Sales Staffing and Realignment
Companies routinely realign sales forces – expanding them, contracting them and otherwise shifting resources throughout the sales organization – to keep pace with company product launches and disruptive industry events. As seen in [the accompanying chart], 66% of the companies surveyed for this research reported a major realignment or restructuring that occurred within the last 12 months.

These realignments include changes driven by a variety of factors unique to different companies and drug markets:
• One company’s oncology division added 45 reps to cover a new product launch
• One company split its ObGyn force into two groups to absorb and combine field forces brought together by a corporate merger
• One company realigned its territories to refocus reps on high-potential targets
• One company added a new division to its immunology franchise
• One company filled out a third primary care sales force and made plans to add a specialty force
• One company changed its target list to accommodate a shift toward specific products
• One company contracted several sales groups and shifted reps to mass market primary care as a result of patent expirations

Much has been written about an industry trend toward smaller sales forces, and interviewed sales executives spoke about the importance of downsizing mirrored sales pods. The days of four or five reps detailing the same drug to the same doctor may be drawing to a close, in other words, as sales strategies stress relationship-based, consultative selling over repetition and overwhelming numbers.

Nonetheless – and although companies continually shuffle their sales resources – such sentiments have not translated into widespread reductions in raw sales headcounts. [Another chart] shows companies’ sales forces growth and contraction over the last 12 months…

To read more, see Chapter 1 of “Pharmaceutical Sales Management 2008.”