Bayer cuts costs and maximizes selling time with Salesforce

These are challenging times for the pharmaceutical industry. Expiring patents, reduced government spending, and growing development costs all contribute to long hours and full schedules. With doctors busier than ever, the time they have available to meet with pharmaceutical companies is becoming scarce. That’s why reps at Bayer—a global a leader in healthcare for more than 130 years—are increasingly focusing their efforts on the most influential physicians, and then maximizing the precious few minutes these doctors give them.

The pharmaceutical division of Bayer HealthCare Canada sells prescription drugs by working closely with the doctors that prescribe them. The company had been using a cloud-based CRM system to track sales calls, invitations to events, and samples distributed, but performance was slow and information wasn’t readily available on mobile devices. Customizing reports and getting important data in real time was also difficult. “Pharmaceutical sales reps should be doing what they do best, finding key physicians and selling, but searching for a contact could take several minutes,” says Alexei Marcilio, Manager of CRM. “It was brutal. That’s a lot of time when our reps could have been out generating revenue.”

Now that Bayer has moved to Salesforce, reps are free to use iPads and iPhones to access data from anywhere. They can create custom reports in the Sales Cloud on the fly and quickly find the most attractive targets in their territory. Custom apps built on the Salesforce Platform make it easy to target physicians and cut the time it takes to disseminate meaningful date to sales teams in half. “Our reps are saving several hours a month with Salesforce, and more accurately targeting doctors,” explains Marcilio. “This translates to increased selling time and revenue gains.”

Helping employees stay connected

A private Chatter social network lets employees in sales, marketing, and marketing research share product information and collaborate to help customers. “Reps in Montreal are now sharing tips with reps in Vancouver,” says Marcilio. Hundreds of employees are using Chatter to share and collaborate across teams and more efficiently on-board new employees. The world is going social, and now Chatter helps us serve our customers in new ways.”