First published in Pharma Industry 3/2023, September 2023. Republished in full, translated from the Swedish original.
The argument is that the thin segment descriptions handed down from head office work for a sales rep who already knows the customer and fail for everyone else, and that the fix is a persona built jointly by sales, marketing and medical, used as the focal point every discussion returns to. The two failure modes it names, circular meetings that fall back on the product, and groups using the same words to mean different things, are described without reference to any tool, platform or year, so a reader can judge for themselves whether they recognise them.
Three things need checking before anyone acts on them, and this note names all three, because naming only some would leave the rest looking settled. First, the data. The article proposes segmenting named healthcare professionals on prescribing behaviour, on demographic information such as age and gender, and on how they have acted in digital settings, and it does not set out what the legal basis for holding and combining that would be. Take that to your own data protection function before building the segmentation, not after. Second, the sequence in the worked example, where a rep meets the customer, sends the follow-up that is already in the communication plan, and then tells medical affairs so the colleague there can take step three. How far medical can be sequenced into a commercial plan is set by your own code of practice and your own compliance function, and the article treats that question as out of scope throughout. Third, the piece is written from inside the author's own method: ABC+ is his workshop model, the article says so, and the recommendation runs towards it.
Two of the article's own moves are worth knowing about as you read it. The difficulty of getting agreement in pharma is established with an anecdote from the author's own workshops, roughly 15 minutes to settle on a role with a B2B group against up to an hour and a half with a pharmaceutical company, and that comparison has no source beyond his own practice. Further down, the case that the method works rests on the sentence that this alignment arises every time, in every workshop, and the article closes by saying it has been proven again and again, neither of which is evidenced. What the conclusion builds on is the anecdote and that claim about every workshop; the line about it having been proven again and again sits inside the conclusion itself and is not separate support for it. Two further quantitative claims about the industry sit in that same conclusion, that the basics are completely different today from what they were ten years ago and that the race started fifteen years ago, and neither carries a source either. The three references at the end are given as author, year and a summary, without journal, publisher or link, and the neuroscience of memory and attention that the summary section says the series took its route through is not cited in this part at all, so a reader who wants to check any of it will have to go looking.
That we reach the right individual with the right message, in the right format, at the right moment is something we know is decisive for the success of our medicines. It is a fact, combined of course with solid and favourable results in phase 3 and phase 4 studies. But where the latter is a given, otherwise we would not have a product on the market, the former continues to be a large problem. In this article and an earlier one, Fredrik Holmboe, speaker and digital strategist in the pharmaceutical industry, explores the different types of customer segment used by pharmaceutical companies, the challenges and the opportunities that come with customer segmentation done properly, and the importance of a clear focal point for breaking down the silo structures we all know are there and increasing the cooperation between the sales, marketing and medical departments. You will find the first part of this two-part series in Pharma Industry 2/2023 (see under Utgåvor on pharma-industry.se).
In today's pharmaceutical industry, customer segmentation is a decisive strategy for working effectively with healthcare professionals (HCP) and driving sales. Segmentation is no longer only the sales department's area of responsibility, though. To create effective communication strategies that resonate with HCPs, both the marketing and the medical departments have to play a key role in the segmentation process too.
Sales reps still play a decisive role when it comes to gathering and sharing detailed segmentation data with their organisations. By capturing information about HCPs' prescribing behaviour, practice characteristics, attitudes and content preferences, the reps can give the marketing and medical departments the insights they need to develop messages and material tailored to the specific needs of different customer segments.
Customer segmentation means dividing customers into distinct groups based on shared characteristics, such as their specialty or therapy area, prescribing behaviour, demographic information and clinic affiliation, factors that are part of the classic CVM (Customer Value Matrix) segmentation where customers are segmented on potential and on development along the "adaption ladder" that has been defined and that is used as a measure by the sales organisation.
After that we have attitude and behaviour characteristics, which form a behavioural segmentation, often grounded in behavioural patterns that have shown up in interaction at physical meetings together with how an individual has acted in digital settings.
Each one of these customer segments has unique needs and preferences, and effective segmentation strategies require a deep understanding of them. An understanding no single department can muster on its own, and which instead needs searching cross-functional work with time for discussion around a clear focal point. So that the discussion does not fall back on the message and the product, but puts the Persona that represents the segment at the centre.
