Many Filipino companies today have changed the title of Professional Medical Representative to Territory Manager. Is there a difference or is it just a title? Being the manager of your territory is no joke. In the true sense of the word, what happens in your territory is your full accountability. You cannot blame anybody if the results go ill, but you can congratulate yourself if the performance is spectacular.

Territory Management is the utilization of industry factors that directly and indirectly affect your business in your area of assignment where time, effort and resources are maximized to arrive on a result that meets or exceeds the qualitative and quantitative standards of the company.

On your first day in the territory, you will be given with a list of customers that you will visit. The list may contain a structure already that you may choose to follow. But the question remains: Is the process involved in that hand-me-down territory plan accurate?

Territory Management starts with a thorough understanding of the territory. There is a progressive pattern to follow in order to arrive at a workable area plan. First, you start with the Scanning Phase. Prepare a list of all the doctors in the territory regardless of any parameters. Once you have the list, you can proceed with the Assessment Phase. You will assess the physician’s potential using various parameters which includes but not limited to:

1. Area of specialization
2. Patient profiling
3. Practice volume
4. Influence
5. Current relations to your company

You would first group the list on the first parameter. This will satisfy a key marketing question: Are the cases encountered relevant to your promoted product? Then, after keeping this list and eliminating the non-relevant specialties, you will have to rank them by means of their patient economic class. You would then have to answer the next question: Are the patients encountered able to comply with the dosage regimen? Practice volume denotes the number of consultations per day. You will then have to rank them according to patient volume.

Influence is another key factor. Influential doctors maybe an established Key Opinion Leader or any person of authority that can influence the prescribing decisions of his or her peers. Last but not least are doctors who have an established relationship with your company. If they enjoy a continuous beneficial relationship, they will reject your competitors. These are the customers you may not want to upset.

The third part is the Recording Phase. In here the data were to be sorted out and analyzed, leaving relevant customers to be targeted. You will then have to assign frequency of visits, the primary, secondary or tertiary product to promote, as well as the type of promotional message per specialty. You will also design your daily, weekly and monthly itinerary or routing plan. The routing plan allows your manager to immediately ascertain your whereabouts.

The fourth the series of steps is the Planning Phase. This pertains to the utilization of marketing strategy or directions brought down by the company, via its author, the Product Manager, to the field force. In here you will identify which specialty deserves the promotional mileage based on the guidelines.

In the Implementation Phase, you will adopt the plans that you have laid down. You will follow the routing plan and sampling schedule that you have set, as well as the frequency of visits to physicians. The process does not end in this phase. The plan has to be evaluated for flaws so that corrective measures can be put into place. The whole process is an unending cycle and plans are to be revised regularly to be viable.

George W. Merck once said: “We never try to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear.” The statement was made more than 60 years ago and it should still be applicable today. But the market is changing, and it challenges the dynamics of ethical marketing.

A large number of pharmaceutical companies, mostly those who emerged from the public’s clamor for “cheaper” medicines, have engaged in the trading of essential drugs. They have implemented a pushing campaign wherein they have bypassed the physicians in terms of decision making on what a patient should or shouldn’t take for their illness. This has led to self-medication and eventually substance abuse or overdose. No wonder most bacteria are immune to present-day antibiotics.

Ethical marketing is a factual and truthful representation of a drug, delivered exclusively to healthcare decision makers: the physicians. The pharmaceutical industry faces challenges with respect to ethical marketing and other promotional practices. The conflict of commercial interests with adherence to ethical practices has been a subject of much deliberation. The degree of concerns and issues varies depending on the laws of various markets. Responsible promotional communication informs healthcare professionals and their patients about the benefits and risks of new treatments for diseases.

In the Philippines, there are laws that govern how companies market their products to physicians and one such provision coming from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) discourages misrepresentation or over claiming and such violation (yes, even done by Med Reps) carry stiff penalties. There is also an organization that monitors industry practices and that is PHAP.

The Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines or PHAP is an organization of select local and multinational companies that engage in active promotion of medicines. Monitoring of members or non-member’s marketing practices is rigorously monitored by PHAP. Unethical practices in marketing are reported by the member’s themselves to PHAP as well as the Philippine FDA. PHAP had also provided specific marketing guidelines that are embraced by its members.

PHAP also launched the Medical Representative Accreditation Program (MRAP) to enable Medical Representatives to be accredited professionally and to establish the acceptable standard for professional competencies, including training on ethical marketing practices. The MRAP accreditation allows the Medical Representative to be a competent individual who has a deeper understanding of the disease and the products and bringing it to the needs of the physicians and their patients.