Although the selling environment continues to evolve, the value that samples provide remains strong. For physicians, samples provide two key benefits: the ability to get patients started on appropriate therapy quickly, and the ability to assess patient response and tolerability prior to filling a full prescription. Samples provide an easy way for physicians to gain product experience, helping form positive product perceptions and increasing future intent to prescribe.

For representatives, samples provide a tangible tool to gain physician access. This will remain particularly valuable over the next five years as more offices carefully manage representative-physician interactions. Providing samples to physicians does not always lead to in-depth product discussions, and this will continue in the future. However, representatives who provide physicians with an adequate and consistent sample supply benefit from multiple enhanced customer perceptions. These include perceptions of representative value, concern for patients, and company image.

Over a five-year time frame, the role of samples as a selling tool may evolve as the industry’s product portfolio evolves. Many companies currently focus on developing large-molecule products, and for these future brands, samples typically don’t fit into the marketing mix. Should these brands account for a majority of representative activity, the importance of sampling will decline proportionately.

Overall, companies who maintain a small-molecule product portfolio can continue to rely on sampling as key tactic in driving positive physician experience with their brands. Companies whose portfolios consist of large-molecule brands will need to consider creating new opportunities for physicians to gain valuable product experience.

Despite significant investments in producing large sample quantities, many brands distribute samples that amount to a pill in a blister pack in a box. Physicians complain that samples suffer from numerous shortcomings: they take up too much space, key information (dosage, expiration dates, lot number) is often hard to find or read, the packaging is difficult for patients to open, and the package insert leaves patients with more questions than it answers.

Agencies can play a significant role in helping brand teams design more physician and patient-friendly samples. Opportunities include reducing package complexity, adding disease state education, improving ergonomics (particularly for elderly patients), and linking samples to physician and patient support programs. Agencies can also play a role in designing targeted patient support programs that can take the place of sampling in appropriate settings. For example, some group practices and hospital clinics prohibit sampling, but will accept coupon and voucher programs.

Any number of scenarios are possible, but it’s unlikely that companies will find themselves unable to distribute samples in the next five years. Companies may need to expand distribution channels beyond representatives, implement additional controls, or disclose sample distribution more transparently. Although operationally challenging, the industry should embrace changes that increase public confidence, customer convenience, and patient safety.

By definition, effective selling strategies result in increased sales, and this implies that they must also be sustainable. Any deliberate off-label promotion clearly cannot be effective. Even if it results in increased sales in the short run, the eventual exposure and consequences more than undo the short-term gains. This appears to be what we’re seeing unfold in press releases concerning the former regional manager described in your question.

Our analyses of highly effective representatives, district managers, and region managers shows that communicating clear expectations, providing appropriate promotional tools and programs, and maintaining close working relationships with headquarters colleagues during business planning and execution enable effective selling strategies to proliferate in the sales organization. In our experience, this applies to large and small companies, launch and mature brands, and primary care, specialty, and hospital sales forces.

Marketers should draw three object lessons from the reports:

When communicating direction to the field organization, cover both do’s and don’ts. Marketers know that repetition breeds retention – this is part of the rationale supporting consistent messaging and visuals across promotional tactics. Marketing communications to the field properly focus on what the sales organization needs to execute. However, as the highlighted reports show, there is also a place for repeatedly clarifying actions the sales organization needs to avoid. This doesn’t mean that marketing takes over their company’s compliance function. Marketers simply need to be aware of ways in which sales people may deviate from their brand’s appropriate promotion, and explicitly address them to ensure they don’t occur.

Continue empowering region managers to adapt national strategies to their local markets, but monitor execution to avoid promotion that runs counter to national strategy, including off-label promotion. Some may draw an erroneous conclusion here - that marketers need to reign in RMs who want to modify national strategy to better fit their local markets. Our work shows that business acumen among field managers drives superior sales performance, and that business acumen requires assessing differences in local market drivers, and implementing appropriate local action. Our research shows that to facilitate strong business acumen, marketers should interact with region managers at least twice per quarter. Dialogue should ideally include assessing marketing strategy execution and impact, competitive intelligence, tools and programs the sales force seeks, and best practices.

Work closely with sales leadership (VP, NSD) to understand the full spectrum of local sales approaches. The typical marketer has tremendous demands on their time. In today’s leaner organizations, they’re asked to do more with less. Attending to long lists of high-priority items can mean that only the most urgent problems receive attention. In this environment, it’s understandable that if a marketer was to spend any time digging into regional sales execution, they might focus on outliers – areas where performance significantly leads or lags. This focus on ends of the bell curve can result in blind spots in between. Marketers need to educate sales leaders on brand strategy so they can recognize deviations across the field organizations they lead, and coach field leadership appropriately.

Marketers and sales forces both seek brand growth, and they want that to occur through appropriate promotion. By adopting the approaches outlined above, we believe every company can successfully implement effective selling strategies.