Although customer segmentation is a critical strategy for pharmaceutical companies, it also brings several challenges. One of the biggest is the need to balance the competing demands of different customer segments.
As an industry we are used to trying to meet the whole market with the whole of our message. We are not trained to differentiate our message to the extent a digital world requires, we have run "one-size-fits-all" for decades.
And now we have the goal of creating personally adapted engagement strategies that deliver communication with the right content, in the right channel, in the right format, at the right moment.
How should we prioritise our time and how should we prioritise our budget?
Take just a few quick examples. Are we able to develop messages that:
How should we balance product communication with communication "above the brand"?
What is most relevant? And for whom is the thing we are focusing on relevant?
Another challenge is the need to continuously refine and optimise segmentation strategies as customer needs and preferences develop over time. We have to be able to adapt to changing market conditions and take in new data sources, new data, new insights from that data, in our segmentation strategies in order to stay ahead of the competition.
Despite these challenges there are also significant opportunities that come with customer segmentation.
In the previous part of this series I describe two different scenarios, a sales rep's physical meeting with the customer in the room and the virtual meeting with the customer, and how those two differ on some genuinely fundamental levels.
Among other things we have established that a skilled rep can make a "dull" sales campaign interesting through the way they act, a way of acting that is not transferable to a virtual meeting.
We have also established that customer segmentation with a relatively thin description of a segment is an inheritance we have to challenge today.
That is because the thin description works for the rep who knows their customer, but it does not work for a marketer who has to create relevant (and here I refer to the previous article where I reflect on what "relevant" really means) communication over time for the customer.
So now we take the reasoning a step further and bring the marketing department into the mix.
The idea is that in the pharmaceutical industry customer segmentation is used to develop targeted marketing and communication strategies that resonate with different customer segments. Personally adapted market communication is the goal to the extent that it is possible, and we are talking about omnichannel marketing.
But we all know we are not there, and many are wondering how we get there.
In fact I think every commercial organisation is wondering exactly that, or definitely ought to be wondering and discussing exactly that, and that many commercial organisations, above all in the pharmaceutical industry, do not have any really good answers.
Because if no solution is found for how the personally adapted delivery of the sales campaign by the rep, in the room, can be replicated in the communication from the marketing department so that this communication is personally adapted too, you are standing still. And today standing still means the same as going backwards, becoming less competitive and eventually starting to see your market share fall.
It is in order to get relevant, personally adapted communication from the marketing department as well that customer segmentation has to work, and then, most important of all, without creating too much change in the cooperation with the European or global organisation.
Would you not agree?
When a problem exists that stays around for a long time, like this one about how hard it is to get relevant, personally adapted communication out of the marketing departments, I am now going to get a little personal.
I am now getting personal about my vision. You with the red personality, skip to the next subheading.
What drives me, what made me set a personal vision of being in one way or another a driving factor towards better market communication from pharmaceutical companies in Sweden, is that at the end of 2011 I ran straight into what is called "the wall". Hard. And it took me a long time to come back.
I connect a large part of why that happened to the processes around market communication, and the cooperation between the sales, marketing and medical departments, not being efficient enough.
A year or so after I started working again I gave my first lecture, that was in 2014 in front of a small, lovely group at NetDoktor's office, and something under a year after that I dared to send an article off to Niclas and Patrik, the founders of the magazine Pharma Industry, which is much more frightening, because an article is something I cannot change once it is in print.
So I write, I lecture and I do as much as I can to learn more that I can then pass on, all in the hope that it will lead to a small change here, a small adjustment in how a question is framed there, and how in the end, through many small streams, that will meet my vision.
Sometimes it feels like banging my head against a wall. It is after all the pharmaceutical industry we are focusing on here, and it is perhaps a little telling that today I still use certain presentation slides from my first lecture in 2014.
But I love what I do, and I will not stop for many years yet, and every bit of support or feedback, every challenging question, every request to come and speak or to be part of a project that I get is so enormously valuable.
And being personal in the way I have just been under this heading is something I would like to see more of. I see it as courage to be who you are and to be authentic.
Now back to this business of discussing winning or disappearing on the strength of customer segmentation.
Think about this in your next working meetings where you focus on something digital. Does the dialogue at some point start turning into some form of circular pattern?
What do I mean by a circular pattern?
