In the pharmaceutical industry, sales teams often face the same structural challenge: promotion strategies based on broad segmentation rather than real prescribing behavior. For years, Aché—one of Brazil’s leading pharmaceutical companies—relied on a generic promotional grid that treated all physicians within a specialty cluster as if they behaved the same.
This challenge is not unique to Aché. According to McKinsey, biopharma companies worldwide are facing increased competitive pressure and shorter opportunity windows, forcing field teams to move away from broad segmentation and adopt more precise, data-driven engagement models.
Their research shows that therapeutic areas now have more competitors entering faster, which requires commercial teams to personalize promotional strategies, prioritize high-value prescribers, and act in real time: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/life-sciences/our-insights/modernizing-the-biopharma-commercial-model-to-maximize-patient-value
This created tactical blind spots, forced reps to improvise during visits, and limited the effectiveness of commercial execution. Despite strong products and a competent salesforce, Aché lacked precision at the most critical moment: the interaction with the physician.
Everything changed when Aché’s Data Intelligence team reimagined the promotional grid using prescription-based individual profiles and Close-Up’s TARGETING analytics.
This shift required a CRM that could support personalized orchestration — something modern platforms like Close-Up CRM deliver exceptionally well (learn more here: https://closeupcrm.com/veeva-crm-vs-close-up-crm-where-close-up-delivers-clear-commercial-advantage/
The Challenge: A Generic Promotional Grid That Didn’t Reflect Reality
Aché’s initial model followed a common market practice:
- Same promotional grid for all physicians in the segment
- Segmentation based only on specialty
- Tactical decisions made in the field with limited data
- Reps promoting products irrelevant to that physician’s stage of adoption
This affected:
- Visit quality
- Time allocation
- Portfolio prioritization
- Strategic alignment
Reps often spent precious minutes discussing products with low likelihood of adoption, rather than maximizing strategic opportunities.
A personalized grid becomes even more powerful when combined with predictive orchestration. Close-Up explains this shift here: https://closeupcrm.com/ai-native-crm-for-pharma/
A Breakthrough: Understanding Physicians as Individuals, Not Segments
Aché’s analytics team investigated one key hypothesis:
Even within the same cluster, physicians demonstrate vastly different prescribing behaviors.
Using Close-Up International’s TARGETING platform, they analyzed years of prescription history and discovered that physicians’ profiles varied according to:
- Molecules already prescribed
- Price positioning and market dynamics
- Participation in different therapeutic classes
- Portfolio balance across high-, mid-, and low-potential products
These insights revealed the need for a more intelligent, individualized promotional model.
The Solution: A Personalized Promotional Grid Integrated into the CRM
Aché created a proprietary algorithm that generates a custom product grid for every physician, dynamically ranked according to:
- Historical prescription data
- Therapeutic potential
- Adoption stage
- Commercial priorities
- Portfolio balance
- Strategic timing for each product
This grid was then integrated directly into Sales Farma, Close-Up’s pharma-native CRM.
How the Smart Grid Works for Reps
Before each visit, the rep can now access:
- A prioritized product list tailored to that physician
- Suggested visual aids organized automatically
- Pre-defined tactical decisions
- Sample distribution recommendations
As a result, the sales conversation becomes:
- More objective
- More strategic
- Better aligned with business goals
- Far more relevant to the physician
The Impact: Higher Productivity and Award-Winning Innovation
The results were clear—and recognized at a national level.
In 2023, Aché won the Lupa de Ouro Award for Best Market Intelligence / Productivity and Effectiveness Project, one of Brazil’s most prestigious pharmaceutical awards.
Operational and Commercial Results Observed
- Significant reduction in pre-visit planning time
- Improved alignment between field execution and strategy
- Increase in overall salesforce productivity
- More meaningful HCP interactions
- Better distribution of promotional samples
- A fully trackable model inside the CRM (physician, product, and visit level)
These improvements also enabled ongoing campaign optimization and real-time decision-making.
Implementation Learnings: A System Designed to Evolve
Deploying this model introduced challenges:
- Team learning curve
- Need for change management
- Continuous algorithm refinement
But each challenge generated new capabilities. Today, Aché is expanding this personalized-grid model across additional business units, aiming for a fully scalable, data-driven promotional ecosystem.
Conclusion
Aché’s journey illustrates a fundamental truth for pharmaceutical sales organizations:
When strategy, data, and technology work together, commercial execution transforms.
By replacing a generic promotional approach with prescription-based personalization, Aché improved the effectiveness of every visit, empowered its reps, and aligned tactical execution with strategic objectives.
Close-Up International acted as the strategic partner behind this transformation—integrating data intelligence, analytics, and CRM technology to bring a new model of medical promotion to life.