Diagnosis
Hospitals provide rich opportunity for pharmaceutical sales.

Prescription
Knowledge and preparation will help you succeed.

IN A TYPICAL U.S. HOSPITAL, PHARMACEUTICALS consume between 25 and 30 percent of the supply budget, and pharmacy costs have increased by an average of eight percent annually over the past several years. One of the nation's largest hospital-management organizations, with nearly 60 facilities in 12 states, spends nearly half a billion dollars each year on pharmaceuticals.

Clearly, the market for promoting pharmaceuticals in hospitals offers rewards for pharmaceutical and biotechnology sales professionals. This article provides a broad-brush overview of how you can get the jump on market share in the hospital and institutional market sector, where rules, regulations and day-to-day selling activities differ significantly from what representatives experience in the physician-office sector.

Why hospital selling?

The "business" of hospital selling

For many representatives, hospital selling offers several advantages. For one thing, on many days hospital sales provide opportunities for one-stop selling. With planning and foresight, you can park your car in the morning, deliver scheduled individual presentations to a half-dozen or more physicians, attend a lecture related to your product's disease state, and spend some quality time with the director of pharmacy, a nursing supervisor or other key staff members – all in one day, and you haven't burned an ounce of gas!

Consider, too, that hospital visits provide you with opportunities to connect with new and "no-see" physicians. This is because some doctors who are difficult to see in the office environment may be more approachable in the institutional setting.

If you promote a specialty product – an injectable oncology medication, for example – you may have substantial opportunities to interact with key thought leaders, especially if you call on large academic hospitals or specialty (for example, cancer) centers.

Additional opportunities

Also, experience in the hospital sector can be an education in and of itself, providing you with broader exposure to diagnostic procedures, treatment options, outcomes, provider opinions, and patient concerns related to the diseases and conditions for which your products are indicated.

The bottom line is that you will discover countless opportunities to learn about patient care while enhancing awareness of your company and its products and driving product spillover from the hospital to other settings, including physician offices, outpatient clinics, long-term care facilities and home healthcare.

Before the first visit

Formularies in integrated systems

Let's start at the beginning. When you are ready to make your first visit to a hospital, keep in mind that sales success begins with in-depth profiling. If you have not yet called on a particular hospital, learn all you can about the facility so that you can speak credibly with your audience.

This means that you need to know about hospital ownership (independent or chain; private, non-profit or government); whether or not the hospital is part of an integrated system; the business potential for your company's therapeutic categories; formulary structure and management; and so on.