Well, it is when there is a lot of "we ought to", "we have to", "that sounds good" and "this needs doing". Or formulations like those, where they do not really lead to any clear tasks to carry out. The meeting does not feel like as effective a meeting as it could have been. And it is relatively common at this point for the group to fall back on what is a safe, shared place, which is the medicine and the medicine's benefits and USPs.
Do you recognise that, or do you think you will recognise it in future?
I have experienced it on a number of occasions in all kinds of different organisations, situations and constellations. And what has turned out to be the solution in many cases is getting a shared ground for the group to stand on, and I will touch on some of the parts of such a shared ground.
What has happened now during the pandemic is that so much has changed, new terms have become current, new processes have appeared, new digital resources such as websites, analytics tools, tracking systems, dashboards and more have become everyday things that we are simply expected to understand how to work with.
This is when a shared semantic ground to stand on is above all needed, where semantics is the study of the relation between linguistic signs (words) and their meaning.
As an example of this I usually take "email marketing". What is email marketing? What makes email marketing good? What are the absolutely fundamental must-haves for making email marketing work? What are the finer details that lift every KPI? How do we balance content focused on the product and content "above the brand"? Which data should we use to optimise continuously, and what does optimisation actually look like in email marketing?
We all have some form of ongoing email marketing, but I would bet that if you looked into the questions above in a working group you would find many different interpretations.
If the working group does not have a shared semantic ground to stand on, where the subject they are discussing and the words they use carry the same meaning and sense for everyone, circular discussions come easily, with a near guaranteed inside-out perspective and a product focus in the initiatives that eventually get carried out.
The next reason a working group is less effective is that it lacks a focal point for the discussion. A focal point that, like the semantics, means everyone in the group has a shared understanding of what is actually being discussed and how it is to be used.
What do I mean by a focal point?
Well, a focal point is the "object" of the discussion that everyone knows, knows what it is and knows how it is to be used, which is needed in order to create progress and carry the dialogue forward. In this context that "object" is a Persona. A proper and easily understood description of the recipient of the communication being discussed.
Here I break off with a quick anecdote. When I run workshops according to our ABC+ model with B2B organisations, it usually takes around 15 minutes to agree on which role (for us: segment) you want to focus on, and the group can jointly describe, in broad terms, why they want to focus on that role.
When I have run exactly the same exercise at pharmaceutical companies, that exercise has sometimes taken up to an hour and a half.
Why?
Well, because at the pharmaceutical company there are more factors to take a position on than in a B2B context. Differences between geographic areas, size of clinic, access to care resources and more. In fact the factors listed at the start of this article.
So skilled sales reps, well educated people and in no way less capable than the ones at the B2B companies, rather the opposite, take longer to land on a shared view of which role (for us: segment) they want to focus on. And by extension, take longer to be able to describe, jointly and in broad terms, why they want to focus on that particular role.
With that anecdote as an introduction to the difficulties that exist in creating a shared focal point, we now take the next step to what is probably the greatest source of confusion in commercial communication in our industry.
To begin with there is a difficulty in choosing a role with a shared view of why.
But difficulties are also to be found in what you have as a group to discuss and work from, which is the thin segment descriptions we have all received from a head office somewhere and have one view or another about. Segment descriptions that rarely represent the market we see and work in, and that even more rarely are genuinely relevant to our commercial communication.
Here you may be thinking that the segments we have to work from actually are useful and are used every day by our organisation to drive our business. If you are in that thought, I would ask you to stop and consider whether the segments that exist are useful for steering product-related information, or whether they actually form the basis for "all other" communication.
The communication that is usually appreciated most by healthcare, the kind that lands "above the brand".
In my experience the segments we have in the pharmaceutical industry are (almost) always used to steer product-related information. And that is where we really have to create a change.
Let us now assume, in order to take the reasoning further, that a working group at your company has landed on a shared view of what the role they want to focus on looks like. That as a group they can describe in broad terms why they have chosen that role. And that as a group they have decided which existing segment they are going to work from.
With those factors in place, the working group at a pharmaceutical company has exactly the same conditions and the same ability to move on in the workshop process according to the ABC+ model as a working group at a B2B company.
What now happens, when you choose an existing segment as the basis for a description of a role as above, is that you marry the world of the sales rep to the world of the marketer in a very neat way, and by extension marry in the worlds of the other customer-facing colleagues too, above all the world the medical colleagues work in daily.
