Bhandari is a pharma veteran and an Editorial Board Member at MedicinMan