What you’ll learn
The traditional pharmaceutical sales representative’s role is evolving with AI, enhancing their capabilities for personalized interactions and efficient resource allocation
AI enables pharmaceutical sales representatives to personalize engagement with HCPs and optimize their efforts, leading to improved patient outcomes and a significant reduction in unnecessary touchpoints
The future of pharmaceutical sales lies in AI’s potential to provide real-time support, targeted training, and comprehensive discussions on patient care, requiring companies to navigate ethical and regulatory data challenges for successful integration
Death of the Pharma Rep or the Rise of a New AI-Empowered Rep of the Future?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the pharmaceutical sales landscape. Some see a dark future for the traditional sales representative model. Yet, while the rep’s role is undoubtedly evolving, doom-and-gloom predictions may be premature. AI is not a harbinger of job cuts but rather a tool for reps to deliver higher-value personalized interactions and better patient outcomes.
From Channel to Orchestrator
The old view of the pharma sales rep as an isolated channel for product information is crumbling. Digitally empowered reps can now leverage AI, analytics, and connected platforms to orchestrate fully integrated customer experiences.
This orchestration is critical. Historically, reps juggled siloed data and misaligned messaging across channels and inefficient resource allocation. AI offers a pathway to solve these challenges, but to reap these benefits, pharma needs to understand how AI addresses the current pain points:
Engagement: AI unlocks personalized engagement by sifting through HCP data to identify those most receptive to targeted messaging. This ability goes beyond just matching the right product to the right doctor. It understands the nuances of their practice to offer genuine support and value.
Alignment: Imagine AI bridging the gap between field realities and marketing strategy. Armed with hyper-personalized content tailored to individual doctors informed by AI insights, the rep enters the field better prepared and aligned.
Optimization: Gone are the days of reps wasting time on low-yield prospects or inefficient routes. AI optimizes effort and outreach by analyzing everything from geographical constraints to a doctor’s prescribing history, helping reps focus on the most promising opportunities.
The Case for Change
At Klick, we’ve seen the benefits of the AI-enabled rep firsthand.
We partnered with a top pharma brand to demonstrate the power of the connected, AI-driven rep. The challenge was maximizing a multi-indication campaign while improving and connecting the HCP and field rep experience. The Klick teams helped our client leverage existing tech, such as Databricks, Veeva, and the power of GenAI, to transform their marketing and sales with significant impact.
We established a clear and granular understanding of every personal and non-personal interaction, which was the foundation. We then could alert and inform the rep of digital signals, noting any changes in the practice or HCPs’ behavior or content consumption. These actions enabled the rep to contextualize their message within the HCP’s total brand experience.
Data and insights became bidirectional in near real-time between the home office and the field, using a custom insights dashboard for rep planning and insights and Databricks to empower reps to provide field intelligence back to the home office and help shape the brand’s customer understanding. Reps could request analysis and resegmentation and even trigger automated campaigns from the field.
What was the impact of these changes? The HCP experience improved because of fewer, more relevant, coordinated, and value-focused touchpoints. A test-and-learn approach provided rich feedback about the customers, segmentation, content, sequencing, and prioritization. Insight-informed orchestration reduced touchpoints by almost 50% without negatively impacting prescriptions, freeing up rep time, marketing budget, and resources to target additional customers to drive TRx gains.
The Next Generation of Pharma Sales
And this is just the beginning.
With AI, the rep’s role won’t emphasize memorizing product info or spamming doctors. It will be more about:
Real-time Support: Think of AI assistants providing insights on the fly during meetings and offering AR overlays with complex data visualizations.
Targeted Training: AI can simulate interactions, assess rep-HCP dynamics, and deliver targeted training to address the rep’s individual needs and HCP scenarios and challenges.
Beyond the Drug: AI empowers reps to discuss safety, reimbursement, and other patient-care issues, creating the ideal advisor, not just a product peddler.
Challenges Ahead
The AI revolution won’t be seamless. Pharma companies must address data-hygiene ethical pitfalls and navigate regulatory hurdles. It’s crucial to remember AI is a tool, not a replacement for human judgment. Successful integration hinges on adapting company culture and ensuring reps see AI as empowerment, not a threat.
But the future of pharma sales looks bright for those embracing connectivity, insights, and personalization enabled by AI. It’s about creating meaningful HCP interactions that lead to better patient care. Companies and reps who master the AI-human partnership and focus on high-value activities will gain the competitive edge while leaving those clinging to the old model behind.
Reach out to learn more about how companies are creating a 1+1=3 value proposition by integrating field- and home-office efforts, intelligence, and interactions. We can discuss your unique brands, commercial situation, and how to unlock the most value from people and your tech.
Author
Ryan Slipakoff
Chief Transformation Officer
Ryan is Klick's Chief Transformation Officer, driving innovation, new product development, and accelerating and augmenting Klick’s digital transformation practice. Ryan is an executive partner and sponsor for our clients as they seek to accelerate their commercial maturity, create competitive advantage, and tackle healthcare’s most complex challenges. Ryan is a holistic customer experience expert, blending expertise across strategy, technology, digital, analytics, operations, and data into harmonized solutions and offerings.
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