Pharma Front-line Manager Certification Program

MEDICINMANField Force Excellence
TM
September 2015 | www.medicinman.net
Since 2011
P
eter Drucker, the father of modern
management said,“The purpose of a business
is to create customers.”Yet most pharma
companies are product and sales centric – they
create products and sales strategies, rarely strategies
to create customers.
If businesses cannot exist without creating
customers, is it not imperative that businesses
understand their customers – (both internal and
external) better? Sadly, many if not most pharma
companies actually understand very little about
customers and their behaviour drivers.
As a company grows bigger and bigger, a smaller
and smaller percentage of its top talent interact
with customers. They understand little about
their customers and their behaviour drivers. They
understand their own field force even less and rarely
consider them as internal customers. In fact, field
force people are typically among the least equipped,
lowest-paid and have the least authority to create
customers.
The outcome – customers and field force that carry
on with little satisfaction, switching brands and
companies at the drop of a hat.
Understanding the behaviour drivers of customers
and field force is key to creating and satisfying
customers – be they doctors or others in the value
chain.
In the absence of this knowledge, a generic
approach of offers and schemes are dangled before
customers, who have less and less reasons to remain
loyal. Field force people are dealt with a combination
of carrot and sticks resulting in retention of the
ineffective and attrition of the performers.
HOW WELL IS YOUR FIELD
FORCE EQUIPPED TO CREATE
CUSTOMERS?
1 | MedicinMan September 2015
Editorial

Editorial
Connect with Anup Soans on LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter
Anup Soans is an Author, Facilitator and the
Editor of MedicinMan.
Write in to him: anupsoans@medicinman.net
Meet the Editor
It is in this context that it is heartening to note that
quite a few companies have taken up training and
development of their field force in earnest. One
company has put in place measures to supplement
the efforts of field force to create satisfied
customers through Clinical Practice Associates
(CPA).
The members of the CPA team are taken from
the field force and therefore have a ground level
understanding of the challenges. They are selected
on the basis of the desire to excel in therapy area
knowledge as well as to equip field force people
on a continuous basis. They do not have product
or sales quotas but are accountable to their sales
managers. In short, their objective is to understand
what the customer behaviour drivers are as well
as to ensure that the field force has adequate
knowledge and confidence.
Another company has created a year-long program
in association with a leading medical college
to train and develop their Scientific Task Force
members to understand the challenges faced by
clinicians in treating diabetic patients who do not
respond to conventional treatment.
What are your thoughts on field force learning
and development? Write to me to know more and
share your thoughts on how Indian Pharma can
understand and equip their field force to create
more customers. -MM
”
Understanding the
behaviour drivers of
customers and field force
is key to creating and
satisfying customers – be
they doctors or others in
the value chain.
In the absence of this
knowledge, a generic
approach of offers and
schemes are dangled before
customers, who have less
and less reasons to remain
loyal.

1. Leading with Purpose ...................................8
Pharma managers must lead their team with a
clear purpose - to make work meaningful.
K. Hariram
2. Healthcare and the Freedom of Choice ....10
Patients should be free to choose their healthcare
provider rather than be dependent on the
government. Only then will the cost of healthcare
come down and the efficiency of the system
increase.
Salil Kallianpur
3. Patient Access Part-I: A Conceptual
Overview ..........................................................13
In a highly fragmented yet alluring healthcare
market one of the ways to survive and thrive is to
increase patient access.
Pankaj Mehrotra
4. How to Communicate Your Incentive
Compensation Plan .........................................16
Once you have designed an incentive compensation
plan for your salesforce, how effectively you
communicate it will determine the buy-in and
eventual success of the plan.
Amit Jain
5. Effective Pre-Call Planning Using Predictive
Analytics ...........................................................19
Analytics and mobile can make the pre-call
planning process dynamic and greatly increase the
ROI of a call.
Dr. Palakodeti Ratnakar
6. BOOK REVIEW: Targetitis: The Current
Organizational Disease ..................................22
A mindless drive to set targets and measure
achievement can be detrimental to the health of the
fieldforce!
Vivek Hattangadi
7. Medical Rep or Salesperson? .....................24
Purely economic considerations have reduced the
role of the Medical Rep from scientific partner to
the Doctor to a mere salesperson. How can this be
amended?
Hanno Wolfram
CONTENTS
MedicinMan Volume 5 Issue 9 | September
2015
Editor and Publisher
Anup Soans
CEO
Chhaya Sankath
Chief Mentor
K. Hariram
Editorial Board
Salil Kallianpur; Prof. Vivek Hattangadi; Shashin
Bodawala; Hanno Wolfram; Renie McClay
Executive Editor
Joshua Soans
Letters to the Editor: anupsoans@medicinman.net
Sankar Mahadevan joined Zydus Cadila in 1996. Sankar
has achieved his targets consistently from the very be-
ginning till date without a break for nearly two decades.
This is an unparalleled feat not only in Indian Pharma,
but in any sector. Sankar has already made it to the Lim-
ca Book of Records for his outstanding performance.
Sankar says that he had achieved this feat despite many
challenges like division change, product reshuffling,
strikes, accident and all other difficulties.
At Rs. 20 lacs yield per month, Sankar’s performance is
the best across all divisions of Zydus Cadila – another
milestone.
Sankar has visited Germany, Switzerland Singapore,
Bangkok, Dubai, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia – a remarkable
feat for a Medical Representative.
Sankar was felicitated at the CEO Roundtable at
MedicinMan Field Force Excellence event for his remark-
able and consistent performance.
Sankar’s wife, Vidya is a Hindi teacher. She is a profes-
sional singer as well as a dancer. Sankar and Vidya have
two children Pavithra and Gokul.
SANKAR CROSSES ANOTHER MILESTONE!

