Wholesale Way

The pharmaceutical product marketing industry is very large, estimated at more than $25 billion per year and this emphasises the need for a pharmaceutical company to be active and effective in the arena. The organisation can be as creative or as ground breaking as it likes as it brings new products to the marketplace, but without sharp attention to its marketing operations it may falter in an ultra-competitive marketplace. While the healthcare industry always seems to be a growth industry, there is an increasing amount of more focused competition and the company fails to concentrate on its marketing strengths at its peril.

The healthcare industry touches almost every individual in the country at some stage and due to its sheer size, drug spending is always a subject of great attention. Within the healthcare industry, the total amount spent on pharmaceuticals accounts for 15% of the entire budget and it therefore follows that due to the high stakes associated, a lack of marketing proficiency can have significant repercussions.

For the pharmaceutical company, its sales force is at the sharp end and spends much of its time interacting directly with the professional, the practitioner and the advisor. Positive interaction between the sales executive and the professional is essential for progress. The executive spends a lot of his or her time detailing and providing information to the professional, yet this is often a tough wall to breach, as the practitioner is somewhat detuned to marketing advances.

Often times, the healthcare professional, being highly educated and focused, wants to rely on scientific papers, advice from colleagues within the industry, or his or her own training and first-hand experience. There is a significant danger that the professional could view the advances of a pharmaceutical company sales executive as single-minded, so the executive therefore needs highly-tuned marketing and communication skills to be able to break through.

The pharmaceutical industry is maturing constantly and with advances in medicine comes the need for a much higher level of education at the sales executive team level. These complex dynamics worry the pharmaceutical company chiefs, especially as they have enough to fill a plate with regard to product development, lobbying activities, regulatory enforcement, adherence and economic constraints. In these times, many turn to pharmaceutical consulting firms to advise them and principally, to steer and educate their sales forces.

Generally, pharmaceutical consultants have a great deal of first-hand experience within the market and specifically with regard to dealing first-hand with professionals and end users. They can advise about correct motivation and the proper balance of training versus direct, “feet on the street” time. Most pharma consulting experts will help to ensure that the sales staff member realises the urgency required, while bringing all members of the team together into a cohesive unit. The executive must not only work with the best interest of the employing company at heart, but must seek to engage the acceptance and trust of the end-user professional at a critical stage in the product life. True balance is required to ensure that motivation works through training to reveal the correct way forward.

Alan Gillies is the Director of L2L Consulting, an elite pharmaceutical consultancy firm which specialises in Strategy Development and Implementation Excellence for prestigious multi-national organisations.

Surely, the pharmaceutical market is one of the most interesting and diverse industries, always in a state of change and flux, but in more recent times, we can see a distinct trend away from big brand product, wide reach styles of marketing toward a focus on the “niche” medicines; this process also seems to be accelerating. An additional challenge is thus presented for the pharmaceutical company sales staff, most especially in the area of education.

Pharmaceutical companies may now be more concerned with discussing product branding at an early stage of the development cycle, as they are keenly aware of the volatile nature of the market and additional constraints that will emerge as the company tries to penetrate and satisfy these more narrow-minded niche markets. It is possible that resistance could be significant and this can mean that more attention should be paid to branding as a critical early component of the marketing cycle.

Increasingly so, pharmaceutical markets are overcrowded. So many choices are presented to a consumer and a wide variety of external forces often come into the purchasing decision, including advice given by the petitioner or front-line professional. Every one of us expects instantaneous information to be available whenever we need it and we’re now getting used to engaging with each other much more often within social networks and online. As a consequence, we are becoming much more educated about every aspect of our existence. As the market becomes more crowded and the consumer becomes more educated, more emphasis must be placed on marketing program efficiency by senior company executives.

Pharmaceutical companies are spending a great deal of their time moulding and shaping the market so that it is ready for the product when it is released. This only helps to emphasise the fact that marketing should be considered interactively during brand creation phases and that educational channels are explored.

While niche product areas are the subject of greater marketing emphasis, more emotions are involved in the end-user decision process as well and the professional is less likely to advise the consumer to go down the more beaten track. The pharmaceutical company must be fully in control of its marketing message and methodology, or it will not be able to differentiate itself from competitors in the marketplace. Consequently, the company’s sales force members are under even more pressure now than they were before, as they must penetrate an increasingly sceptical barrier at the practitioner level with an even more targeted and stronger message accordingly.

The sales force is of primary importance to the success of the company and senior officials are turning in greater numbers to pharmaceutical consultants and pharmaceutical consulting firms to help them train and focus the force accordingly. As an organisation identifies its marketing focus, pharma consulting plays a great role, especially when talking about niche concentration. If the professional is traditionally distant, sharper skills will be required and more cognitive training must be assured to enable the sales executive to break through and be successful. Effective implementation requires an equal amount of experience, ability and training.

Alan Gillies is the Managing Director of L2L Consulting, specialising in enabling pharmaceutical companies to achieve new heights of productivity and performance, throughout all levels of management and revenue generating activities.