Life Sciences Case Study

Integrating Acquisitions Into a Combined Full-Portfolio Sales Model

Introduction

Company Background

During 2018-2021, this global life sciences company acquired four companies in the same high-growth area of bioscience research. However, each of these acquired companies had different sales motions, channel strategies, geographic focus, coverage models and customer experiences, creating significant integration challenges.

In addition to differing go to market approaches, one of the acquired companies owned a novel product with minimal competition, requiring an enhanced, scientific sales process to educate customers about its uses and benefits.
Customer interviews indicated a preference for a single account manager model to sell the entire portfolio while still benefiting from a specialist layer with extensive workflow and product application knowledge across the portfolio.

To make it easier to serve customers and streamline sales processes, the parent company outlined three objectives:

Globally consistent go-to-customer (GTC) model. The new GTC model would better serve customers while offering consistent experiences.

Greater sales productivity. By aligning sales talent and newly designed roles, the company set a goal of boosting sales productivity by 20%-30%.

Greater sales efficiency. The company aimed to drive efficiency and scale by incorporating a digital selling channel.

These three objectives would help the parent company achieve top-line growth and $500 million of net new revenue over four years. They chose Alexander Group because of our experience in the life sciences sector in addition to our expertise in successfully realigning sales organizations.

Approach

Achieving these aggressive goals required establishing a new GTC model by redesigning the current global sales force roles and responsibilities based on the ILAER sales cycle of Identify, Land, Adopt, Expand and Renew. Alexander Group’s approach standardized these new roles and assigned them primary and secondary sales responsibilities.

Sales Development Rep (SDR)

Primary responsibility for identifying prospects

Account Manager (AM)

Secondary responsibility for identifying accounts and primary responsibility for landing and expanding accounts

Field Application Scientist (FAS)

Primary responsibility for demos during pre-sales and for product adoption during post-sales

Inside Sales Rep (ISR)

Secondary responsibility for reorders

E-Commerce/Marketing

Primary responsibility for expanding and reordering, secondary responsibility for identifying, landing and adopting products

By standardizing these roles across the global organization, the company was better positioned to clarify rules of engagement and establish expectations for success.

Key Findings

Alexander Group’s analysis of competitor models across key geographies revealed a high prevalence of portfolio account management (AM) models. We estimated that 84% of companies successfully applied the AM model and reported higher customer satisfaction and loyalty. Under this model, the account manager leverages the overlay roles for workflows, industry expertise and product knowledge. As one customer stated, the “single sales rep is preferred to streamline communications. I do not want to rely on multiple sellers to buy products from the same vendor.”

These findings validated that a globally consistent, AM-based GTC model was appropriate for integrating the sales force and achieving key strategic objectives.

Recommendations & Outcomes

Upon review, Alexander Group recommended the following actions to deploy this global life sciences company’s AM model and desired objectives:

Ensure new models drive top-line growth, including sales productivity increases and incremental headcount investments where needed

Create a scalable, efficient, and customer-centric GTC commercial engine with a globally consistent set of roles and responsibilities

Expand inside and digitally-enabled sales channels globally, increasing average seller productivity and supporting efficient post-integration scaling

Allow for minor regional variations by tailoring the sales model to address local, regional and country-specific nuances

Develop a roadmap to shift from channel partner-led to direct sales over 24 months, especially in key geographies where the newly integrated sales force can drive sales

Create a single sales incentive compensation plan for the newly designed sales organization

Deploy success metrics to monitor integration progress and ensure visibility of ongoing challenges and objectives achieved

The company has seen consistent, high double-digit growth over the past two years and exceeded the planned expectations.

Change adoption ensured appropriate planning, visibility and communication while rolling out this new engagement model. During the pre-launch phase, Alexander Group engaged the leadership team and developed communication plans. During the roll-out phase, we provided enablement tools, playbooks and 30/60/90-day plans to guide the newly designed sales force. Finally, in the post-launch phase, Alexander Group designed success metrics, workstream oversight and delivery that were key features to ensure complete implementation of the new GTC model.

The company has seen consistent, high double-digit growth over the past two years and exceeded the planned expectations. Because of the integrated model, it is well positioned to weather the current slowdown in the Life Sciences industry impacting most competitors.

Engaging an Expert

Challenge brings opportunity. Alexander Group helps life sciences clients assess current revenue challenges, offer solutions that drive revenue and align their sales investment with business objectives. Alexander Group has the life sciences industry expertise to help your organization.

About Alexander Group

Alexander Group understands your revenue growth challenges. Since 1985, we’ve served more than 3,000 companies across the globe. This experience gives us not only a highly sophisticated set of best practices to grow revenue—we also have a rich repository of unique industry data that informs all our recommendations. Aligning product, marketing, operations and finance efforts behind a successful sales organization takes insight and hard work. We help the world’s leading organizations build the right revenue vision, transform their organizations and deliver results.