The landscape of HCP engagement has never been more challenging. With access constrained, budgets tightening, and the looming sunset of third-party cookies drastically reducing the quality of market-wide data, the mandate is clear: maximise every impact.
The solution isn’t found in searching for ever-diminishing external signals, but in looking inward. For pharma organisations committed to enabling their field teams as true orchestrators of great customer experiences, first-party data is the single most valuable, compliant, and actionable asset you possess outside of the brands you are promoting.
First-party data – the data you collect directly from your customers’ interactions with your brands – is the truth. It’s a record of their content consumption, their Rep Triggered Email (RTE) opens, their attendance at your virtual events, and their interactions via your CLM system. It provides the necessary clarity to move beyond generic messaging and deploy the kind of personalised, high-impact strategies that drive true sales performance.
In a world desperate for relevance, your first-party data is the foundation for an evidence-based dialogue with the customer. The question is: are you truly leveraging it?
Three ways to start stirring up some impactful first-party data
You don’t need a complete digital transformation roadmap to start seeing immediate returns from your first-party data. Our expert consultants regularly identify key improvements that deliver quick, measurable impact.
Here are three quick wins your organisation can implement now to leverage your existing data better:
- Audit and make mandatory your CLM/CRM data capture: If it’s not captured, it didn’t happen. Too often, critical interaction data – the exact materials consumed during a personal HCP interaction, the specific content downloaded, or the HCP’s expressed intent – is left as an optional text field or is simply never recorded consistently. Conduct an immediate audit of your CLM/CRM capture fields. Ensure they are mandatory, structured, and instantly link to a defined Next Best Action or automated follow-up content (like an RTE). This isn’t just administration; it’s building the precision engine that fuels your commercial outreach.
- Capture intent by measuring interaction within the Digital Sales Aid: Forget tracking simply whether a material was used. The most valuable first-party data is generated during a live, digital sales aid presentation. Your CLM system is a powerful data-gathering tool – if you use it correctly. Design your edetails with interactive elements that require the HCP’s input or navigation decisions. For example, rather than just showing three options, ask the HCP to select the clinical pathway that is most relevant to their practice. Every selection, every choice, and every piece of content that the rep skips based on the conversation is a direct first-party data signal. Ensure your CLM setup captures these specific, granular interactions. This instantly provides the rep with clear, non-verbal data on the HCP’s needs, transforming your sales aid into an in-call insight generation tool that dictates the immediate next steps and future follow-up strategy.
- Make consent value-driven, not a compliance barrier: Compliance and customer experience are not mutually exclusive. When seeking consent for first-party data collection (email preference, tracking cookies, etc.), frame the exchange not as a bureaucratic necessity, but as a clear value proposition. Explain to the HCP that providing consent allows you to deliver highly specific, valuable, and timely content that relates directly to their recorded interests. When your data collection strategy is driven by authenticity and the promise of a superior experience, compliance becomes a benefit, not a bottleneck.
The Road to rep enablement requires deeper expertise
The tips above offer immediate uplift, but they are just the start.
Maximising your pharma sales performance requires a strategic, ground-up assessment of your data architecture, your CRM/CLM maturity, and your ability to transform raw data into actionable insights via tools like MyInsights Dashboards.
The most transformative changes – those that accelerate sales performance by 71% – come from mastering elements such as:
- Advanced, behaviour-based segmentation strategies.
- Integrating cross-channel data to form a true single customer view.
- Building predictive models for next-best action planning.
These are complex challenges, and they require focused, expert guidance.
We’ve deliberately left our top-tier advice and our proven critical assessment framework out of this article. That’s because the true path to data mastery is bespoke, not bloggable.
If you’re ready to do it better and harness the full potential of your first-party data to empower your field and office teams and drive unparalleled results, let’s talk.
Ready to unlock your full data potential?
Contact us today to book a tailored First-Party Data Workshop and take the critical first step on the twentyeightb Discovery Pathway.