Axtria Inc., a global leader in award-winning cloud software and data analytics in the life sciences industry, released findings from its alignment design and refinement benchmarking study for life sciences organizations.
The healthcare landscape is evolving at a transformational pace. Rapid market changes often impact sales portfolios, causing disruptions in workload and prioritization. The traditional way of aligning sales teams is no longer effective. To remain competitive, organizations must deploy sophisticated go-to-market models where talent structures are aligned to engage new stakeholders across multiple channels, regions, specialties, and organization sizes. Realigning sales territories at regular intervals is essential to creating balanced workloads and positively impacts the performance of sales reps.
“It is critical to regularly reevaluate and adapt territory alignment processes to account for changes in business dynamics and growth. The impact of inefficient territory alignment is significant,” said Asheesh Sharma, Head of Axtria’s Commercial Excellence Practice. “The right territory design ensures a fair distribution of high-potential targets and maximizes sales opportunities even with a leaner sales force. Sales and commercial operations can benefit from analyzing data acquired through the lenses of therapeutic areas, lifecycle, and rep roles.”
Below is a sample of insights from Axtria’s study, which looks at industry trends and best practices in alignment design and refinement:
Alignment Design and Refinement Benchmarking Study:
- A positive shift in territory alignment is visible with the industry moving toward frequent refinement cycles, with ~72% of companies refining their alignment quarterly, striving to achieve a balanced alignment index, minimize vacant territories, and reduce rep travel.
- While organizations have tried to reduce vacant territories, ~3% are vacant across therapy areas. Primary care teams displayed higher vacancy rates and took longer time to fill.
- Due to the challenging process of filling a vacant territory (on average, it takes more than three months), sales operations leaders increasingly rely on NPP (Non-Personal Promotions) to cover vacant territories.
The Alignment Design and Refinement Benchmarking Study is now available for demonstration and discussion.
For more information on these studies, please visit CE Benchmarking Hub (axtria.com).