Commercial Excellence

Commercial Excellence has become essential in the biopharma industry. In a context of accelerating competition intensity and rising customer expectations, companies with best-in-class and customer-oriented commercial capabilities will be able to outperform competitors and maximize margins and revenues.

Commercial Excellence is the design and delivery of commercial best practices, sustainably boosting customer satisfaction and revenue growth. It consists of multiple commercial levers that can be activated, like Inbound and Outbound Marketing, Digital Strategy, Brand Strategy, Pricing Strategy, Customer Segmentation, Account Management, Sales Organization or Channel Management among others.

Commercial Excellence refers to an above-average performance in all those commercial capabilities and best-in-class abilities to activate those value creating marketing, sales and organization levers.

A successful commercial transformation relies mainly on a customer-centric approach supported by solid data and analytics enlightening strategic priorities.

Commercial Excellence primarily finds its roots in customers analysis. Enhancing customers' experience is nonnegotiable in such a competitive biopharma universe. Companies should perform surveys and interviews with customers and prospects to understand their needs and preferences and offer a superior value proposition. Companies should also identify their most promising customers and market segments to focus their effort on strategic actions.

Commercial Excellence also greatly relies on a company's ability to learn from leaders. Companies should constantly benchmark best performers and analyze their best-in-class commercial practices to know what should be implemented and where improvements are possible.

Of course, companies should perform a full internal diagnostic of their own commercial capabilities and sales organization. Their performance in each capability should be assessed and graded through interviews across the entire organization and with feedbacks from customers. They should compare their current capabilities with leaders' best practices and customers' needs and expectations. This work allows to pinpoint capability gaps holding a company back from reaching its full potential and is essential to prioritize actions.

Companies should however keep in mind that today's commercial environment is way more complex than in the past. In order to remain competitive, companies should combine their sales forces' traditional skills with data and advanced analytics. Commercial functions should progressively transition from art to science and rely more on facts than on intuition to reach higher performance.

Most importantly, a commercial transformation should come with performance monitoring. Companies should define Key Performance Indicators to track the impact of improved capabilities and adjust the commercial excellence program. Indeed, best performers have one thing in common : they are continuously reassessing and improving their commercial capabilities. Best practices constantly evolve as what drives value change over time. Commercial Excellence is a journey with fluctuating objectives and strategies and no finishing line.

Finally, a successful commercial transformation needs everybody on board. Comprehensive change requires a holistic approach that involves the entire organization at all levels and gather everyone around a common objective of unlocking commercial potential. Management should lead the transformation and employees should be empowered through workshops to continuously improve customer experience.

Only a collective and organized effort can hope to achieve sustainable results necessary to build strong customer experience and loyalty in an era of rising expectations.

Undoubtedly, Commercial Excellence is a long journey requiring a tremendous amount of work. But you are not alone to go the distance.

As Larka brings excellence to your technical operations, Larka can bring excellence to your commercial operations. For decades, we have been using our unrivaled expertise of the biopharma industry and its intricacies to help its players unlock their commercial potential and maximize their revenues and margins.

We work hand in hand with your teams to transform your commercial operations into a powerful value creating and differentiating Marketing & Sales engine.

Our data scientists will collect and analyze all relevant insights on your company, your customers, your market and leaders' best practices. Our bright strategists will help you build and sustain best-in-class commercial capabilities to gain significant competitive advantage and create strong customer experience.

Let us guide you through the Commercial Excellence journey and raise the commercial game to the next level.