The new-to-brand Rx (NBRx) metric is based on longitudinal linking of patients’ prescription activity over time. It is the gold standard for Longitudinal Prescription Data and can be a powerful tool for managing your field sales force. In this blog, we examine five important things to know about NBRx when applying it to your sales incentive plans.

1. NBRx usage in Incentive Compensation (IC) plans has continued to increase during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on IQVIA’s 2022 U.S. IC Benchmark Study, the use of NBRx as an incentive plan component has increased to almost 19%, compared to 7% pre-COVID-19. For newly-launched products, nearly 25% of respondents reported using NBRx as core part of the IC Plan.
2. The NBRx metric reports source-of-business insight into what drives your New Prescriptions (NRx) and Total Prescriptions (TRx) volume. Even though these NBRx prescriptions are generally about 10% of overall volume across markets, they are an important measure for product success and can predict future sales trends.
3. Impact on Sales Reps’ Morale: From IQVIA’s sales team surveys and focus group sessions during IC plan design projects with our customers, we hear directly from sales leaders and sales reps that they prefer New Patient Start metrics in their IC plans. Why? They report feeling they have more influence on NBRx in comparison to TRx, which they perceive as being more dependent on ongoing patient compliance.
4. NBRx vs NRx: Some of IQVIA’s customers use NRx instead of NBRx. The difference between the two is that NRx includes any new prescription: new-to-brand, new script, renewal of expired scripts. NRx remains a popular proxy for patient-oriented metrics. However, using it as an IC metric can encourage the reps to influence HCPs to write shorter duration scripts, so they can get higher NRx volume. On the other hand, NBRx does not offer that opportunity to a rep.
5. All-in or Not: While NBRx is an excellent indicator for future business, and rewards reps for winning business from competitor products, it should not be the only metric in your IC strategy. IQVIA recommends complementing NBRx with other metrics. TRx, for example, makes a good complementary measure because it brings focus to the long-term success of the product, thereby balancing a rep’s attention on short and long-term success. A TRx component in an IC plan also motivates sales reps to stay on message for keeping patients on therapy and not ignoring the refill business.

How can you introduce NBRx within your organization? When adding any new metric, such as introducing NBRx, IQVIA recommends including the new data in a sales incentive contest rather than attempting to inject it into the annual plan as a means of initially orienting your team to it.

Once ready to move NBRx to your core IC Plan, you can model out the weights between the metrics that make up your sales teams’ IC plan based on your brand strategy, company’s IC philosophy, and focus areas for Sales reps. You can use a combination of historical data and future potential to establish a balanced IC Plan.

Could NBRx be part of your company’s IC strategy? Connect with us if you want to discuss how NBRx could fit into your incentive strategy or if you have any questions.