Carrots and sticks are for donkeys only.
A Corporate Leadership study* showed that when an
ineffective manager becomes an effective manager, there is
potential to improve:
ØØ Employee performance by 25%,
ØØ Employee engagement by 52% and
ØØ Employee retention by 40%
Conversely, lack of training for the role will lead to much
frustration for managers and their teams as they adopt tools
and methods that are ineffective.
Like carrots and sticks.
*Study by Corporate Executive Board

12 Months certification program for Front-line
Managers leading to award of diploma in:
“PHARMA FIELD FORCE MANAGEMENT”
Participants will be taken through
12 Modules over 12 Months
Delivery of the program through a combination of
Live Workshops, Webinars, & Mobile

Front-line Managers will be certified
on 4 competencies:
1. Personal Effectiveness - Lead by Example
2. Essential Business Management Skills - Efficiency
and Effectiveness at work
3. Sales Team Leadership - Engaging and Inspiring
team members for peak‘perfo-romance’
4. Customer Relationship Management - How to
Understand, Build Rapport, and Develop Relationship
with Clients
Program Director
Anup Soans
Program Faculty
Eminent professionals from industry
and academia. (Contact us for details)
Program resources*
WorkBook
* Additional charges may apply. Kindly contact for more information

LIST OF MODULES
Module 1. Mindset Change - Moving from a‘Fixed Mindset’to
a ‘Growth Mindset’
Module 2. Understanding Self and Others - The key to
Emotional Intelligence
Module 3. What Creates a Satisfied Customer?
Module 4. Who are KOLs and KBLs? Understanding the Rx
Market Dynamics
Module 5. Planning, Organizing, Executing and Monitoring
(POEM) - For Effective Time Management
Module 6. Understanding the importance of effective
communication - for in-clinic performance
Module 7. Critical thinking and problem solving
Module 8. How to be an effective sales team leader - Team
Building and Team Working
Module 9. Five sources of power to manage business and
lead people
Module 10. Employee Engagement Vs Employee
Dissatisfaction - Key to reducing attrition
Module 11. Situational Leadership - Training, Facilitating,
Coaching and Mentoring
Module 12. What every FLM should know about SFE - for
Effective Territory Coverage
Contact Us.
Mobile
96-868-022-44
Email
anupsoans@gmail.com

A
s a Coach and Mentor, people approach me for
guidance and directions relating to variety of
situations, issues, conflicts and circumstances
between them and their bosses.
To mention a recent example:
A middle level manager of a region, who was reward-
ed the previous year for an outstanding performance,
was considered suddenly useless the next year and was
threatened by his boss.
While the results of the previous year was considered as
“outstanding’, the means and methodologies of getting
the revenues was conveniently overlooked. Nature has
its own way and so also the market. What followed the
so called‘outstanding year’was a year of‘out-standings’
(Overdue payments).
Throughout my interactions with industry people, a
pattern of dictatorial approach by many senior managers
clearly emerges. Almost always, all 365 days in a year, they
seem to be managing by threat. There is hardly any‘value’
contribution from such managers in terms of developing
their people.
Will they be able to sustain this approach for long? God
only knows!
When we sum up, few common factors that come out
are:
1. High level of Ego... self-centric behaviour ...high level
of insecurity
2. Operating from a“personality”ethic and not“charac-
ter”ethic
3. Lack of clear vision and strategic thinking with action
plans
E
Pharma managers must lead their team with
a clear purpose - to make work meaningful.
K. Hariram
K. Hariram is the former MD (retd.) at
Galderma India.
He is Chief Mentor at MedicinMan and a
regular contributor. khariram25@yahoo.com
LEADING WITH
PURPOSE

4. Poor communication skills and inability to
INFLUENCE & INSPIRE – the‘what’is told but
never the‘why’and‘how’.
5. “Killing meaning at work”,
The results of a multi-year research project is
described in a recent book,“The Progress Principle,”
which found that, of all the events that can deeply
engage people in their jobs, the single most im-
portant is“making progress in meaningful work.”
As mentioned in the article (“How Leaders Kill
Meaning at Work”) that appeared in McKinsey
Quarterly dated January 2012, senior executives
routinely undermine creativity, productivity, and
commitment by damaging the inner work lives of
their employees in four avoidable ways. They are:-
Falling into Mediocrity trap – while organisations
talk about excellence, their selling culture, sales
management process and people management
signals exactly the opposite through their words
and actions.
Poor execution of strategies – senior managers
don’t appear to have their act together on exact-
ly where the organization should be heading. It
becomes awfully difficult for the team to maintain
a strong sense of purpose.
Firefighting all the time – Absence of coordina-
tion and support within an organization leads to
people disbelieving that they can produce some-
thing of high quality. So the sense of purpose gets
lost.
Setting unrealistic goals – Most of the times the
annual objectives are unattainable and unrealistic
that leads to low morale of the team members and
the sense of failure grips everyone.
The leaders in any organisation should be in a
better position than anyone else to identify and
articulate the higher purpose of what people do or
do not do within their organization.
A clear purpose with proper support to ensure
achievement, backed by consistent everyday
actions, will create the meaning that motivates
people toward greatness. This will help anyone find
greater meaning in their own work as a leader. -KH
K. Hariram | Leading with Purpose
”
“... of all the events that
can deeply engage people
in their jobs, the single
most important is “making
progress in meaningful
work.”

