Optimum Ventas – Business Case Healthcare
Starting situation
A French multinational pharmaceutical contacts “Optimum” to evaluate its proposal for solving the decrease in its sales and the low performance of its commercial team.
The starting point was that this company was in a situation of decrease in nationwide sales asymmetrically in the 2 territories in which they had divided Spain. (East and West)
Customers of this lab are a finite number of medical specialists. Theseprescribers are starting new treatments in patientsthat are maintainedforlong.
Patients beginning treatment should be treated on a monthly basis for 5 years to significantly improve their quality of life. The laboratory business is based on the doctors that start their new treatments with its products, and that keep the therapies already initiated, actively.
This situation made that the sales team will base its sales performance, more on PR than planning its commercial activity and its scientific / commercial approach of the doctor visits.
Both the National Sales Manager and the Area Managers were not able to give a concrete answer to the General Manager on how they had obtained the results of the last period and how they would evolve sales in the coming years.
The General Manager, in addition to the problem of the decrease in sales, had no visibility into why, and his management team was not able to prepare a contingency plan
Optimum proposal
Optimum proposed an audit of the sales department, to accurately determine the current situation of the company and establish a plan of action.
Performance of the team of consultants from Optimum
- The consultant team from Optimum conducted a commercial audit where they evaluated the following aspects:
- The current market and the doctor specialists potential.
- The potential of the 2 commercial territories.
- The laboratory situation compared to its direct competitors and laboratories with molecules substitutive treatments.
- The delegates structure’s composition.
- The skills of the sales team.
- What were and how the delegates execute the business processes: capturing new customers, cross-selling, increasing the use of the product, customer loyalty and customer retention.
- The KPI Business Performance.
- The way to analyze data and make decisions of Area Managers and National Sales Manager.
- The effects of the product marketing campaigns and PR with the doctors.
From the results of the commercial audit and from the Lab General Manager the following decisions were taken:
- First, a commercial redistribution of territories, so that the commercial potential of them was symmetrical.
- Second, an adjustment of commercial structure, according to the New Territories and the actual market potential was made.
- Third, it became a new definition, in phases and performance indicators, of the various commercial processes that the team of delegates should run.
- Fourth, a homogeneous commercial management model was implanted and adjusted to the market, to the laboratory, and to the definition of new commercial processes to enable an analysis and decision making based on the KPI defined by Optimum.
- Fifth, the orientation of the communication marketing campaigns changed. We changed the way of communication, from a mere explanation of the product characteristics, to the patient benefits obtained by the use of the laboratory products.
- Sixth, the formation of the entire sales team was started. (National Sales Manager, Area Managers, and delegates)
Results
Our collaboration on this project was of 2 years and the result was the sustained sales growth in a declining market situation (increased share), a commercial team focusing its activities on those aspects that contributed commercial results and a team of intermediate managers with an analysis methodology that allowed them to respond to the General Manager and to establish specific action plans that guaranteed them the achievement of its goals.