Work/Field strategy
Reallocating 500 medical representatives
Pfizer Pakistan employed 500 medical representatives. Their territories had been set years earlier and no longer matched where the commercial opportunity was. This work sized the opportunity again and reassigned the field force against it.
- Organisation
- Pfizer
- Region
- Pakistan
- Period
- 2017 to 2018
- Focus
- Market sizing, territory design
Context
The field force was deployed on a structure that had been in place for some time. Prescribing patterns, therapeutic area growth and competitor activity had all moved since it was set. Some representatives were covering territories with limited remaining potential while other areas were under-served.
There was no current view of where the opportunity actually sat, so any argument about coverage came down to opinion.
Mandate
Size the opportunity by therapeutic area and by geography, and produce a reallocation of the 500 representatives that the business could defend.
Approach
I built a market sizing model using prescription and sales data to estimate potential by therapeutic area and by territory. Territories were then scored on how well current coverage matched that potential.
The model produced a reallocation plan. I worked through it with sales leadership so that the changes were realistic to operate and could be explained to the representatives affected.
Outcome
The 500 representatives were redeployed towards higher-potential therapeutic areas. The change contributed to 2% year on year sales growth.
Coverage decisions could also be revisited against the model afterwards, rather than being reopened from scratch each planning cycle.