10 | MedicinMan September
P
eople talk a lot about“freedom”these days.
Be it freedom from colonial rule or the
freedom of expression, the freedom of the
Internet, the freedom to watch porn, to have con-
sensual sex in beach-side resorts or the freedom
to marry irrespective of faith. At the root of each
of these passionate beliefs is the resentment of
the State intervening in the freedom of personal
choice. Why then, does this resentment dissolve
when it comes to health and health care?
Health and health care is as much a subject of
personal choice as is the right to choose what
you want to watch on the internet or do in your
free time. Would you like it if the State told you to
consult this doctor and not that one? Or if they
told you which hospital you could be treated in
or to what cost your treatment should be limited
to? And yet, that is exactly what a pharmaceutical
industry lobby in India, demanded that the gov-
ernment should do!
At a recent event, the Organization of Phar-
maceutical Producers of India (OPPI) asked the
government to increase public spending in the
health sector. This would include subsidizing
health insurance and providing universal health
care. This sounds perfectly reasonable, doesn’t it?
After all, shouldn’t everyone be able to access free
healthcare? It isn’t really very reasonable, if you
think about how it would actually be done.
The first thing the government would look for is
the money to fund this mammoth task. And that
money would obviously come from the taxes that
we pay! Just as the industry would choose to re-
sist a move by the government to fund universal
health care through an increase in corporate tax-
es, ordinary citizens should also have the choice
to pay lower taxes from hard-earned salaries.
Pre-empting this, the National Health Policy
recommended a‘sin-tax’– a tax on fast food, to-
bacco, alcohol, aerated drinks and other such - to
fund healthcare. Do you think companies who sell
these products will pay that money - or will you?
And do you think the money collected through
an indirect tax is enough to fund free healthcare
for 1.25 billion people and more?
E
Patients should be free to choose their healthcare provider rather than be dependent on
the government. Only then will the cost of healthcare come down and the efficiency of the
system increase.
HEALTHCARE AND THE
FREEDOM OF CHOICE
Salil Kallianpur
Families wait outside the government-run BC Roy Hospital for Pediatric care in Kolkata. Image by Sami Siva. India, 2014.

The next step is prioritization. Should money be
spent to build new medical colleges, or hospitals, or
primary health centers? Isn’t it more important to
give away free medicines? Maybe health insurance
for everyone is an urgent need too. See the confu-
sion? There are just too many things to do, and the
money is too little.
Instead, I believe the OPPI – as a powerful industry
body – should focus on getting the government to
simplify if not simply do away with healthcare laws
in their present form. For example, if the laws that
require licenses to set up hospitals and medical
colleges are simplified, they could attract many more
players to the health sector. The result will be more
colleges and better trained doctors and paramedics.
Today, despite the attractiveness, even the big-
gest home bred industrialists running multi-sector
conglomerates, fear to tread into this space because
of over-regulation. Yet, CEOs of pharma companies
have rarely – if ever - called for a simplification of or
doing away with the law.
Simple economics tells us that markets immediately
respond to increasing demand. The healthcare space
in India is bursting at its seams with demand. Why
then is supply still regulated by the government?
Open it up! Allow anyone who wants to enter the
space to come in and set up shop. This will reduce an
enormous amount of workload on the government
and pressure on the health budget as private capital
is infused into the sector. The increased competi-
tion will also drop prices, improve quality and allow
consumers the freedom to choose instead of being
told what to do.
To be sure, a lesser regulated sector will definitely
attract the greedy. This is why I do not advocate
public-private partnerships (PPP). PPPs are as full of
cronies as a crony capitalist organization is, and is as
full of opportunists as the government is. The private
corporate sector also, is full of people looking to
bend the law and make a quick buck.
As a representative of the industry, the OPPI must
work to make the word“profit”more respectable
than it currently is, while also clearly distinguishing
it from“profiteering”. To distinguish one from the
other, we need a less-burdened government to run
an efficient justice system. What I am advocating
for is minimum government and maximum gover-
nance. With a more efficient justice system and more
providers of service, power moves to the consumer
Salil Kallianpur | Healthcare and the Freedom of Choice
”
What I am advocating for
is minimum government
and maximum governance.

