Is Tele-detailing Right for Your Product?

Lou Shapiro

I often get asked if tele-detailing can help a specific product in pharma. The answer is not always a resounding "yes" or a simple "no."




Have you considered tele-detailing to support your pharmaceutical product(s)? The most obvious application of tele-detailing is to cover vacant sales territories. However, in my experience tele-detailing can be an effective tool in a number of situations including:

• Products that are under-resourced with sales reps. Tele-detailing representatives can provide product information, answer questions, and process and fulfill sample requests

• An established product facing increased competition from new entrants. Healthcare-trained representatives (ie, RNs and pharmacists) can answer clinical and scientific questions from physicians

• A new product entering a marketplace with entrenched market leaders. Tele-detailing representatives can provide additional promotional support to “early adopters”, as well as answer questions and fulfill sample requests

• An established product that is profitable, but gets little detailing time from sales reps. Tele-detailing representatives can call on top-prescribing physicians to share new data on the product, or mid-tier prescribing physicians to remind them of the product’s efficacy, safety, and ease of use

Tele-detailing is an effective, flexible and efficient promotional tool. I’ll share the essential elements of a successful tele-detailing program in a future blog posting.

In the mean time, download a copy of our latest whitepaper, “Selecting the Right Call Center Partner: Tips for Success.” (http://bit.ly/pscallcenter)

We also did a recent podcast with PharmaVOICE entitled "Keys to Partnering with a Pharmaceutical Call Center" (http://bit.ly/ps092011podcast) which you should check out if you are interested in more on this topic.

Have you used tele-detailing to support your pharmaceutical product(s)? If so, what results did you see? Have you decreased, maintained or increased your tele-detailing efforts? I’d like to hear about your experiences with tele-detailing. Please share your thoughts in the comments of this blog post.
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