In that marriage lies the basis for creating a Persona for commercial communication that can be agreed on across functions.
And it is a Persona description we have to arrive at.
We have to leave the thin segment descriptions we all find hard to relate to, and even harder to work together around, far behind us and take the next step.
Why?
Well, because the Persona is of course better and more thoroughly described than the segment. But above all, the description that makes up the Persona is produced in the cooperation between mainly the sales, marketing and medical departments.
Which means everyone has a shared view.
Imagine that discussion and the power that comes from having that shared view.
When everyone has the same focal point, a focal point produced together. A focal point people feel secure in. A focal point where they know the semantics. A focal point that removes circular discussions, that removes the risk of falling back on that safe shared point I mentioned above. The safe point that is always the medicine and that leads without exception to a hundred percent product focus, and not a customer focus.
This shared view arises every time, in every workshop, and it is now that we start to approach a real foundation for a strong customer focus. We start to approach personally adapted, relevant communication, and, to stick my neck out a little, from the marketing department as well.
By starting from existing customer segments and creating Personas from them as focal points, according to the process described above, pharmaceutical companies can develop more targeted and effective engagement strategies that meet the specific needs and preferences of different groups of HCPs.
That is the direct result and a clear goal we have to have.
What we create at the same time is the possibility, in cross-functional conversations, of working out clear buyer journeys where we even have the possibility of starting to touch on what is so popularly called omnichannel orchestration.
The strategy for working the customer often lands on the sales rep. They are to be the conductor who leads the communication to the customer, and for omnichannel to succeed in practice they have to have the time to agree, together with the marketing and medical departments, on which arguments, which science and so on are available.
And again, and I repeat it because it is so incredibly central and important, for those discussions to result in something that creates relevance over time there has to be a clear recipient, a focal point, at the centre of what is discussed and decided.
That focal point takes shape in the form of Personas.
Let me give you an example. A sales rep is out in the field and meets a customer who turns out to be one of the 3 to 4 defined Personas the rep's product team has to work from, and so the rep knows immediately what is to be communicated and how what is communicated in this particular meeting can be followed up later.
Why?
Well, because what is communicated has already been worked out across functions.
The rep can then, since it is in the communication plan, in the engagement strategy of the buyer journey, make the send that is the most relevant of them all. The send that continues the dialogue that has just taken place, as part of a strategy.
Once those two interactions are done, the rep can then inform the medical department so that the colleague there can follow up with the customer in step 3 with the medical information that has been worked out across functions as the appropriate next step.
That step 3 then makes up the springboard for step 4, step 5, step 6, and so on.
The rep can become the conductor who steers what is communicated and when it is communicated, since it follows the agreed engagement strategy. A strategy that of course does not (only) run from A to Z, but has several layers and ways forward, which makes it possible to follow the customer in their individual wishes or needs.
From that set-up it then becomes possible to hold the right meeting with the right communication, to do the right follow-up, to send the right material to someone in the care team, the nurse for example, in order to support the doctor, and so on.
It is only now that we can really start to talk about real buyer journeys, or as I prefer to call it, it is only now that we can talk about a well-thought-through engagement strategy that creates customers who experience a very good customer experience.
And it is only through a good customer experience over a longer period that we can come anywhere near customer engagement, where customers actually want to interact with us on the strength of the value we have consistently given them.
This whole line of reasoning falls back constantly on how it is Personas and not segment descriptions that have to be the focal point of every discussion.
But above all it falls back on giving the sales, marketing and medical departments time to sit down and work out these Personas, and from them create different engagement strategies as well as tactics that support the best possible omnichannel marketing.
Would you say that time exists in your organisation?
Would you say you end up in circular discussions?
Would you say you have different views of the semantics you work from?
Would you say you have, or lack, a clear focal point?
Would you say you have an established engagement strategy that involves several departments?
Would you say you are where you should be as an organisation, or that you have a long way to go?
Would you say you need guidance through this process?
Customer segmentation is a decisive factor for success in the pharmaceutical industry, and not only in our industry but in every commercial organisation. The questions touched on in this series are questions every leader in every commercial organisation should be touching on.
By dividing customers into distinct groups, communication and engagement strategies can be tailored to specific needs and preferences. That requires close cooperation between different departments, though, and there is a large dilemma.
