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My wife has worked in the medical field for over 15 years. She has cultivated relationships with people, including many sales reps and she has established friends over the years. When I came home from work the other day she was distraught.
"Apparently I'm losing my clinical dietitian Jamie with _____ company because they're changing territories."
My response was simply, "Why?"
"She said they brought in some big data analysis company who realigned all the territories according to some stupid algorithm."
I asked, "I wonder if the algorithm took your relationship with Jamie into account."
"Apparently not, and if I don't get a good dietitian, I'm dropping them as my pump company. I won't make recommendations for them anymore. And I won't speak for them either."
I sensed she was being a bit over dramatic but she did have a long relationship with this particular dietitian, who was exceptional. And as is mainly the case in my house, I put my foot in my mouth.
"It can't be that hard to find a good clinical dietitian. Is it?"
"Are you kidding me! There's been times where I haven't been available or we were on vacation and Jamie literally saved our patients lives with some of her recommendations. You've even met Jamie a few times. How dare you!"
I apologized immediately for my ignorance. Mind you, I don't know that much about dietitians but apparently the job is not just recommending what type of food a patient should eat. And so my wife explained that these people go to school for at least 6 years, have training yearly, and a good dietitian, especially a renal or diabetes educated one, can make a huge difference in a patients life.
I guess saving patients lives or influencing them didn't factor into the company's algorithm either. I know that there are a lot of people to help support patients and their maladies, but you never know how much of an impact changing a sales territory can affect people's lives. At least not until it affects you.
I'm not so sure it's a good idea to crunch numbers when you're impacting peoples lives. I know that statistics are not supposed to lie, but there is no way to measure the ability of a good sales rep, great dietitian, or even a relationship, and factor it into an algorithm. I'm sure that people are taking those considerations into account when mapping out territories, aren't they? Wrong! Wake up CEO's. Not everything can be reduced to a number.
I still have many friends working in medical sales, so I called one of them who is a regional manager, because I knew he was going through exactly the same situation with his company. They had discussed adding a few reps, and the company had sought his advice on where to "carve out" a territory in his region. They gave him maps, and accounts, and he spent weeks trying to figure out how to spread out the accounts, in order to minimize the damage of a change. Why would there be "damage" you might be asking yourself? The answer is simple. Customers do not like change.
Once he did all this calculating and reworking of his territories, would you like to know what the company did? They ignored all of his hard work and just arbitrarily made changes based upon some recommendations they received from a consulting company. A consulting company whom supposedly based their decisions upon geography, account leads, and revenue. He showed me the data because I was a math and economics major in college and I told him exactly my thoughts. But it didn't take a math wiz to figure out the problem with the territory break down.
"You have 3 large territories and one tiny one. That makes no sense. How did they come up with this algorithm? What did they factor in?"
"Beats me! Current revenue maybe? But this little territory won't support a rep! There aren't enough prospective new customers, just a few current ones.", he said and he pointed to a tiny map in the middle of two large territories.
"Why is it so small?", I asked. "Is it just a few large accounts?"
"Bingo! They figure if just one rep focuses on these 3 accounts they can maintain the territory."
"That sounds reasonable. What happens if they happen to lose one of the accounts?", I asked.
"Uh, they're fired?"
"That sounds promising for a new rep. Is there a contingency plan if something happens?"
"Uh, they're fired...and I'm fired?"
"It sounds like that consulting company and their big data algorithm figured it all out for you."
"Gee thanks for the support? Anymore good advice."
"Don't lose any of those accounts."
"You're brilliant!", he said with a mouth full or sarcasm.
"I know.", I answered with a wry smile and a laugh.
Yet I felt sorry for him, knowing full well that if the company had listened to his advice, he might have full control over his future and that of his reps. Sometimes big data can make some big mistakes, or set you up for some big failures. I believe it's best to use data but to also work with your people to come up with a plan that will make everyone successful.
But what do I know, I'm just a consultant...
SFTD
