Blog Assignment: Implementing SNA in medical industry for medical sales representative

Problem/Challenge:

In medical industry in Japan, maybe same in the US, a medical sales representative who is employed by a pharmaceutical firm approaches to doctors and persuade them of using that pharmaceutical’s drugs or medical equipment. Basically there are no rules and decisive strategies for MRs to maximize their sales efficiently. In order to gain more sales, pharmaceutical companies always look for the best candidate who is well qualified as a MR but very few are reachable in the market. For that reason pharma companies hire a number of MRs each year with spending a huge amount of cost instead of finding the one who is really experienced. 

MRs in general work very late at night and very hard every single day to reach their sales target. Inefficient sales strategies force them to take inefficient and unreasonable sales action. For example, MRs attempts to visit doctors as many as possible in a day without knowing doctor's real needs. They often wait more than an hour to talk to a doctor only for five minuets who might have a slight chance to switch to their drugs. The pointless sales strategy requires them a lot of overtime. 

Implementing SNA in medical industry would address doctor's social connection and network in medical industry. Which doctors were in the same university and have a close relationship. How intense does each doctor interact with each other in both their work and personal life. Which group of doctors would share information that lead to share ideas and opinions of which type of drugs they should choose for patients. Who might be the most influential doctor when it comes to use a new drug. 

A visualized SNA data would help come up with many new creative strategies, which could deliver a value to MRs and pharma companies. It would make an accurate estimate which doctor could be an expected customer of their drugs and identify which doctor might be the most influential to others. Based on the SNA data, MRs would attack the most influential person to convince him to use their drugs, resulting eliminating inefficient action for sales. Afterwards, other doctors would automatically switch to their drug because of the influence from that doctor. Or, other strategy I can think of is MRs can visit a doctor who is surrounded by doctors using their products already. It is much easier for MRs to sell their products with less time and effort to a doctor who has someone familiar with their product.

I think asking doctors to participate surveys might be difficult but all the questions should be simple to answer and required not so much time for doctor.

By using these strategies coming from SNA, pharma companies could organize sales team more productively and reduce the number of inefficient sales person. MRs could increase efficiency and at the same time reduce the amount of workload, resulting them to maximize their sales and profit as well.