Time to Get Personal

With the performance of the sales force directly linked to the bottom line, ensuring representatives are well-motivated and incentivized is a critical ingredient in any company ’s financial health. Yet, with the huge amount of change reshaping the pharma landscape – from digital to patient-centricity and the pressing focus on value – pressure on sales reps has never been greater.In response, there is a growing concern that the way sales reps are incentivized has the potential to lead to unethical selling practices,as has been seen in several high-profile scandals over recent years. Many companies are looking at new ways to motivate their sales force to deliver high-performance and avoid the risk of endangering their reputation.The most notable example is GlaxoSmithKline, which has gone so far as to decouple rep performance from commercial targets as part of a wider change in its commercial model, a development discussed in-depth in a recent eyeforpharma whitepaper,GSK ’s new ‘ethical’ customer approach: Is it delivering?Asdebate rages about the various merits and challenges of the two models– ‘ethical’ (incentives based on relationships) on the one hand and ‘unethical’ (incentives based on sales) on the other – are the voices of individual reps being drowned out?Keep it flexibleMany pharma companies remain unclear about the exact purposes and goals of their motivational processes and so rely entirely on annual ‘ratcheting’ of sales targets based on...
Source: EyeForPharma - Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Source Type: news