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 Making Each Sales Call Count
What makes the truly effective sales representative
different? The key is the representative's innate ability
to identify the unique, subtle characteristics of a
physician that will enable him or her to appeal directly
to that physician's needs and desires on behalf of the
company's products. Every physician segment
evaluates promotional contacts differently based on
his or her particular promotional and practice
attitudes. To that end, understanding the differences
can help pharmaceutical marketers and sales
representatives make much more effective
promotional decisions.
In a cover story written for Pharmaceutical
Representative, Stacy Vaughn, Vice President,
Sales Force Effectiveness, GfK Healthcare, shows
how data-driven marketing research exercises, such
as a promotionally based attitudinal segmentation,
can help drive effective marketing programs and
enhance sales force effectiveness as marketers and
representatives are better able to develop and tailor
content, thereby maximizing spend, increasing
physician satisfaction during representatives' visits
and experiencing better business outcomes in terms
of promotional returns.
 Disruption in Health Care, Continued
Recent Orange Pages (February 2009) have addressed The
Innovator's Prescription, A Disruptive Solution For
Health Care, a seminal book on the topic of
righting
what is wrong in healthcare by Clayton M. Christensen
et al.
This month's article offers further clarity to
Christensen's theory, based on a recent discussion
forum hosted by Harvard Business School and
featuring Christensen, which consisted of further
comments about the topic of his book, as well as
responses to questions posed by those in the
audience.
More specifically, in the Harvard session, Christensen
boiled down his entire book into one simple graphic,
which is detailed in this month's
article.
Meet Our New Addition: Senior Leadership
As a destination employer for the industry, GfK Healthcare draws top marketing research talent. While our new researchers offer clients a variety of methodological and therapeutic expertise, they share the common background of being marketing research veterans with experience specifically focused in the health care industry. Did You Miss the May Issue of Topline?
Click
here to read the issue, which
includes:
Topline
archive is available. Skim the
directory and select
articles you missed. Access subscriber
opt-in/comment form.
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June 2009
 Wanna See a Scary Graph? Take a look at this graph, including the sourcing that shows its credibility. To many of you, the discrepancy between the increase in workers' earnings and inflation, and the level of health insurance premiums, is no doubt familiar information. To others, the difference, and especially the magnitude of the difference, between these parameters may be a revelation. Whether the information is new or old to you, as we have written before, the growing divergence between these parameters can no longer be "chowed down." The businesses that typically bore the brunt of paying for these increases each year cannot, in today's economy, continue to do so. Nor is there room in the slowly growing rate of wages to continue to pass these costs along to workers, through such mechanisms as increased co-pays. It goes without saying that in today's economy, federal and state governments are unlikely candidates to step in and fill the gap. As many of you know, I have been writing extensively in recent months about the disruption in health care, and thus the disruption in the health care business sector as well. This graph clearly indicates that things will, indeed, need to change rapidly, and significantly, if health care is simply not to run out of money. When I was doing my undergraduate work at the University of Pennsylvania, one of my least favored required courses was calculus. I knew it had something to do with the area under the curve, but that's about all I remember. Somehow, I passed the course, went on to get my Ph.D., and have avoided calculus ever since. Until now. As I look at this graph and the amount of real estate that increasingly exists between wages, inflation and health insurance...  Richard B. Vanderveer, Ph.D. CEO, GfK Healthcare   |
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