Finding Your Way in an Account-based Selling Model

Account management is nothing new to the life science industry – in the past, the business model was designed primarily for managed care or market access teams. The market continues to evolve and integrated delivery networks (IDNs) control access to entire markets with their own rules of engagement. Today the need to have a coordinated plan for these organizations has become a core component of the go-to-market strategy for a brand or a company’s portfolio. Companies cannot be successful if they approach IDNs with the traditional HCP-driven model or a single channel mentality.

Each IDN has its own governance and personality – magnifying the need for tailored engagement plans. The decision makers, preferred method of communication, and the products or services they are interested in all vary. The implications of not understanding the customer enough and not following these rules are serious – from losing access to internal stakeholders and healthcare professionals, to not having your product and services selected for the hospital formulary and protocols.

For operationalizing account-based selling, you need a flexible framework – to meet the account selling model requirements for the therapeutic area or the portfolio of products and services. Key account managers need to be able to understand the market, know the organization’s needs, plan how to meet those needs, and pull through against the identified stakeholders. By integrating the account planning process into CRM, the account manager responsible for coordinating activity across the organization is able to create multichannel plans to engage with the customer in the most effective way.  With this integrated and orchestrated approach, companies are able to:

•  Profile their complex network of customers and visualize the hierarchy of organizations and how they relate to each other, as well as to HCPs affiliated with those organizations.
• Understand and document the access of products within an IDN through the listing of their formulary and protocols for use.
• Create a plan, establish objectives for their customers, identify both company resources and the organization’s stakeholders, and establish a set of tactics to coordinate pull-through activities.

Diverse customers bring the added challenge of understanding not only the personal multichannel preferences of individual stakeholders, but also the multichannel preferences and rules of engagement for the organization.  Aligning channels such as closed loop marketing, email, web, and call centers enables brands and companies to ensure that this dialogue is a continuous conversation, taking place at the stakeholder’s convenience. By bringing understanding and planning together with multichannel execution, companies can traverse this complex maze with confidence. To learn more about successfully engaging with key stakeholders across channels, click here and learn more about Veeva CRM.

Andy Fuchs is director of commercial strategy.