and he is free to reject cronies and cartels and opt
for those who serve him well. That is the power of
choice.
Shifting the burden of providing healthcare to
private players will allow the government a lot of
bandwidth to ensure such a market. The OPPI should
remind the government of what its Chief Executive
promised the citizens of India.
In a country driven by electoral politics and vote-
banks, the most dangerous part of large-scale
welfare is that it cannot be rolled back. Look at the
newspapers to see how many countries with welfare
went belly-up. To continue funding such welfare, the
government slowly but surely will begin to control
everything else. Is there any part of the state-con-
trolled apparatus that you like? Why should you
expect healthcare to be any different then?
State provided insurance will probably be worse.
The sums for which you are insured are ridiculously
low and rarely keep up with evolving prices. Look
up the fines that convicted criminals have to pay! If
we still follow a penal code made in 1860, what are
the chances of the health policy keeping pace with
escalating health costs in the future?
When the insurance sector opens up to competition,
the few players who have formed powerful cartels
will be forced to break them, resulting in cheaper
and better insurance schemes. Also with lesser taxes
and benefits to pay, you have more money in your
pocket to decide how to use it. Think of it as a 50%
increment every year!
With reduced involvement of government, cronyism
and cartels will reduce. Pricing mechanisms that
are“set-up”or“rigged”will be set free to respond to
market realities. More hospitals, more doctors and
paramedics and lower medicine prices; health insur-
ance that does not ditch you when you need it the
most - isn’t this the stuff patients’dreams are made
of? Why does the OPPI not think of this approach to
improve access to healthcare?
The OPPI’s appeal probably reflects a point of view
that it is the role of the government to provide
healthcare. Not so! It should be the role of anyone
capable, to provide it. Instead of asking for access to
free healthcare, the OPPI should instead ask for free
access to healthcare. The government’s presence
hinders that. I would resent having to entrust my
healthcare to it, if I had the freedom of choice. -SK
Salil Kallianpur | Healthcare and the Freedom of Choice
”
The OPPI’s appeal
probably reflects a point
of view that it is the role
of the government to
provide healthcare. Not
so! It should be the role of
anyone capable, to provide
it.
Salil Kallianpur is an executive in the
pharmaceutical industry currently working for
GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals. This article
is written in his personal capacity and is not
endorsed by his employers. The views are personal.

E
PATIENT ACCESS:
A CONCEPTUAL
UNDERSTANDING
In a highly fragmented yet alluring healthcare
market one of the ways to survive and thrive is to
increase patient access. This is the first in a series
of articles on Patient Access by the author.
I
n the Indian healthcare market, it is becoming a
challenge for pharma companies to grow top and
bottom lines due to intense generic competition,
pricing pressures due to government regulations and
presence of price warriors. Unethical CRM practices
and well entrenched regional players add complexity
to marketing planning exercise. You will agree that
the news about MCI action against few erring pharma
companies is just the tip of the iceberg. Sales and
marketing functions of more than 5,000 Pharmaceu-
tical organizations faces challenge of brand differ-
entiation which ultimately leads to unethical CRM
practices for physicians and promotional schemes for
and chemists.
The major challenges faced by Healthcare organiza-
tions are as follows:
1. Drying up of R & D pipelines: 2014 R & D pipeline
analysis shows that only five companies worldwide
are developing more than half of the pipeline of
products relevant for the disease burden of develop-
ing countries – Novartis being the leader.
More than 50% of the industry’s R & D efforts targets
only five diseases: lower respiratory infections, dia-
betes, cirrhosis of the liver (mostly for hepatitis) HIV/
AIDS and malaria.
3. Recruitment and retention of skilled field force:
Booming Indian economy is opening new employ-
ment vistas for youngsters. Thousands of technical
colleges are producing millions of graduates every
year and yet healthcare organizations are finding it
difficult to attract good talent.
Pankaj Mehrotra
Part 1
Pankaj Mehrotra is a Product
Group Manager at GlaxoSmithKline
Pharmaceuticals. His views are personal.

Pankaj Mehrotra | Patient Access: A Conceptual Understanding
”
“...there is lack of trained
team to devise robust tools
to map the needs, wants
and desires of patient
population speaking more
than 780 languages living
in 6 different town classes
spread across 29 states in
7th largest country of the
world.
3. Problem of plenty: Currently there are more
than 110 brands of Metformin plain; 660 brands of
Aceclofenac and its combinations; 250 brands of
Paracetamol plain and more than 47 brands of plain
Clobetasol Propionate topical preparations, making
the task of brand differentiation for sales and market-
ing team extremely challenging.
4. Long gestation period and poor ROI: Efforts to
increase reach and coverage to new geographies/
therapeutic segments faces the resistance of well-en-
trenched players requiring long-term manpower and
promotional resource commitments. A classic example
is the fate of rural marketing divisions. In the past 5
years, more than 20 big pharma companies launched
dedicated rural marketing divisions in India. Howev-
er, lower ROI compared to parent divisions, logistical
issues and lack of management’s long-term backing,
resulted in stagnancy or disbanding of operations in
more than half of such initiatives.
Today, the responsibility of sales team is identification
and coverage of potential customers and ensuring
brand availability at all stages of distribution channels.
The job of marketing function is to identify right mole-
cule, customer segment and promotional tools which
can influence the decision making process.
The current marketing planning relies on market
research tools like sales and prescription analysis and
customer-facing team’s feedback with HCP insights to
identify opportunities and design or refine marketing
strategy. The time has come for Sales and marketing
teams to re-look at the market research tools rather
than treating HCPs as the only player in a market
where the rules of business are getting redefined
every passing day.
You will appreciate that the influence of patients and
care givers on the decision-making process is not
factored in in the planning process as currently there
is low awareness about the impact of such factors on
choice of treatment from the time of identification
of need to treat to the treatment journey. Moreover,
there is lack of trained team to devise robust tools to
map the needs, wants and desires of patient popu-
lation speaking more than 780 languages living in 6
different town classes spread across 29 states in 7th
largest country of the world.
One of the ways to survive and thrive in highly a frag-
mented yet alluring healthcare market is to increase
patient access. As of now, the common strategies used

