7.6. Summary
Rick now gathers his findings and recommendations from his investigations relative to the two tasks he was given by his sales and marketing vice president, which were to:
Verify the claims of the marketing group that a limited promotion they ran for Pharma Inc.'s major product from May through December 2008 was very successful.
Determine whether there are regional differences in performance relative to sales of Pharma Inc.'s major product.
As for the first task, given the available evidence, the 2008 promotional activity in Midlands, Southern England, and Northern Ireland did have a positive impact, just as the marketing group had claimed. Physicians in these regions averaged 81.6, 77.0, and 72.9 prescriptions, respectively, over the eight-month period (Exhibit 7.42). Meanwhile, physicians in the best nonpromotional region, Greater London, averaged 67.3 prescriptions. In the worst nonpromotional regions, Wales and Northern England, physicians averaged 42.5 prescriptions over that eight-month period. The oneway plot in Exhibit 7.39 shows the picture by region with the data summarized by physician, and the bubble plot in Exhibit 7.61 shows the picture summarized by sales representative and adjusted by the number of physicians per sales representative.
Rick also learns that more visits by sales representatives generally lead to more prescriptions being written for Pharma Inc.'s major product (Exhibit 7.51). This effect is especially true when representatives leave promotional sample kits.
Relating to the second task, Rick's initial analysis of the data shows that some sales representatives are in contact with many physicians, whereas others are in contact with far fewer physicians, and that this depends on the region. Even though he does not have to account for sales representatives' time, he would like to understand better why this difference occurs, because he may then be able to increase the yield of his sales force as a whole in the future. But, more to the point, Rick has learned that there are large differences in sales between the different regions. Rather than simply attributing this to a failure of his sales force in some regions, he is prepared to consider that this may also be due to regional differences in the physician and population demographics.
One issue that his data analysis has surfaced is the extreme regularity of monthly visits over almost all regions. When data are this regular, Rick knows that there is probably some underlying reason. He needs to convey to the sales representatives that there will not be negative consequences if they fail to adhere to a one-visit-per-month doctrine, so long as they show good performance overall.
As a first step, he will initiate interviews with some selected sales representatives so that he can learn something about this issue, as well as why there is so much variation in number of physicians assigned to sales representatives in the different regions. He expects to realign his sales force in 2009 and would like to do this in an effective, logical fashion. He also needs to enlist the sales representatives' help in creating operational definitions of concepts that are being measured, such as a visit to a physician. Clear definitions will provide meaningful data, which will support better knowledge, decisions, and operational effectiveness in the future.