Marketing and Selling Skills of a MR

Marketing and Selling Skills of a Medical Representative.

Marketing and selling skills assume the highest signficance for the pharmaceuticals industry and on him depends the growth of the pharmaceuticals. Marketing means introducing the product to the doctors and sale means ensuring continued flow of the availability of the information and services and pharmaceuticals in the relevant segments and retail outlets and thus ensuring that sales realizations are there. Product information, market intelligence, disease profile, seasonal or otherwise trends of the disease, relative competitive scenario, clustering of doctors and disease wise clustering of the customers and other informations are must to the medical representative. Back end support to the medical representative is a must.

Market intelligence : This would include the market shares of various companies, the numbers of doctors in the practicing of such disease; general practioners vs specialist; company wise volumes sold; number of prescriptions per day; duration of the disease; nature of disease; when to become active for sales and marketing; critical features of the disease from the marketing and sales viewpoints; degree of confidence in the authenticity of the market intelligence; etc.

Product Information : This would include name of the molecule or formulation; brand name; the dosage form; dosage size; per pack the number of units; doses manufactured and available; recommended dosage patterns; therapeutic values; side reactions; packaging features; label claims information; price; expiry period; storage conditions; opening and closing aspects of the containers; how to dispose the medicine; how to take or administer the medicine; drug delivery systems related information; precautions; and other aspects.

Knowing the Doctors and Customers : End customers are required to be known by the pharmaceutical industry and end customers in the territory of the medical representatives. The maximum potential of a medicine and its dosage form. And if the disease is of seasonal kind; then the total marketing potential and sales realization depend on the qualitative attributes of the applicable disease market. The names and addresses of the doctors with their communication details; and the general practice vs specializations etc. need to be known. His current loyalty with the organization vs other competitors. This is the key responsibility of the medical representative, that the long term market of the medicines in the minds of the doctors is possible through quality reliability and consistency in all aspects : product quality; quality in packaging; quality in communications and other aspects relating quality.

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