In-market detailing pilot tests leadership hypothesis

Client

Global Healthcare Company

Situation

The client, a small but profitable division of a global healthcare organization, was facing the decline of its largest product. As a compounder and distributor of specialty pharmaceuticals, the client did not have its own sales organization calling on physicians who referred patients for the procedure that utilized this drug. And, since the drug was now generic, there was no one detailing physicians on the value of the procedure. The hypothesis that senior leadership at the client organization wanted to test was: If we hire a sales team to detail physicians on the procedure, utilization of the procedure, and thus the associated drug, will increase, irrelevant of the pharmaceutical brand.

Solution

Hire Leverage Point Advisors (LPA) to develop and implement a pilot to test the hypothesis in a small number of markets and measure the results. LPA recommended a full-year in-market pilot in three geographically dispersed markets with differing market dynamics.

Development of the pilot took six months and included an advisory board with six key opinion leaders to gather input into messaging; recruiting, hiring, training and certifying a contract-selling organization to deliver the physician details; development of sales messages and materials; and regular updates to the client leadership team. While the pilot was in the field, LPA held regular progress updates with the contract sales representatives, answered questions and provided guidance to the representatives, fielded a qualitative market research study to supplement pilot performance data, and delivered quarterly progress updates and recommendations for pilot modifications to the client leadership team.

Upon completion of the pilot, LPA presented a formal recommendation to the client leadership team and delivered a final report with all supporting materials for the client’s historical files.

Results

Based on the pilot market performance, LPA did not recommend an expansion of the pilot into additional markets. There were multiple market factors contributing to the product’s decline that were identified as part of this pilot. Most could not be addressed by detailing the referring physicians. The client accepted the recommendation and assigned internal resources to address the findings and key learnings from the pilot.

Although the original hypothesis was disproven, the client was able to use the findings from this pilot to stabilize the decline in their key product line and even saw minor growth in procedures the year following the pilot.