On July 1, GlaxoSmithKline embarked upon a new phase in plans to overhaul its incentive compensation package, pegging sales rep pay to a combination of “selling competency,” customer evaluations and overall business unit performance instead of individual sales targets. The company eliminated individual sales goals in January of this year.
The switch, which the company telegraphed last year, is meant in part to revamp a smaller, more specialty-focused sales force for the post-rep race era, and also to emphasize the quality of details over the quantity of scripts written. When the announcement was first made, Connelly had said: “The US healthcare marketplace is changing significantly in response to demand by patients, healthcare providers and payers for higher quality care, lower costs and better health outcomes. Physicians have been telling us they want to see fewer sales professionals, and those they do see need to provide greater value in helping improve patient health. In response, we are changing the way we sell our medicines and vaccines in order to deliver the value our customers demand, in a transparent way, with integrity and respect for the patient.”
Sales targets were dropped from compensation evaluations at the beginning of the year.
Reps will now be paid in part on “adherence to the company values of transparency, integrity, respect and patient-focus,” the firm said last year. Those considerations will factor into sales competency and customer evaluations, according to GlaxoSmithKline spokesperson Kevin Colgan.
“A lot of what we’re doing is really trying to make sure the incentives we have in place are aligned with those values,” says Colgan.
He said he could not discuss specifics of how GSK will evaluate selling competency because the company considers that information proprietary.
From the August 01, 2011 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media
