Customer engagement and pharma’s field force future

How healthcare professionals (HCPs) prefer to engage with pharma companies has been changing for some time, and COVID’s digital transformation of society has dramatically accelerated this. The continuation of these existing trends has important implications for all aspects of field force planning and execution, from segmentation to targeting, call planning to incentive compensation. Meanwhile, the complexity of the prescriber, payer, and provider landscape continues to increase. This complex landscape requires multiple touchpoints between various pharma field roles and customer office roles and a new approach to the traditional frequency-based pharma communications.

This pharmaphorum webinar – in association with Axtria – took place on Wednesday 14^th April from 16:00-17:00 BST / 11:00-12:00 EDT and looked at customer engagement and the future of pharma’s field force. The webinar discussed how the right field force training and execution, in combination with the appropriate technology, can help transform this field force engagement model. Focus The webinar also covered:

• Pharma-specific data on changing customer preferences
• Customer landscape and pharma field force touchpoints
• Ensuring field force engagements are customer-centric
• Providing relevant messaging to the right customer at the right time

View the webinar* on demand by clicking on the link in the window above or by clicking here. Our Panel Vandana Singh, principal, commercial excellence at Axtria, has over 20 years of experience in various strategy, operations, and analytical roles in the pharmaceutical industry. She joined Axtria from Bristol-Myers Squibb, where she held a variety of positions with increasing levels of responsibility and during the BMS-Celgene integration led the insight generation and recommendations for re-branding BMS. Before joining BMS, Vandana worked at Sanofi-Aventis in multiple field force effectiveness roles for four years and at ZS Associates for five years. Steve Green, head of sales operations, neuroscience at Takeda, has been with the company for 22 years and has held roles in sales and sales operations leadership. He has established expertise in all areas defined as sales force effectiveness and in his current role of director, sales force effectiveness for the neuroscience business unit.  He supports two sales teams (specialty and primary care) with approximately 800 representatives. Manvendra Singh, senior director, head of sales innovation, international operations at Novo Nordisk is an award winning global pharmaceutical healthcare executive with proven leadership skills in delivering outstanding commercial results and change management (coaching and mentoring top leadership teams with best-in-class commercial practices) in emerging and developed markets. He is a subject matter expert in commercial effectiveness with experience in setting up and running commercial effectiveness departments at global and regional level for innovative and established pharmaceuticals. Dany Labrecque, global biopharma independent advisor / consultant has spent most of his 30-year career at Bristol-Myers Squibb leading business teams across multiple geographies around the world. He was most-recently worldwide vice-president of field force excellence and capabilities at BMS, during which he successfully centralised its field force training organisation and established worldwide capabilities, across commercial and medical, to enhance business performance globally. He is also a staunch advocate for inclusion and diversity, and mentors many young and aspiring leaders. Melchior Mpanjo-Penda, head of sales force excellence, incentives & compensation at Sanofi has more than 25 years experience in the pharmaceutical industry, working across brand management, marketing, sales support, and international & global programs management. His specialties include pharmaceutical product management, marketing planning & execution, sales forecasting, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), reporting, team building and advanced analytics and datamining. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by Melchior during this panel discussion are personal views / opinions and do not reflect the official policy or position of any of his current or past employers. Dominic Tyer, interim managing editor, pharmaphorum [moderator] Dominic Tyer is a trained journalist and editor with over 20 years of pharmaceutical and healthcare publishing experience. He serves as interim managing editor at pharmaphorum media, which facilitates productive engagement for pharma, bringing healthcare together to drive medical innovation. He is also creative and editorial director at the company’s specialist healthcare content consultancy, pharmaphorum connect.