Detailing “Theme”- A better alternative to conventional detailing “Story”

Manthan D. Janodia

Every pharmaceutical company’s aim is to maximize return on investment (ROI), increase sales and earn decent profit for sustenance and growth of the company.

Pharmaceutical companies have to primarily depend on personal selling to promote their products in the market as the target audience and customers are different, who are not the end users but merely influencers. These influencers are medical practitioners referred to as doctors or physicians by general public.

Companies direct all their efforts to sell the products to these distinct class of customers and train the field force to take on the task of promoting products to highly skilled and knowledgeable customers. Hence pharmaceutical selling is distinct from other kinds of selling. It requires specialized efforts by the pharmaceutical companies to carve a niche for themselves in the marketplace with a great number of players in the market vying constantly and fiercely for better market share.

Promotion efforts in pharmaceutical industry:

Promotion efforts in pharmaceutical industry are typical, as it is not directed to the end user but the influencer – the physician. Promotion of pharmaceutical products can traditionally be done with four techniques viz, personal selling, advertising, sales promotion and publicity. Out of these four techniques, only personal selling is the most effective and primarily used techniques of promoting pharmaceutical products. Other techniques are used but they are used during special circumstances and are used to achieve short-term objectives of the company rather than long-term objectives. Thus, advertising, publicity and sales promotion is used secondary to support the main technique, personal selling. Advertising of prescription drugs is permitted in United States with prior approval and permission of FDA but in India advertising is restricted according to Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954 and can be used only to promote OTC (Over The Counter) drugs that are used for minor ailments and not for prescription drugs. Thus, to promote prescription products to doctors through personal selling, use of supporting aids is required and “detailing charts” are widely and commonly used tools. Almost every company designs these detailing charts and thus, field force of pharmaceutical companies are armored with the detailing charts to take on the task of promoting company’s products. Apart from detailing chart, leave behind literature (LBL) and newsletters are provided by the companies to doctors.

Pharmaceutical product detailing: An art coupled with science

Once the companies select right candidates for the job of medical representative (MR), virtually every company provides them with induction training. This induction training, basically, is used to train newly selected medical representatives of the company. The training program includes various aspects of pharmaceutical promotion. It involves contribution of various departments of the company such as medical department, marketing department, Product Management Team (popularly known as PMT) and training department. Of these departments, role of PMT is important. Training includes imparting knowledge in the areas of anatomy, physiology and pharmacology. During this training program medical representatives also face the simulated conditions, which resembles the actual marketing scenario. Medical representatives are asked to detail in front of people from training department who act as doctors. Medical representatives are asked to “crammer” the detailing “story” provided to them by the marketing, PMT and training departments. In the process, it so happens that medical representative crammer the “story” in such a way that when he goes to fieldwork, he starts explaining to doctor about the disease including etiology, epidemiology and mode of action of drug!!! So frequently it happens that medical representative of some companies start detailing with explaining, “what is diabetes or hypertension and how it happens” to a diabetologist or a cardiologist respectively!!![1] This may be detrimental to the company as doctor is irked by medical representative of that company and feel offended. End result is losing of sales for the company as sometimes doctors’ stop prescribing product for that company. Thus detailing of pharmaceutical products is an art coupled with science and medical representative must know which tune to play to which doctor.

Need for change in conventional detailing:

As we have seen that pharmaceutical marketing is distinct, the main aim of pharmaceutical marketing or, for instance, any marketing activity is to inform customer about the product, more specifically the brand, and manage to “hook” or register the brand in customers’ minds. This could be achieved only with the help of promotion. In pharmaceutical market with a clutter of products, it is virtually impossible for a doctor or physician to remember all brands. This could be substantiated by looking at number of brands available in the market for the same molecule or drug. To register a brand in customers’ minds, recourse adopted by the companies is personal selling, the most essential and vital aspect of pharmaceutical marketing. In pharmaceutical marketing, it is difficult to convince your customer i.e. doctors to try the product as many “me too” products are available and number of representatives visiting physicians is increasing day by day. Then how can a company fair better in registering the brand in customers’ minds? The idea of a product or brand has to be based on some “theme” or “story” associated with brand as it becomes easy for the physician to relate brand with a particular theme or story. This is easy to achieve for company as training medical representative becomes easier, which ultimately arouses interest in medical representatives during training and can easily relate brand with a story. This will eventually be reflected in the marketplace- in doctors’ chamber- which is real battlefield for the medical representative.

