The revival of SFE?

SFE.
Last week alone, i heard the mention of this almost obliterated acronym from a pharma veteren who was talking excitedly about how her company is driving towards SFE innovations,increasing bottom line profitability by improving sales productivity and another co-worker who was being headhunted for a job as a regional SFE champion. this week, in a kind of deja vu, a senior ex-colleague highlighted that SFE has become his one of his core responsibility for his role in his organization's new structure. incidentally, all three of them were speaking for descriptively smaller companies.

Few in pharma would not have heard of SFE, whose ubiquitous spread, sometime back in 2002 within the industry caused many a drug reps sleepless nights filling up tedious forms to identify their customers, separating the KOLs from the laggards, profiling and classifying them into ABCDs or HMLs customer groups, studying their purchasing patterns, sorting out their level of influcence, sussing out their brand advocacy/support, etc.

Many organizations also created a new position in the sales division within the Singapore offiice- the SFE manager. whose immediate task is to draw up a spankng new SFE blueprint after studying the sales forces' productivity and practices and explaining why the existing system is not good enough. After intense research, the SFE manager will propose, develop and introduce (often to the dismay of reps) new methods, programs, initiatives, expensive hardwares and whatever other fancy ideas (with even more ludicrious KPIs) that will intensify the sales forces' efforts and hopefully, propel the company to profits haven.

Fast forward to present day pharma, most of the original SFE managers have gone, without replacements. The amount of raw data collected have yet to be crunched nor input to any viable SFE systems. many of the half-hearted initiatives launched have not yielded any positive returns for the companies which had invested relatively vast amounts into what may well have only been an idealistic pursuit.

The problem with most local SFE initiatives were that they were primarily customer centric. tactics were planned to exploit the customers' projected potential into maximum returns. little emphasis were placed in building and developing a strong sales force that could do the above and exceed the customers' potential beyond their projected limit by forming positive CRM

SFE does have its success story in capitalistic US, where big pharmas are pouring good money to hire specialty consultants to design proprietary products and solutions to engage their customers and optimise their sales foces' effectiveness. many local set ups opted for the more economical approach of employing someone whom they consider with adequate sales experience and insights to lead SFE. there are bound to be exceptions to this case. the success of any effective sales force cannot simply be attributed to any one style or methods.

The sales force is a dynamic entity and is essentially about people, the way sales people work, their beliefs and motivations, the workplace environment and culture, their interaction with external parties- doctors, purchasers, HC authorities, etc

With many of the larger companies having had a bite of the SFE pie, i now hope that it will not leave a bitter taste to the others coming into its path.