Next Best Action has been one of the most important approaches for sales in recent years, including for pharmaceuticals. But because selling pharma is significantly different than selling other products, pharma-oriented NBA approaches need to be significantly more sophisticated than NBA for other industries. Pharma sales teams looking to implement NBA need to embrace an updated, data-driven version of this approach, known as NBA 2.0, along with the appropriate tools, including advanced AI and data analytics platforms.
Advanced NBA 2.0 strategies utilize and analyze data on products, customers, customer needs, presentation models, and much more to develop the most effective way to discover, approach, communicate with, and present to potential and existing customers. When done right, data-based NBA 2.0 enables sales teams to zero in on exactly what customers are looking for – and how to communicate with them at every step of the sales journey.
Advanced NBA should be tailored for the pharma sector
While it’s often said that a good salesperson can sell anything, that is definitely not the case in pharma, where there are extra challenges and specific expertise needed. Sales teams need to keep abreast of new developments in research, regulatory issues, academic and field studies, clinical trial results, customer client bases, and much more – and any NBA approach used by pharma sales teams needs to include this rich variety of data from multiple sources in its analysis, with campaigns and approaches to each customer relating to how these issues affect specific customers.
Just as the data pharma sales teams rely on is more varied and complex than the data required in other businesses, so are the customers – thus requiring a more sophisticated approach. For example, large HCP offices – who are likely to be the chief customers of many pharma sales teams – are large organizations with large budgets. As such, they are the targets of a wide range of companies trying to sell them everything from pharmaceuticals to medical equipment to patient entertainment systems.
Effective NBA 2.0 uses AI and data to improve communication with customers
Today, most companies utilize every conceivable communication channel to convince HCPs and other customers to adopt their solutions, and these care providers are thus inundated with messages, overwhelming them with a huge amount of data – much of which is often ignored because of its sheer mass. In addition, the channels used by sales teams – email, text or video messages, social media – may not be the ones that decision-makers in the organization use, meaning that the people sales teams need to reach may not even see their messages at all.
An NBA best practices approach to sales would solve this pain point. With the support of a specialized and tailored data platform, pharma companies can consider all aspects of the sale from a variety of sources that paint a full picture of the customers and their needs. This would include what messages customers need to hear about the things that concern them the most (such as medicine’s side effects, regulatory issues, budget considerations, etc.), to whom or which group sales teams need to direct their messages, what channels would be best to utilize, and more. Fueled with this data, which is analyzed with AI and machine-learning based algorithms, advanced NBA 2.0 can guide teams on all steps of the sales journey – what initial messages to present, how to present them, how best to design a message in order to elicit a response, what to do in the case of objections, and how best to close a sale.
Another advantage of an advanced and updated NBA 20 approach is a greater ability to communicate clearly with customers, and a greater understanding of the sales process for teams. Each step of the sales journey is laid out clearly, with data supporting each move, response, and reaction. Customers get clearer data about what pharma companies are offering, and sales teams are able to move forward intelligently, methodically following through on their efforts until completion of deals.
In addition, effective AI-driven data analytics platforms help sales teams with ad-hoc suggestions, recommendations, and alerts on the Next Best Action, simplifying and streamlining the sales process. Instead of trying to make sales with a piecemeal, reactive approach, sales teams utilizing a proactive, updated NBA approach are equipped with an overall plan to help them achieve their goals – enabling them to work in a more organized manner, anticipating and planning for each step in the sales journey.
Pharma companies need to look externally for AI platforms that enable NBA 2.0
It is clear that a great deal of data – from a wide variety of sources – needs to be gathered and analyzed in order to develop an effective NBA sales plan, and algorithms need to be designed to provide direction for various aspects of the sales journey, from customer acquisition to presentation to customer retention. This kind of algorithm development would be a challenge even for companies that specialize in AI, much less for pharmaceutical firms. And any AI resources within the organization are far more likely to go to pharmaceutical R&D than to sales. Ultimately, building a data development and analysis project for sales teams is often out of the question, even for the biggest pharmaceutical firms.
Given these challenges, pharma sales teams should work with an AI-based data analysis platform provider. This will enable them to use machine learning-based tools, including the algorithms they need to develop NBA plans. Such platforms enable information from various sources – both from within the organization and from other external sources – to be assimilated into large databases that can analyze thousands of data points from millions of pharma sales efforts, providing the best results for sales teams on who exactly approach, based on the types of patients they see; how to approach customers; what communication channels to utilize; how to develop messages; how to handle objections; and how to close sales. With NBA best practices, pharma teams get a clear direction on how to accomplish all this – and significantly increase the likelihood that they will be successful.
About Doron Aspitz
Doron is a passionate, visionary executive with 20+ years of leadership experience in disruptive, fast-growing technology companies in dynamic markets. He specializes in building and expanding early-stage companies with a customer-centric approach. As the CEO of Verix for the past 15 years, it has been his mission to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies use data to provide better, more comprehensive care to millions of patients worldwide. As a tribute to his contributions to the industry, Doron was awarded “Pioneer of the Year” by Call Center Magazine.