Pankaj Mehrotra | Patient Access: A Conceptual Understanding
”
The evolving patient access
concept focuses on all 3
stakeholders in treatment
decision-making process
viz. Patient, care givers,
HCP.
to increase patient access were tier pricing, strength-
ening distribution process and augmenting reach and
coverage by adding field sales team headcount.
The evolving patient access concept focuses on all 3
stakeholders in treatment decision-making process
viz. Patient, care givers, HCP. There are 6 major steps in
increasing patient access:
1. Patient Journey mapping: Understand access
and influencers
2. Disease Awareness: potential to increase patient
footfall and diagnosis
3. Acceptance of need to treat so exercising appro-
priate therapeutic/preventive options
4. Availability of product and knowledge
5. Adherence to treatment so reducing recurrences
6. Affordability: factoring in the total value of treat-
ment
Healthcare organizations can increase“access”of
information needed to diagnose and treat patients to
establish trust in the minds of HCPs and caregivers by
making them“aware”about“availability”of right ther-
apeutic options closer to the consumers with“afford-
able”products that offer the right value proposition
will continue to win the“acceptance”of stakeholders.
-PM

O
ne of the key factors for Incentive Compensation
programs to succeed is clear communication and
presentation to different stakeholders in a struc-
tured manner. A company can design a great incentive
plan but if it fails to communicate it effectively, it doesn’t
necessarily meet the desired end objectives. The sales
team does not understand the plan and misalignment
disengages the salesforce.
Companies generally perform periodic assessment of their
sales incentive plans to gauge the fairness perception of
the salesforce and take steps to course-correct for new
strategic needs. Incentive Compensation plan communica-
tion however is not often given its due importance during
IC program development. This impacts the overall effec-
tiveness and success of the sales incentive program.
1. Business Objective Alignment
ØØ What is the underlying business objective and how can
the sales force be aligned to that objective? As part
of the plan communication process, this is the most im-
portant question. Any ambiguity on this front is surely
a recipe for the incentive plan failure. It is desired to
keep the communication simple, link plan elements to
sales strategy, be clear about changes from the existing
plan.
ØØ What is the appropriate messaging for different stake-
holders? How can communication help achieve it?
Several desired results need to be tackled while creat-
ing this messaging such as change awareness, incen-
tive plan education, fairness perception, behavioural
change.
E
HOW TO
COMMUNICATE
YOUR INCENTIVE
COMPENSATION
PLAN
Once you have designed
an incentive compensation
plan for your salesforce, how
effectively you communicate it
will determine the buy-in and
eventual success of the plan.
Amit Jain
”
Amit Jain is Co-founder and Director
of Operations at Aurochs Software, an
incentive compensation solution specifically
designed for the pharmaceutical industry.

ØØ How can sales front-line leadership be involved in
the design and communication process? This step
ensures that the sales leadership buys into the new
plan design and are comfortable aligning report-
ing medical representatives to broader business
objectives. Sales leadership can be involved either
through qualitative interviews or by conducting
plan design workshops with them. If plan buy-in is
achieved effectively with sales leadership the plan
acceptance will be greater by the salesforce.
2. Communication Channels
ØØ What are some of the channels that can be used
for plan communication for different stakeholders?
These channels may be pages within company
intranet, emails, focus group discussions, sales
leadership meetings etc. It is advisable to use
multiple channels to provide context and to put
emphasis on the why’s and how’s of a new plan.
It is also important to define the roll-out strategy
in case multiple channels are employed for this
purpose.
ØØ How can we disseminate underlying incentive plan
objectives and information to the broader sales
leadership and to the operations group support-
ing ongoing IC operations? The objective should
be to empower sales leadership and the opera-
tions group to resolve field queries in an efficient
way. There are several ways this can be achieved –
involving different stakeholders in the plan design
process, creating detailed performance measure
and payout calculation flows for easy understand-
ing. It is really important to explain plan excep-
tions to both sales leadership and the operations
group for speedy resolution to field queries.
3. Support Avenues
ØØ What are some of the additional avenues available
to the sales force to improve their understanding
of the plan? These may be achieved by online
documentation, easy-to-carry plan design/ pay-
out table leaflets with crisp messaging, eligibility
conditions sheet, what-if pay-out calculator etc.
ØØ How can we measure the success of the commu-
nication process? Feedback about a plan roll-out
is critical and must be gathered in the form of
surveys or medical representative interviews. Such
a feedback loop can help companies understand
which areas of plan communication they lag in
and make appropriate adjustments.
Amit Jain | How to Communicate Your Incentive Compensation Plan
”
What is the underlying
business objective and
how can the sales force be
aligned to that objective?
As part of the plan
communication process,
this is the most important
question.

ØØ A medical representative’s immediate man-
ager may be one of the best resources for the
representative to learn more about the plan.
Hence effort should also be spent in making the
front-line leadership plan advocates and act as
the first line of support.
The plan ideally should be communicated within
2 weeks from the start of the performance period.
Plan education is not a one-time process howev-
er. Ongoing plan communication can help align
behaviours to business objectives better by encour-
aging field representatives to take full advantage of
the various opportunities in an IC plan.
After plan communication, it is equally important to
provide clear and concise performance reports for
salespeople to track their performance with clear
direction. These reports can act as ongoing motiva-
tors for the salespeople and can help them course
correct their selling strategy if required to do so. This
constant monitoring and tracking helps with the
better understanding of the IC plan, engages the
salespeople and motivates them to perform better.
- AJ
Amit Jain | How to Communicate Your Incentive Compensation Plan
”
Plan education is not
a one-time process
however. Ongoing plan
communication can
help align behaviours to
business objectives better
by encouraging field
representatives to take full
advantage of the various
opportunities in an IC plan.