Promoting brand with theme or story - better alternative to conventional detailing:

Instead, companies should focus on developing “detailing theme” as this detailing theme can be modified according to the specialty of doctor, time available in doctor’s chamber, rapport with doctor. Detailing theme helps to tailor the detailing of product according to the needs of the customer i.e. doctors. Detailing theme should be based on broad objectives; the pictorial depiction in detailing chart should be in synchronization with the message to be conveyed to the doctor. Thus, it becomes easy for medical representative to remember the theme of detailing rather than entire detailing story. It is easy for company representative to identify a brand with a theme than “cram” the entire “story”. Once medical representative is explained about what each pictorial or graph in detailing chart indicates pertaining to a product, he can tailor the detailing according to the situation he is faced with. According to the specialization of doctors and time available in doctors’ chamber, he can detail the product.  Extending knowledge about detailing theme would reduce or minimize blunders like explaining about disease condition to specialist doctors as mentioned. This would save time, resources and efforts of the company. Detailing theme also avoids the monotonous repetition of “detailing story” by medical representative every time he meets doctor. As against detailing story, “detailing theme” would add creativity each time MR visits doctor and doctor would also be interested in listening to MR. All the departments of pharmaceutical companies involved in training of MRs should try to evolve “detailing theme” that would help MRs to be specific and would spare doctors from monotonous and repetitive “crammed” story every time MR visits doctor. Further, it is evident that in electronic media when products are advertised, they are linked with some theme and thus, the recall value of the brand is more with theme attached to brand. Same concept could be extended to pharmaceutical brands when promoting products personally in doctors chamber.

Advantages of detailing theme:

Some advantages of detailing theme could be cited as follows:

• Avoids repetitive and monotonous detailing
• Attracts doctors’ attention
• Can leads to discussion with MR and thereby arousing interest about the product
• Helps to register “brand” of the company easily as it is linked with a theme
• Medical Representative would enjoy “learning” during training period in the company
• Helps MRs to develop good rapport with doctors easily

Conclusion:

It is imperative that training of medical representatives with “detailing theme” rather than “detailing story” is advantageous to pharmaceutical companies. Further, with help of detailing theme, other supportive materials like LBL and newsletters could be effectively and appropriately used. What is required is willingness of companies to break the mould of adopting practice of detailing story. With help of detailing theme, company’s MR would be able to capture attention of doctor and can actually engage him in discussion. Once the doctor is engaged in discussion, he would be willing to provide information that is of vital importance to company and companies can amend their products to suit the needs of the customers.

[1] Based on discussion with one Senior Faculty of the College, Dr. J.Venkata Rao, who actually witnessed this incident in a doctor's chamber.

About Authors:

Manthan D. Janodia^{1 *}, Udupa. N¹, D.Sreedhar¹, Ajay Pise¹, Virendra S.Ligade¹, Venkata Rao J.²

¹ Dept. of Pharmacy Management, Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Manipal 576 104, Karnataka, India

²  Dept. of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Manipal 576 104, Karnataka, India

* For correspondence email : mdjanodia1978@yahoo.co.in

Authors are associated with Department of Pharmacy Management, Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, Karnataka, India. Authors are actively involved in teaching subjects on pharmaceutical marketing and management. Authors have played key role in establishing this department since last few years and has been actively involved in the area of pharmaceutical marketing, pharmaceutical branding and other areas of pharmaceutical field like Regulatory affairs etc. Authors have published various articles on pharmaceutical field in various journal of repute. In addition papers pertaining to pharmaceutical marketing are presented in various national conferences.