It’s a familiar situation.
A major pharma company’s leading competitor is launching a product that vies for market share with one of it’s best-selling drugs. Key physicians are already receiving compelling messaging about diminished side effects and improved dosing. A quick response is essential. So, the marketing team starts pushing competitive positioning about the existing drug’s improved efficacy profile to the sales force in the field.
At first, it works. But as time goes on, most reps eventually revert back to the brand strategy they’re most familiar with and leave the recommended, event-triggered strategy behind. Given the head-spinning amount of data, sales channels and targets reps must manage everyday—often for multiple brands—it’s an understandable challenge.
Luckily for sales and marketing teams alike, decision support tools are addressing this challenge head-on, bridging the gap between strategy and its day-to-day application with impactful suggestions and insights delivered the moment they’re needed within the rep’s CRM.
CRM suggestions bring the right strategy to the surface
With so much to keep track of, reps who receive strategy changes within their workflow have a major advantage. That’s why decision support tools like CRM suggestions are so effective at helping reps take advantage of competitive messaging as soon as it’s issued and keeping it top-of-mind as long as it’s relevant. Specifically, data-driven CRM suggestions can help your reps navigate urgent strategy changes in the following ways:
- They know exactly when a new strategy is deployed.
Instead of relying on a chain of downstream communication, marketing can easily enact strategy changes simply by revising a few rules in the control panel of their decision support engine. When the strategy is ready to be deployed, it will immediately appear as a suggestion in the rep’s workflow, reinforcing any prior training and HQ communications. And since suggestions are always prioritized by importance and accompanied by reason text, reps won’t have to guess about which message to deliver next. - They have immediate access to the right materials to leverage the new strategy.
By linking any relevant emails, presentations or other resources directly to the suggestion, the information your reps need is just a click away. Instead of hunting through HQ communications for the right email template, reps can access it directly from their workflow for a totally seamless experience. - They’ll deliver the right message at the right time—even when targets are shared.
With suggestions and insights, reps can see who spoke to a physician, about what topic, and when, all in real-time. When new suggestions are generated, Aktana reviews past and future activities for the rep, any counterparts and even HQ, allowing the sales team to deliver relevant content that reinforces but doesn’t repeat. - They’ll know which physicians will respond best to the new strategy and which to prioritize.
Depending on physician preferences, formulary coverage and other variables, the “right” messaging will likely vary from one physician to the next. Over time, Aktana’s learning platform will establish which physicians respond to certain topics better than others. Is Physician X especially interested in clinical trial data? Do presentations on drug efficacy resonate more with Physician Y? Suggestions guide reps to deliver the most valuable information to the physicians it will impact the most, allowing reps to be more targeted and effective.
Simplifying an elaborate process
In the past, tweaking strategy was a huge undertaking. Now, however, brands can optimize new strategies with the touch of a few buttons. With the help of decision support and CRM suggestions, marketing teams can test out strategies that are more complex than ever before—without creating undue chaos for the sales force they rely on to execute them from day to day.