We live with an inheritance that has its origin in the sales force once being the company's spearhead out towards the market, which means that essentially all internal structures and processes for customer segmentation and customer work are built on the needs of the sales organisation.
Sales reps have a key role in both gathering detailed data on customer behaviour, attitudes and content preferences, and acting as the conductor in an omnichannel orchestration.
To succeed with that, the knowledge gathered has to be shared with the marketing and medical departments, so that a cross-functional group can shape relevant engagement strategies, messages and material. Here tools such as the CRM system need modifying to make storing and sharing the information easier.
To illustrate the importance of material that is personally adapted for the customer, the article took its route through neuroscientific research on memory formation and attention, where the difference between which sales material works in a physical as against a virtual meeting was brought out.
It is not possible to use sales material intended for a physical meeting in a virtual meeting. The material for the virtual meeting has to be built from the ground up with neuroscientific research as its basis.
To get away from the inheritance we live with, to create good conditions for cross-functional cooperation with commercial communication and engagement strategies at the centre, to increase the chances of succeeding in every customer meeting whether it is physical or digital, we have to base all our interaction with the market on Personas and build from there. That is decisive.
These become shared focal points in the cross-functional work, they reduce the risk of circular discussions, they reduce the risk of scattered messages, and they have to start from existing segments but be deepened in order to become more useful.
Circular discussions, and views of what words mean that pull in different directions, are far too common, especially now after the pandemic when change happened faster than ever before. Introducing a shared set of terms and semantics makes a shared view easier. There is incredible power in a shared view where departments work in the same direction.
Through workshops where different departments jointly work out Personas, a stronger customer focus and more consistent messages can be reached. This lays the ground for well-thought-through engagement strategies and more effective omnichannel marketing.
Models such as ABC+ can be a good tool for guiding cross-functional working groups through the process of creating clear Personas and engagement strategies. With the right method and a shared view in the organisation, customer segmentation can contribute to greater internal engagement.
Customer engagement is based on a positive customer experience over time, where the customer consistently receives valuable communication. Communication like that is impossible to keep up over time without time being invested in discussing the questions and subjects touched on in this article.
With the parts touched on in this article in place, you dramatically increase your chances of a better sales result.
The best way to grow is to help.
Having written this series, I realise that we in the pharmaceutical industry have a fair amount to think about when it comes to the way we segment and communicate with customers. My hope is that the article raises questions we can address together, for the reason that advanced segment analysis and cross-functional Persona work is the key to successful communication and greater engagement in the modern pharmaceutical industry. What is needed now is a shift from traditional silo thinking to a hybrid world where the customer is and always will be at the centre.
Or as I usually prefer to put it, in simpler words and slightly more plainly:
Traditional silos and processes quite simply do not work any more. We have to start thinking in new and broader ways in order to genuinely understand the needs and behaviours of different customer groups. This is about starting to work across functions with Personas and agreed engagement strategies that put the customer at the centre.
It will take time, time you have to ask for. It will take internal engagement and a process that is clear to everyone in order to find the forms for this new way of working. The potential to create stronger engagement from the market and reach better results is enormous.
The conclusion simply has to be that it is time to kick out old habits, to kick out the inheritance we live with, and together find our way back to, and then work from, today's "the basics".
Because "the basics" are completely different today from what they were only 10 years ago. The race started 15 years ago and change in the pharmaceutical industry is slow.
So start today. Create the Personas you can all stand behind, start from existing segments in order to marry the worlds of the sales, marketing and medical departments for a greater shared view. There is incredible power in a shared view and it will increase internal engagement.
Bonus #1 is that what you create matches the segmentation in your CRM system.
Bonus #2 is that you as a leader drive change management in your organisation without it being disruptive.
The subjects and questions touched on in this series are the ones I think about every day, questions and subjects there are clear and well-defined methods for finding answers to, where organisations that have their answers in place will see enormous differences.
It has been proven again and again.
You will find me most easily on LinkedIn, and with that I wish you all the best.
FREDRIK HOLMBOE
Owner & Lead digital strategist at Dualia
Until next time I wish you all the best.
FREDRIK HOLMBOE
Owner & Lead digital strategist at Dualia
Read the Swedish original at pharma-industry.se. Part 1 is here on this site. Turning existing segments into personas that sales, marketing and medical can all work from is what the Omnichannel Journey Sprint is built around.