How to Write a Pharmaceutical Sales Business Plan

Success in pharmaceutical sales is arguably easier with a well-developed business plan. A business plan helps establish the framework of what you want to accomplish in pharmaceutical sales and how. Creating a pharmaceutical sales business plan is no different from creating a plan for any other business, as the purpose is to map out actions for achieving financial success. By following standard conventions, you can create a pharmaceutical sales business plan that's specific to the products you sell.

Start by establishing a clear business vision and pharmaceutical sales goals for maximum business success. A business vision is a desirable future state you want to achieve in pharmaceutical sales, such as increasing drug pricing competitiveness, expanding sales territories, or offering higher quality products or services. Once you are clear on where you want to take your business, you can address meaningful goal-achieving strategies in the business plan.

A business plan is as good as the work and information that goes into developing it. Pull together enough quality data to write a detailed description of how you plan to achieve business goals, including plans for developing, analyzing and improving product sales. For example, sales territory demographics, drug use by demographics, and physician or hospital data is important for figuring out pharmaceutical marketing strategies. Also, gather information necessary to write business plan basics, such as a company overview, product descriptions, current financial status and future growth projections.

The prep work for writing a plan also includes assessing pharmaceutical sales business strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. This assessment provides a balanced business view, as well as the information necessary to manage barriers and to build on business assets. For example, a strength may be the ability to offer a highly popular drug or medication; a weakness may be that a sales territory is oversaturated with competition -- though on the other hand, there may be an opportunity to expand in another territory. A threat may be a looming drug supplier price increase.

With all pertinent information on hand, it’s time to write your pharmaceutical sales business plan. You don't need to start from scratch, as there are free business plan templates readily available online, and you can adjust them to suit a pharmaceutical sales business model. Using a template allows you to forego the worry about how a plan should look so you can focus on content. Your finished product should be as long and it needs to be to create a functional business blueprint, but 20 to 40 pages are not uncommon.

The last step is to regularly review and update your pharmaceutical sales business plan and sales progress. A regular review helps with assessing and measuring actual drug sales versus projections. For example, if sales of a certain drug are hindered by FDA concerns, you can revisit your marketing and sales strategies for that product and make timely adjustments. The goal is to build on business plan strategies that work and change the ones that don’t.