Executives from pharmaceutical companies and health care payer and provider organizations convened at the "Selling Pharmaceuticals in 2015" forum in Philadelphia to discuss mutually beneficial partnerships that, if implemented, could replace the traditional model of selling drugs on price, features and benefits with a new model that focuses on quantifying and communicating total value.
"Under the traditional model, pharmaceutical companies were focused primarily on getting to the sale," says Angela Bakker Lee, principal with global management consulting firm ZS Associates and chairperson of the forum. "Today, however, they need to place greater emphasis on supporting what happens after a prescription is written. Working with payers and providers to achieve better results for patients will enable forward-thinking pharmaceutical companies to truly differentiate themselves from the competition."
Organized by ZS Associates and eyeforpharma, a leading provider of pharmaceutical business intelligence, the "Selling Pharmaceuticals in 2015" forum attracted senior-level executives from pharmaceutical companies, as well as executives from prominent payer and provider organizations. The event also featured leaders from a range of other industries, including executives from United Airlines, eBay and IBM. In open forums throughout the day, these sales and marketing leaders shared insights from their experience implementing value-based customer partnerships. They also offered suggestions for how the pharmaceutical industry could adapt current operations and revamp their commercial model to deliver greater value.
"There's a unique opportunity today for pharmaceutical companies to join with payers and providers to innovate and to build better solutions together than either could deliver independently," Bakker Lee said. "Thanks to the cross-industry best-practice sharing at the Philadelphia event, we're confident participants walked away with new-found optimism about the possibility of working together."
An Urgent Need to Adapt
While pharmaceutical companies worldwide face increased price pressures and market access restrictions, they still need to drive earnings growth. According to Torsten Bernewitz, principal with ZS Associates, one of the most effective ways for them to do this is to work with payers and providers — for instance, to support patients in ways that improve compliance and persistence and reduce total healthcare utilization.
A few leading pharmaceutical companies have already taken steps down this path by implementing new account management strategies that focus on "key" accounts. So far, however, most companies have implemented key account management (KAM) narrowly, using it to improve processes, coordination or stakeholder management in one or two lines of business.