"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication." Western Union management, 1876. Western Union's last telegram was transmitted in 2006. "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." Sir William Preece, technical manager of the British Post Office, 1876.
I have found many references to erroneous predictions on the net, but I have had no official confirmation that these predictions were actually made by the people mentioned. The very fact, however, that they circulate persistently gives the sense of something that readers find credible. There are more reasonable and useful predictions. Making predictions under certain conditions is very complex, almost always indispensable and part of our role.
If in medicine you can make predictions based on experience and clinical evidence, in the same way you can make predictions in pharma marketing in Italy based on science. You have to act even if you do not have enough information to make reasonable predictions. The use of the telephone in Pharmaceutical Sales Rep in Italy was certainly a groundbreaking moment, but why is it that, from the moment of its first adoption in Italy until today, many managers still do not trust it?
An analysis of doctors' behaviour and experience confirms that about seventy-five per cent of doctors willingly adhere to Pharmaceutical Sales Representative via telephone. What holds managers back from adoption is execution. Execution is all about the relationship. A phone call cannot shift the prescription, nor can a single visit from the Pharmaceutical Sales Rep in Italy or a single communication via e-mail or post.
Effective telephone Pharmaceutical Sales Representative requires five things:
- A Remote Pharmaceutical Representative in Italy who is well trained, experienced and specialised in the use of the telephone and web medium: to create true telephone empathy
- A perfect profiled database: to know who to call
- A model call guide or call script as appropriate: to recruit the doctor with a seductive and useful Pharmaceutical Sales Representative
- A powerful and complete CRM system, connected with CATI platforms, web calls, video shares, video meetings: to enable the remote Remote Pharmaceutical Representative in Italy to use multimedia and engage the doctor
- Compliance with all laws, standards, prescriptions, certifications, adherence to organisational models, obligations: it sounds trivial, but it is not.
It will not appear strange to many that only the first point is specific to the medium. Making the Remote Pharmaceutical Representative in Italy work in synchrony with the other media is then a different challenge.