When positioning a new vaccine, education and compliance can be challenging

It’s not just your customers who need to be on board. The veterinary staff and their clients can be equally important in determining the success of a new vaccine and, often, the success of a practice.

So, while distributor reps can educate their veterinarian customers on disease prevalence and the need for newly available vaccines, veterinarians have a responsibility to keep their staff informed, educate their clients and promote client compliance. “Getting clients to comply [with any treatment] is a huge challenge,” says Elliot Perkins, sales rep, Intervet/Schering-Plough. To do so, veterinarians should convey the “overall cost of caring for pets,” he points out. For instance, taking a dog that is not vaccinated for bordetella to a kennel can be risky given the opportunity for disease outbreaks in such environments.

But, as challenging as it may be for reps to educate their customers on existing vaccines and encourage them to pass along that information to their staff and clients, positioning a new vaccine often requires even more persistence. “Reps must look for opportunities to educate their customers,” says Perkins. “Especially when the need for a new vaccine is not perceived, it takes a lot more time for reps to create that sense of need.”

For Perkins, a Washington, D.C.-based rep working to promote the value of his company’s new canine influenza vaccine, the high local incidence of canine influenza has made his job a lot easier. “In the D.C. metro area, we have had a significant outbreak of canine influenza, so everyone is painfully aware of the need for the vaccine,” he says. Nevertheless, he makes it a rule to phone a practice ahead of a sales call to gauge its level of staff awareness.

“I’ll call the office before I go in and ask, ‘Can you tell me about this new canine influenza vaccine?’” Perkins says. “Often, I hear, ‘I don’t know.’ Compare that to a practice where the staff is informed. An informed staff can [influence] how happy clients are and how successful the practice will become.

“It’s vital to the practice for clients to be educated,” he continues. “If they understand and believe in the importance of a treatment, they will be more likely to follow through with it and return to the practice in the future. I always look for how aware [potential customers] are of the disease state. Do they know its prevalence? Because, people are less likely to be receptive to a concept and follow through with a new vaccine when they don’t.”

Prevention is key
Not every animal requires every vaccine, notes Perkins. But when there is a high risk for a particular disease, it’s imperative to immunize pets. In fact, boarding facilities in the D.C. area are not admitting dogs that are not vaccinated for canine influenza, he points out. “If an outbreak occurs, it could cost a kennel as much as $75,000,” he says. One local rescue [facility] had a high number of cases of canine influenza, and many of those dogs contracted pneumonia. The kennel had to pay for treatment and disinfection, and it had to close down until the animals were no longer contagious. If a pet owner takes a healthy pet to a boarding facility, and the animal becomes ill, chances are the owner won’t pay for treatment. Clinics and kennels can control whether their patients (or boarders) are vaccinated and protected,” he adds. “Prevention is key.”

Educate, educate, educate
Perkins finds the more veterinarians he reaches out to, the more sales he likely will make. “Reps should make it a point to get into every key practice they have,” he says. “They should set up appointments and lunches with veterinarians, office managers and other staff.” By working with staff separately, sales reps can show veterinarians they want to help educate the whole office, he points out.

Another way for reps to reach potential customers is through dinner engagements. Perkins suggests inviting two or three large practices to a dinner program and then bringing in technical service reps or clinical researchers. “I may even do a presentation myself,” he says. The important thing is to get the veterinarians involved and interested, he adds.

It’s also important to incorporate local leadership, such as key opinion leaders from state or regional associations, Perkins continues. Attending a variety of meetings and providing veterinarians with literature and handouts is helpful as well. “Reps need to reach a large audience,” he says. Not every veterinarian attends every meeting, so reps should look for different avenues for reaching them, he notes. “Reps should be tremendously organized, with an excellent plan of attack,” says Perkins. “They can’t work in piecemeal fashion.”

Handling objections
Veterinarians, like physicians, generally do not latch on to a new product without ample evidence of its need, safety and efficacy. So, it should be no surprise to reps who are positioning a new vaccine to hear a veterinarian say, ‘I’d like to wait and see what its side effects are.’

“Positioning a new vaccine is not a sprint,” says Perkins. “It’s more like a marathon. So, if a customer doesn’t want to try a new vaccine just out of the gate, I tell them, ‘That’s fine.’ I’m there to sell them on the clinical side. My job is to bring in more clinical data and build their trust. If they need a few more months to make a decision, that is fine.”

Another common objection reps may hear from potential customers is, “I don’t see a great prevalence of this disease in this area.” Perkins doesn’t hesitate to point out, “What was in your neighbor’s house yesterday could very well be in your own house today.” Indeed, veterinarians should take steps to prevent diseases from spreading from one location to another, he notes. “We provide a literature piece that shows where canine influenza is occurring and how prevalent it is in those areas,” he explains. “Reps really need to establish a need in the veterinarian’s mind.”

Veterinarians want to see third-party clinical data and research, he continues. “In the last 10 years, the gold standard for research has become challenge data, he says. Simply providing the latest research no longer is enough. Today, veterinarians are looking for specific data that measures the differences between vaccinated and non-vaccinated animals, he explains. “Today, we have to prove [our products] work,” he says. “We can’t show this in theory.” So, for instance, Intervet/Schering-Plough has created a booklet with information from associations, research by the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), articles, clinical research and more, he adds. “In some cases, we provide this information in electronic format so that the veterinarian can make it available on his or her Web site,” he adds.

The key is for distributor reps to thoroughly educate their customers and provide them with resources they truly can rely on, Perkins continues. And, providing technical insight is a value-added service, he notes. After all, he points out, people may not always wish to be sold something, but they almost always are open to more information.