In support of prioritizing commercial investments through Promotional Response Analytics, MattsonJack provides evidence-based support of the effectiveness of sales and marketing spending for sales forces, marketing campaigns and now DTC advertising. Coming under severe pricing pressure and political scrutiny, top management of pharma companies are now seeking this support of the effectiveness of sales and marketing spending because the investment is becoming a burden, financially and politically.

MattsonJack’s Promotional Response Analytics staff provides the business intelligence needed to assure that such investments would yield the desired return. With our proprietary methodology, we can help to answer questions such as:

• How much spending is required?
• What should the optimal mix and timing of that spending be by major class of marketing investment, e.g., sales calls and position, samples, physician meetings and events, professional journal and DTC, if warranted?
• How might competition respond, and how could that be countered (war gaming)?
• What should the investment be across brands in a group or across the company, to optimize the overall return on the sales and marketing spend?

MattsonJack's approach simultaneously evaluates the impact on physician prescribing of sales calls, samples, physician meetings and events, professional journal pages and DTC spending by media. Each of these environments is analyzed using econometric methods adapted by MattsonJack specifically for pharmaceutical promotion. Our methods integrate and correlate the findings with actual prescribing outcomes and, in so doing, provide our clients a true interrelated promotional response model, facilitating evidence-based marketing decisions.

Our methods are unique in the industry and based on the premise that new prescriptions result from a complex, dynamic and simultaneous interaction of all major influences on prescribing. MattsonJack’s approach is robust because its basic structure - simultaneous evaluation of all quantifiable influences on prescribing - allows for measuring and predicting effects outside of the traditional set. Then, actions can be monitored through highly sensitive econometric analysis to allow rapid response to competitive reaction.

Fundamentally, our methods enable "what if" analysis of changes in promotional investment by level, modality and timing, as well as changes in any of the key market, product, or disease environments. Using this methodology, we can predict new prescriptions over a 12- to 18-month period following implementation of a specific promotional plan, and typically yield forecasts with r2 values in the 95% or higher range.

Detailing Optimization - Reach and Frequency

While the pharmaceutical industry is familiar to some degree with product / market adoption theory and has made some application in targeting physician calls, the overwhelming standard governing call-frequency continues to be based on total prescription volume by a physician in a target therapeutic category, i.e., the physician's prescribing decile. The concept of importance by prescribing decile is completely valid for determining reach (which physicians should be called on), but is the wrong criterion to determine call frequency, or how frequently a physician should be called on.

MattsonJack examines actual prescribing in relation to number of sales calls and creates a marginal product revenue curve for each physician. For many pharma companies, the "high-value physician" is being called on with a frequency so high that the marginal return on each call is actually negative.

MattsonJack's approach is based on the premise that there are a given number of calls to be distributed across a defined physician target audience in order to maximize the return on those calls. Stated differently, MattsonJack's “Redeciling” methodology identifies those physicians on whom a call is most likely to yield the highest marginal return.

The value of this approach is enormous. In one study, the analysis showed that the sales gain from call frequency based on maximizing marginal return equaled the sales gain from adding 150 sales representatives and leaving the traditional call frequency in place.

For more information on MattsonJack's Brand Optimization services, email: info@mattsonjack.com or call us at (314) 469-7600.