As pharmaceutical companies shift to multi-channel
approaches and scrutinize promotional spend, it is
more important for the sales force, which has the
most direct customer contact, to maximize their effec-
tiveness during sales calls. The way to improve direct
customer interactions is to use mobility enhancing
features —mobile tools and predictive analytics that
provide real-time information and productivity – at
low operating cost.
To achieve the full potential of analytics and mobility,
pharmaceutical companies need to follow a broader
and interconnected strategic approach with a core
set of execution activities. Defining, developing and
implementing a holistic analytics-led mobile strategy
for the sales force can help pharmaceutical companies
drive sales efficiency and productivity, improve the
customer experience and maximize cost management
initiatives.
This white paper provides answers to many of these
key questions including how to define a comprehen-
sive strategy to integrate mobility and predictive an-
alytics into sales processes and to develop a detailed
implementation roadmap.
E
Dr. Palakodeti Ratnakar
EFFECTIVE PRE-
CALL PLANNING
USING PREDICTIVE
ANALYTICS
Analytics and mobile can make the pre-call planning
process dynamic and greatly increase the ROI of a call.
Dr. Palakodeti Ratnakar is Asst. Vice
President and Head-Global Life Sciences Sales
& Marketing practice in Tech Mahindra and
has over 2 decades of experience in Strategic
Planning, Market Intelligence and Portfolio
Management in companies like Dr. Reddy’s

Dr. Palakodeti Ratnakar| Effective Pre-call Planning Using Predictive Analytics
Introduction:
The days of turning up for a sales call with no advance
planning and not much knowledge about the physician
are long gone. To compete and succeed solid pre-
call planning information is critical. Pre-call planning
enables the representatives to qualify sales leads, target
physicians, and have an efficient engagement.
According to the Miller Heiman effectiveness study1,
63.4% of sales leaders agree that their teams do not
qualify leads as well as they should. Additionally, 55.9%
of sales leaders agree that their sales team wastes time
pursuing poor sales leads and opportunities. Good
Pre-call planning is essential to qualifying leads and
ultimately garnering better prescription share.
Today, pharmaceutical sales forces primarily use laptops
or traditional tablet PCs to
access enterprise CRM solu-
tions, read e-mail, or present
digital, interactive promo-
tional materials. But these
tools have their limitations—
namely weight, portability,
and costly hardware and
software support. Mobile
provides added flexibility
and new features that can
significantly improve medical
representatives’productivity.
The Increasing Cost of Sales Calls
Based on data gathered by Cahner’s Research2, as re-
ported by the Direct Marketing Association, the cost of
a sales call has been steadily climbing by an average of
$9.60 a year since 1980, when it was just $126.00. At this
rate, it is reasonable to expect the cost of a sales call to
reach $580.00 by 2020. As this cost continues to rise, it
becomes increasingly important to find ways to maxi-
mize the return on the investment in sales calls. Proper
pre-call planning helps to minimize the time to close,
shrink sales cycles, and increase close rates thereby
playing an important role in increasing ROI.
Pre-Call Planning: Why it is Essential to Sales Success
Today
Mining the right information about a physician is the
key to his mindshare. And it is at the core of the solu-
tion-selling sales strategy – an approach that stresses a
high comfort level between physician and medical rep
is essential.
The days of turning up
for a sales call with no
advance planning and not
much knowledge about the
physician are long gone.
To compete and succeed
solid pre-call planning
information is critical.
”

Dr. Palakodeti Ratnakar| Effective Pre-call Planning Using Predictive Analytics
Diligent pre-call planning enables to learn about a
physician’s concerns, requirements and other key
influencing factors that can play an important role for
a productive discussion with the physician. As complex
products and services drive longer sales cycles and
cost-per-call continues to climb, this ensures that calls
are productive for both the medical representatives
and the physician.
Online Business Information Resources: The leading
edge of Pre-Call planning
Today, online business information resources are
playing a pivotal role in enabling sales organizations
to obtain better, faster, more pertinent information
for qualifying leads. Less time-consuming than net-
working, attending seminars or other ways of getting
business information, online business information
resources include all the statistics and information
sales people need on one web site, where they can find
them instantly. Representing the latest evolution of
pre-call planning, these resources have become essen-
tial for an effective Physician-Rep interaction.
Predictive analytics of Pre-call Planning
Multi-dimensional analytics can help the marketing
team to react immediately to the needs from the sales
force with instant alerts and actionable insights, greatly
improving efficiency and productivity. Capturing how
long physicians are observing the detail, the ability to
accept requests for extra information in real time and
respond to these instantaneously can help to measure
the detail’s effectiveness and potentially the return on
investment.
With an integrated CRM system, Pharma sales reps
can record the information that shapes the direction
of business and establish effective pre-call planning.
Information on physician prescribing pattern and mol-
ecule choices captured from structured and semi-struc-
tured databases allows the representative to have a
360 degree view of the physicians in their target list.
Medical Representatives will have an opportunity to
influence physicians with improved quality of detailing,
personalised messaging, faster fulfillment of needs and
instantly reverting with desired medical information
requests and latest clinical trial reports with the help of
mobile applications. -PK
”
Diligent pre-call planning
enables to learn about
a physician’s concerns,
requirements and other key
influencing factors that
can play an important role
for a productive discussion
with the physician.
References:
1. Mulcahy, Susan (2002), Evaluating the Cost
of Sales Calls in Business-to-Business Markets.
Newton, MA: Cahners Research.
2. Miller Heiman Effectiveness Study, 2004

