Is low Carryover good for you?

Carryover gets people talking. Sales management often assumes it must be low, using that assumption to justify making lots of calls.

Here’s a quick thought experiment: if carryover remained 100% for years to come, what would that mean for every new patient your customer puts on your brand?

Without high carryover, a prescription drug cannot achieve the revenue levels we see in the market.

Experience shows that carryover is difficult to predict intuitively. One common pattern emerges: if a product is over-resourced, carryover seems terribly wrong. Yet if the same product is allocated more budget, the numbers suddenly look excellent.

Debating carryover is rarely constructive. Loud complaints often come from those who haven’t done the proper calculations accounting for future events.

In reality, these debates are defensively motivated. They distract from the real problem with every over-resourced product: the field force spends too much time on customer interactions that generate almost no revenue.

Visiting a customer multiple times for $60 in revenue—whether it’s $50 or $80—is simply not worth it.