In an attention economy, emails, EHR alerts, and meetings overwhelm us. We are healthcare providers, and pharmaceutical representatives add to this burden. Providers can only be reached 50% of the time and face 1.4 touchpoints every hour from pharma makers.
Pharma can change this. Imagine if drug companies could talk to providers, patients, and others. It could reduce interruptions. Providers would get the data they need to improve patient care. They would get it without an added burden.
With AI and other technologies enabling deep personalization, pharmaceuticals must rethink their approach. A new model should combine new drugs with healthcare. It should add value and ease providers’ workload. And it should reach more patients with the right treatments.
How Pharma Can Advance Their Interactions with Customers
Think about the commercial model we use today. It’s anchored to sales reps and brand-centric marketing. That model has focused on healthcare providers when they write a prescription.
Today, providers are more overwhelmed and less accessible than ever before. In general, the norm is becoming more personalized and customized. This is true for all kinds of transactions. Customers expect more customization based on their needs, even when they prefer solitude. For these reasons, the “interruption model” is not practical for reps now, nor will it be in the future.
There’s no doubt that pharma’s present commercial model has brought the sector a lot of success. But the approaches and attitudes that pharma employs today are holding us back.
- Everyone—and no one—owns the customer. Reps can’t know about every touchpoint across all functions. Each function and channel has its own goals, and each team has its priorities. So, companies create a siloed, disconnected, and interruption-heavy experience for a given customer.
- A product-first orientation. Pharma continues to measure its success based on products, not customers. It thinks, plans, acts, and measures around product features. It does not focus on customer needs.
- One engagement model. Each customer has their own needs, desires, and journeys through healthcare. While pharma can customize some things, it needs help managing personalization at scale.
- The industry still relies on reps. But, this way is less effective and access is shrinking. These ingrained processes make change seem impossible.
Today’s model cannot support pharma’s future. A new future calls for bold transformation—inside and out.
The Future Commercial Model Will Prepare Pharma to Listen, Predict, and Ac.
The future pharmaceutical model makes customer engagement the organization’s job. It’s not the representatives. It gathers data from listening to and learning from customers. It uses the data to grasp the full customer context, driving its strategy. The goal is to help drug companies. They want to change behavior. They want to engage customers. And they want to do it on a large scale.
Adopting Our Future Model Requires Making These Shifts:
- We collect data. We gather and centralize insights on customers and their context.
We move from brand planning to customer strategy. We use this centralized knowledge and AI. We use them to make custom plans for each customer. They tailor the plans to their context. This applies to all products and teams.
We went from using reps to using them, using the right roles and channels. They help us make personalized customer strategies in real-time. We do it one customer at a time.
This model helps drug companies fix current system flaws. It also helps them drive business results by:
- Accelerating adoption through a focused customer strategy
- Capturing unmet demand with patient journey management solutions
- Strengthening cross-functional coordination
- Enabling more efficient resource deployment
It fosters a customer-centric mindset, institutionalizes customer learning, and creates personalized experiences. Adopting this model sets drug companies apart in a tough landscape. It also helps patients be healthier.
Where Should Pharmaceuticals Start?
This new model requires lasting change. But, pharmaceutical companies can start today without risking current results.
Build the context stream: Centralize knowledge about customers to create personalization at scale. The context stream combines customer insights, observations, needs, trends, environment, experience, and touchpoints. It uses both structured and unstructured data. This helps us understand customers better and improve their experiences.
Listening is the start. Invest in AI and machine learning to turn insights into strategic decisions. For example, use continuous insights. Use them to make algorithms that predict customer actions. Also, use them to recommend smart steps.
Conclusion
Pharma’s change starts today. It has a new sales model. It puts personalized, efficient, and context-driven engagement first. By centralizing customer data and using artificial intelligence. And by shifting from a representative-centric approach. Pharmaceutical companies can fix current system flaws and better meet customer needs. This change will set pharma apart in a tough market. It will ensure long-term success and better health for all. Now is the time to act and build the healthcare future we need.
