In our previous blog, we discussed the significance of providing call plans to representatives. Continuing with our blog series on different dimensions of sales performance solutions to pharma companies, this blog will talk about the critical linkages between sales incentives and call planning.
The linkage between sales incentives and call planning is critical for the pharmaceutical companies to attain high field force effectiveness. In today’s tough business environment, designing an effective incentive compensation program and then linking it with the call plan is a major challenge for the global life sciences organizations. To achieve set business goals, these pharmaceutical majors must ensure alignment between their call plans and incentive compensation (IC) plans.
Most of the pharmaceutical players focus majorly on Call Plan Compliance (CPC) to attain high field force sales effectiveness, for them 80% of CPC levels is more of an historical industry benchmark or something that is prescribed by their Headquarters. However in many of the cases increase in the level of CPC has not resulted into the increased IC attainments, a representative may have low level of CPC and 110% goal attainment while other representative might achieve high CPC but 94% goal attainment. There are inherent disconnects between call plan models and sales compensation models, which quite often is the root cause of these issue and leads to distrust in call plans provided by the Headquarters.
Current processes for incentive plan design and call planning have inherent disconnects leading to significant breaks in alignment. These include models, data sources, methods to value customers and even guiding principles! Incentive plans need to go through a structured process to ensure compliance and alignment. When designing an incentive plan, it is important to frame the design in a manner that could be linked with call planning assumptions and methodologies, and ultimately CPC. This link will drive the sales force to adapt its behavior to meet the organizational objectives.
Asheesh Sharma, Axtria Principal and head of Commercial Operations and Technology Services practice, will present the topic at PMSA Conference 2014 on May 18-21, 2014. Asheesh will share his experiences about industry best practices and IC designs that drive tighter alignment and reduce field dissonance. Other key discussion points of the session will be on:
- Fractures in the process that causes this break in relationship to emerge
- What can we do in incentive plan designs to account for a better linkage to call planning process
- This would also include discussion on modeling approaches need to be aligned to achieve better linkage
- Finally, Asheesh will close with a discussion on cycle times and IC administration impact that his suggested improvements may cause
Contact us for more information on this topic, and stay tuned to Axtria’s Ingenious Insights blog for continuous updates on PMSA activities.
Click Here To Learn More About Axtria Incentive Compensation Benchmarking Study – 2020 Results