‘T
ARGETITIS - The Current Organisational Dis-
ease’ is a book by David Jenkins, published
by Management Books 2000 Ltd. I recently
borrowed it from the British Council Library.
David Jenkins has written this book in a provocative
manner. He closely looks at the current lamentable
organisational disease of targetitis and its cure. In a
lighter vein, targetitis can be described as the setting
and chasing of targets, more than are necessary for
the effective functioning of an organization. Targetitis
is also the bane of Indian Pharma.
After so many years of association with Indian Phar-
ma I find that its high priests are fanatic about their
religion - their religion called‘efficiency’. They control
this religion by the setting of targets. The employees
(not just the sales force) find extreme difficulties in
first, understanding them and second, meeting them.
Efficiency is given precedence over effectiveness.
This book examines common ways of setting cor-
porate targets. David Jenkins makes a case that the
primary purpose of orthodox management is to get
hold of compliance. Do targets set artificial divides
between what needs to be done to match these
paper targets and what needs to be done to meet
business goals? Does the checking mechanism waste
resources?
He asks, in a confrontational manner, whether data is
fiddled with to seemingly meet these targets.
At least for Indian Pharma, I can say confidently –
quite often!
E
Vivek Hattangadi
TARGETITIS -
THE CURRENT
ORGANIZATIONAL
DISEASE
A mindless drive to set targets and
measure achievement can be detrimental
to the health of the fieldforce!
Vivek Hattangadi is a Consultant in Phar-
ma Brand Management and Sales Training
at The Enablers. He is also visiting faculty
at CIPM Calcutta (Vidyasagar University)
for their MBA course in Pharmaceutical
Management.
vivekhattangadi@theenablers.org
Book Review

Vivek Hattangadi | Book Review: Targetitis - The Current Organizational Disease
The C-Suite is obsessed with the desire, the almost
messianic urge, to identify and set targets. They
demand more and more sets of figures from brand
managers and sales managers to peruse at review
meetings. And to do what? Set more targets!
An exasperated young brand manager once men-
tioned that he has been reduced to an Excel Sheet
Manager.
One outcome is that the weight of producing and
reporting statistics and targets is burying organizations
in being efficient rather than effective. The progress of
the organization and even decision-making is getting
stunted by directives and targets.
Brand managers of Indian Pharma have been forced to
immerse in the business of statistics, percentages and
figures rather than concentrate on the market reality,
listening to customers and bringing in innovation.
I adore Akio Morito of Sony. Had he, like the Indian
Pharma brand managers, immersed himself in statistics
and tried to figure out what percentage of cassette
tape-recorder‘pie’he could take, he would have never
made Walkman such a big success. Instead, he walked
around, visited stores where cassette tape-recorders
were sold, spoke to people, listened to what people
were saying when buying a cassette tape-recorder and
he knew exactly what people wanted. This is the secret
behind the marvel called Walkman.
It is widely touted and believed that setting over-ambi-
tious targets forces people to work harder and longer.
Advocates of this method say that it stimulates creative
thinking, increases motivation and excites people to
reach greater heights!
But, is that really the case?
David Jenkins says that by setting ever higher and
higher goals, this route could increase frustration,
smother stimulation and decrease motivation. Over-
stepping the mark could lead to disinterest and
cynicism. Rather than having supposedly‘empowered’
people through the process of setting targets, collect-
ing statistics and analysing results, it might, perhaps,
have led another form of centralization and control.
These and many more vital topics are explored in this
book. [David Jenkins concludes that the best targets
are generally set by the people who have to meet them
- and not dropped from on high,] and that where there
is no alternative to targets being imposed, the relevant
team should be left to decide how they should be met.
Critical reading for all organisations - and, indeed, for
the C-Suite of Indian Pharma! -VH
”
... the weight of producing
and reporting statistics
and targets is burying
organizations in being
efficient rather than
effective.
What the Pharma CEO
Wants from the Brand
Manager
A Book by Prof. Vivek Hattangadi
Available on Flipkart
(click to purchase)

I
n the early days of the pharmaceutical industry,
field force people visiting and discussing thera-
peutic issues with doctors were called‘Medical
Representatives’. Their task was to represent their
company’s expertise in the treatment of specific
diseases. Medical Representatives had a very clear
mission:“No one knows more about therapy than we
do!”
Physicians kept their doors wide open and more of-
ten than not, medical representatives were welcomed
with:“Dear colleague, would you prefer coffee or tea?”
‘Calls’, as one would say today, lasted 15 to 30 minutes
on average. The objective of that visit was simple: Any
question a physician might have had, was to be an-
swered. Doctors discussed their problems in scientific
depth and breadth with their‘therapeutic advisors’.
Medical Reps fully respected that symptom assess-
ment and diagnosis was solely and completely the cli-
nician’s domain. [Finding a diagnosis was even called
the art of a medical doctor. Yet, vast knowledge about
therapy and the ability to advise and consult physi-
cians on the right drug to prescribe, was a domain of
well-trained and equipped medical representatives.]
If there was any kind of flu, bacterial or virus epidem-
ic, Medical Representatives gathered experiences
from other doctors and shared them with doctors
during their visit. Scientific literature and the latest
publications in renowned magazines were integral
part of discussions. It was absolutely clear that, once
asked, they proposed the optimal therapy. It was not
mandatory nor expected, that Medical Representa-
tives suggested“their drug”as being the best option.
E
Purely economic considerations have reduced
the role of the Medical Rep from scientific partner
to the Doctor to a mere salesperson. How can this
be amended?
MEDICAL REP OR
SALESPERSON?
Hanno Wolfram
Hanno Wolfram, is the founder and owner
of www.Innov8.de, a Germany based
company offering consulting projects for
pharmaceutical companies.

