White Paper Chat · Healthcare commercial strategy
The rep role is changing whether you are ready or not.
HCP access is down 58 per cent. Most healthcare companies are responding by hiring more reps. The category leaders are doing something structurally different. Michael Colling-Tuck in conversation with Badri Wadawadigi on what that looks like.
Watch or listen to the full conversation
75 minutes on the modernisation of the healthcare commercial process.
Audio only
Six arguments from the conversation
01
The model has quietly broken
The healthcare commercial model was designed when HCP access was around 80 per cent. Today it sits closer to 24 per cent in UK healthcare. That is not a headcount problem. It is a structural one. More reps accelerates the constraint rather than solving it.
02
From pilot to air traffic controller
The rep is no longer the linchpin of the sale. The Value Assessment Committee, procurement, the clinical champion, the medical information team: the modern deal is won or lost across a stakeholder map the rep may never see in full. The skill required is coordination, not just conversion.
03
Data bloat is killing field intelligence
CRMs accumulate forms until reps are spending more time on administrative returns than on accounts. The fix is not a better CRM. It is ruthless prioritisation: collect only the data that feeds directly back into how the rep walks into the next conversation.
04
The playbook is a living document
The best playbooks capture what the best reps actually do in the field: the objection handling that works, the framing that lands, the account pathway that has been walked successfully. Peer-to-peer knowledge, systematised. Not a product manual written at launch.
05
Three tools, not thirteen
Field forces need instruction (what to do in this conversation), engagement (two-click access to what demonstrates value in the room), and reporting (fast enough feedback that the rep sees the data acted upon). When those three work together, the rep is the intelligence node they are supposed to be.
06
Headcount is the multiplier, not the engine
Category leaders do not just have larger field forces. They have better playbooks, better pre-call preparation, and better feedback loops. The headcount multiplies a system that already works. Without the system, more headcount produces diminishing returns faster than most commercial directors have absorbed.
About the guest
Badri Wadawadigi
Badri is a commercial strategy practitioner who has spent the last several years working at the intersection of digital transformation and healthcare field force effectiveness. He has led and restructured field forces across multiple multinational organisations, with particular experience in CRM rationalisation, sales playbook design, and commercial tooling strategy.
The white paper he and Michael co-authored on the modernisation of the healthcare commercial process forms the basis of this conversation.
Read the argument
The rep role is changing whether you are ready or not
The written version of the argument: the model that broke, what the category leaders are doing differently, and the three tools every field force actually needs.
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