GSK Takes the Step Towards Total Transparency

GlaxoSmithKline has made the bold move to realign its incentive plan away from sales volume and toward customer satisfaction and transparency. GSK vice president Jo Camiskey and Endo Pharmaceuticals’ Senior Director Kara Zubey recently spoke on this radical transition. 

The shift sees GSK refocus their sales strategy to meet customer needs over volumes sales as a key motivator. The new policy will stop the use of individual sales targets and instead pay its sales-force on the basis of technical knowledge, quality of service and overall business performance. The plan, which comes just months after its ethics were challenged by a bribery scandal in China, is expected to be in place by early 2015. Notwithstanding the scandal situation in China, GSK is headed in the right direction toward transparency according to Chairman Andrew Witty.

The program, known as “Patient First”, works by decoupling sales representatives’ incentives from results, and instead links performance pay to customer satisfaction scores. By removing volume sales as a key motivator, they were able to enable their sales-force to focus solely on delivering value.  The philosophy was to directly change the attitude and approach of the sales-force.

Implementing a whole new attitude towards incentives is no easy transition for an entire company.  Camiskey describes the situation, as such: “When you conduct any large organizational change there is resistance to change. The classic barriers always lay in the way. It is important to adopt a tactile approach and sell the issue internally.” Making the change is paying off, according to, “Physicians who previously would not open the door to GSK representatives would now allow members of our field force to make an appointment.”

Senior Director Kara Zubey, of Endo Pharmaceuticals, supports GSK’s new approach. She states, “Changing sales force attitudes is VERY hard. I give GSK a lot of credit. After all, most of the for-profit businesses run today compensate salespeople based on volume. It is not that our reps don’t want to help customers, it is just that regulations make it hard to answer the questions that customers ask and their hands are tied. So, removing volume-based sales incentives will kill two birds with one stone.” 

Both Camiskey and Zubey will be speaking at the eyeforpharma 12th annual conference April 15 & 16, Philadelphia 2014, focusing on the new health economy and how to survive commercial change. Event Director Evena Liao states, “We are excited to see pharma moving towards a patient-centric commercial model and delighted to have Jo, Kara and over 50 other pharma executives speaking at the conference.

For more information about eyeforpharma Philadelphia 2014, please go to www.eyeforpharma.com/philadelphia

For more information contact:

Evena Liao

EyeforPharma
Office: 201-204-1914
evena@eyeforpharma.com