”
Physicians trusted Medical Representatives and they
were seen as part of their family. Physicians were eas-
ily accessible and Medical Representatives were their
source of in-depth therapeutic knowledge. Medical
Representatives visits were a welcome interruption of
the daily routine of asking and listening to patients.
Then one day, the pharma industry was taken over by
economists. Medical doctors, pharmacists, chemists,
biologists and other disciplines in leading positions
were replaced. Focus and perspective of pharma
industry turned 180°: Medicine or the physician were
not the focus. Instead it became all about Profit and
Loss, Sales and Market Share.
Inside an“ethical pharma”company, marketing and
sales experience was almost non-existent. Few chem-
ists, medical doctors, biologists, or pharmacists serv-
ing as line or divisional heads knew, what marketing
and“sales”really meant. Profit and Loss and return on
investment became the most dominant drivers of the
pharmaceutical industry. The vocabulary was re-de-
fined and the whole industry was held hostage by the
vocabulary applied.
Since then pharma companies started doing what
all other businesses were doing,“Best practice”and
“Benchmark”became an integral part of the new
vocabulary.
The Medical Representative was renamed, reshaped
and mutated to a salesperson. The field force became
the sales force and what has formerly the“Medical
Information”department was called“Sales Depart-
ment”.
Sales reps did no longer consult and advice, let
alone listen. They had a message to convey and a
positioning statement to repeat. Repeat? Yes, repe-
tition became another key word. In any call the“key
product message”had to be mentioned a number of
times and of course the physician had to be called on
repetitively. Once a week detailing was the order of
the day.
The change in“ethical pharma”was enormous and so
was the suffering of physicians.
We need to recall that physicians by nature and ed-
ucation are philanthropists. It therefore took a while
till they started to close their doors to this industry’s
sales people.
When the era of copy/
paste started, pharma
copied methods and
techniques from FMCG.
Hanno Wolfram | Medical Rep or Salesperson?

”
26 | MedicinMan February 2015
Of course some of the therapeutic advisors of the
early days were still on duty. Now, these formerly nice
people, discussing problems with a doctor at eye-lev-
el, asked the doctor for more scripts because they
needed their bonus to feed their family and keep
their job. Their‘selling skills’were trained regularly
and the last step of any call was called“closing the
deal”.“You give me five new patients and I invite you
to …”was standard. Words like‘target’‘group’,‘target-
ing and segmentation’, or‘segmentation and target-
ing’(still often unclear in their meaning and sequence
in the 21st century!) had been introduced.
The other learning from FMCG was that pharma
needed to know and respect their customers. All of a
sudden, physicians were called‘customers’. Since they
do not buy drugs from pharma, the word is wrong
and misleading. After the so-called customer was
identified, needing a CRM was a logical consequence.
‘Selling’drugs to physicians, being called‘customers’
and‘closing deals’with them led to bribery, caused
billions of dollars in fines and resulted in a heavy
decline of pharma’s reputation across the globe.
We must be fully aware that the field force’s target –
the Doctor – decides if value is delivered. Currently
most of them do not see value delivered by field
forces and consequently the targets close their doors
even more. In the US, a very free and sales-friendly
nation, less than 50% of all physicians today are ac-
cessible for the pharmaceutical industry at all.
The pharmaceutical industry’s field force is the only
living contact with physicians and other stakeholders.
Many new tasks are eagerly waiting to be taken over
by the field force. New, value adding tasks are waiting
to be created and adopted by the field force.
Selling drugs to physicians will be missing in the list
of valued tasks. -HW
The field force remains the
most expensive and the
most precious population
in any pharmaceutical
company.
Hanno Wolfram | Medical Rep or Salesperson?

27 | MedicinMan December 2013
O god! What to do my target has increased.
How much can I eat more?
When my capacity is half for sure,
What to do now my incentive chances are diminished.
I had sweated hard to achieve my yearly target.
In return I have received another pile of hope.
For achieving it there is not any scope.
Oh god! It seems even job, I have to forget.
You have to increase your hunger
When market is growing, why can’t you?
Even crows now instead of pellets use straw.
Choose the right product for right customer.
Implement the strategy solely take a vow.
Above stork’s patience and eagle’s prey target can’t grow
O god! What to do my target has increased!
- A poem by ‘Kaviraj’
This poem is composed by Kaviraj. It addresses the issue of sales targeting in the pharma industry. In first 8 lines
medical representative is arguing that his target is too high. In the next 6 lines, the manager explains that the target
is not very high and it is achievable and tries to lift the morale of his team.
Amit Kumar works with Cachet Pharma as Brand
Manager and is popularly known as “Kaviraj”
among his friends since his school days .
Poet’s Corner

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