Prescriber Centricity: Improving Sales by Identifying Key HCP Interests
Any successful salesperson will tell you that the key to influencing and winning over a potential customer is marketing to that customer’s specific interests. This is especially true in the fast-paced biotech and pharmaceutical industries, with the “customer” in this context representing a target prescriber. In fact, a biotech targeting study pinpointed five types of prescribers based on five corresponding and distinct prescriber interests. Unsurprisingly, the study demonstrated that sales reps who tailor their sales approach to a prescriber's key interest have significantly higher success rates in product adoption compared to those who do not. In this blog post, we will delve into five classifications of key prescriber interests, shedding light on how a sales rep can leverage a prescriber’s primary interest to drive sales.
What Are the Five Types of Prescribers We Can Identify?
Based on the “Prescriber Centricity” sales approach, a prescriber can be classified as a patient-centric prescriber, research-centric prescriber, business-centric prescriber, family-centric prescriber, or other-centric prescriber. Below, we very briefly outline each prescriber type and how a prescriber’s key interest should be leveraged to improve product adoption.
Patient-Centric Prescriber
Patient-centric prescribers want to know how your medication will help their patients. They may want information about the efficacy of your product, its ease of use, details regarding drug pricing and reimbursement, sample availability for patients, etc. In short, with the patient-centric prescriber, it is essential to emphasize the ways in which the medication would benefit the prescriber’s patients.
Research-Centric Prescriber
For the research-centric prescriber, it is of utmost importance to highlight the research and studies conducted for your specific product(s) and therapeutic class. These prescribers pride themselves on staying up-to-date on the research behind the products they prescribe or may prescribe in the future. Helping to provide them with recent research improves the rep’s standing with these prescribers, which ultimately drives product adoption.
Business-Centric Prescriber
These prescribers are primarily concerned with their practice, and the costs associated with their practice. For instance, they want to know the amount of time and money it takes for the office to fill out insurance forms, stock the sample closet, reorder supplies, etc. For these prescribers, helping the front office reduce costs goes a long way. If your medication needs to go through a hub, or requires pre-authorization, anything a rep can do to help the front office adopt your product easier will benefit the rep and sales of the product they’re promoting.
Family-Centric Prescriber
These prescribers are all about family—both his/her family, as well as the rep’s family. Furthermore, if you personally know a family or families that have benefited from using your medication, then it could be advantageous to lead the sales conversation with that information. It is of course critical to work in product information and product benefits, but the overarching theme of the conversation that ties everything together should be family.
Other-Centric Prescriber
The “other-centric” prescriber type encompasses those who are primarily interested in a particular hobby or topic—oftentimes, sports. For example, some prescribers might be primarily interested in soccer. Thus, when relating to these prescribers regarding the benefits of your product, the rep could utilize soccer analogies that incorporate their key interest into the sales approach. Once again, the attention and interest of the prescriber is greatly enhanced by leveraging the prescriber’s primary interest.
Conclusion
The sales rep is the best judge of how their prescriber targets should be classified based on the five prescriber types outlined above. Therefore, the reps should be the ones deciding on the segmentation of these prescribers. After categorizing target prescribers into these five groups, your company’s marketing and sales training leaders can begin developing scripts. These scripts will enable sales reps to apply their understanding of each target's primary interest, tailoring their sales approach accordingly. The impact of this process on product sales and adoption is astounding. Request a free consultation with us today to get started on ensuring your prescribers are being classified into the proper segments and pursued with the most effective selling strategy.
