Innovara, Inc.

I saw an ad on TV recently for Mercedes. It shows kids in the back seats of cars asking their parents, “Are we there yet?” Mercedes then goes on to say, “We ARE there… so far.”

A major pharmaceutical company was doing sales training recently for its sales organization. The participants were either very experienced representatives or relatively new ones. They all were facing typical access issues in terms of having face time with doctors. The focus of the training was how to do a good, professional job as a representative in less than one minute. The reps balked. They did not understand why they were going through such basic sales training. “We are already there!” the experienced group decried to the company, tuning out the chance to learn anything new and depressing the less experienced reps.

Come on…get with the program! In the best case, if everyone is selling in this environment, isn’t this an opportunity to hone one’s skills to better differentiate oneself in every time-constrained selling situation? What about using this as a chance to demonstrate readiness to be a sales manager and leader by helping and mentoring less experienced peers on these techniques?

Pharma marketing moved beyond the "4 P's" decades ago (well...some did). Isn't it time to move beyond the good old "Situation Analysis" too?

In most strategic and business plans, today the best performing companies start with a high level "environmental scan." Why aren't we doing the same for Brand Plans? And while we are at it, Brand plans are not just about the selling the brand, we need to be "bigger than the brand" to actually support and drive brands and brand value. Quite simply, helping to improve health outcomes in one's therapeutic area or even across a healthcare system IS good business for both company and product brands.

So what is the starting point? We replace conventional "situation and market analysis" with "Brand Scans" and hypothesis-driven scenarios.

What would be the key elements of a Brand Scan?

We are world leaders in medical presentation skills training, working with world leaders in a wide range of medical and scientific fields of expertise. So please trust me when I say that from our experience, a medical professional audience is a most critical one, literally and figuratively. Within a matter of seconds of beginning your medical/scientific presentation, they will decide if they like you, want to stay and listen to you, and whether they will value your opinions.

Here are a few simple proven steps that you can take to make sure the opening of your next medical/scientific presentation goes brilliantly.

1. After you have been introduced, face the chairperson or moderator who introduced you and say "thank you" Dr. (NAME), then pause, and follow with...
2. "It is a pleasure to have this opportunity to speak to you today. As my colleague mentioned, I am Dr. ...., and I am [position] at .... [Institution], from..... [City/country]", pause...
3. "Today, I am presenting on ... [title of presentation]."

Importantly, put your name and title under the title of your presentation, to add visual impact and recall.

Not very complicated, but these simple steps have proven effective for many physicians with whom we have worked.

There are other even better approaches that we refer to as "grabbers", i.e. the way you introduce the topic "grabs" the interest of the audience. After doing the first two steps above, the third step is to quickly involve them in wanting to learn what you have to share with them.

Here are some examples:

• Post something as a collective challenge to be solved: "Today I want to share an important medical challenge...
• Take them on a journey with you: "Today I will present on [topic]. What first interested me about this...[Give a clue as to what is to come]."
• Share both successes and personal, hard-earned lessons: "Today I want to share my experience and some insights I gained from [research/a case] on [topic]."

There you go, some simple yet effective ways for you to begin your next medical/scientific presentation brilliantly.

Good luck on your next presentation! And please share your ideas and experiences, as well.

Contact (Barri Blauvelt) at Innovara to discuss this and other tips we have for you, and to learn more about our Powerful Medical Presenter ™(PMP) ™ and Executive Coaching to Advance Medical Presentation Skills™ (ECAMP™) training programs, which are available globally.

Do you know your customer well enough?

If not, then what are you doing and why are you doing it?

I am reminded of the Lean Six Sigma principal: If what you are doing is not driving customer value, then by definition it is waste.

One of the most important tools we share with in our hallmark marketing course, MARKETING PLAN IN ACTION (MPIA) is "Innovara Attribute Map". This tool and process is relatively easy to do. More importantly, it quickly highlights whether you do or don't know your customer (and competition) as well as you think you do.

Even if you are only somewhat certain, the next phase of doing the exercise is even more helpful: to prioritize primary, secondary, and defensive strategies for your own company and what are likely to be those of the competition.

Finally, we apply the acid test: What is the risk of being wrong? If the risk is low, and it is clear that your strategies are most likely to be the best that you can pursue, then you probably can proceed. However, if the risk is high, take the time to do the customer insight research. Importantly, however, you now know specifically what to do the research on.

For further information about Innovara's marketing training, including the Marketing Plan In Action training program, please click here.

If you are in Asia, we will be holding two open training seminars for Marketing Plan In Action in Thailand in May and Shanghai, China in June. For more information on these open training seminar events please contact the local Innovara offices or trainers. Mr. Hsiang for Innovara Greater China and Mr. Leelatian for Innovara Thailand.

Innovara prides itself on continually updating our sales, marketing and other training curricula to prepare our clients for not only today, but for tomorrow. We don’t sell “off the shelf” packages, but each program is customized and specific to the learning need. Why?

Quite simple.   Industry representatives are faced with many and new challenges every day. As health care is evolving rapidly, so must they. Along with these challenges, comes the need to create new ways to work with medical and other customers that build true value. You no longer promote brands, you promote improving health care, from prevention, to awareness and education, to diagnosis and management, through end stage disease. So what does it take to be a successful rep today? Simply – you have to think and be “bigger than the brand”.

Firstly, product, competitor and customer knowledge (incl. buying systems/access management, working within established and creating new networks, key account management skills) – these are GIVENS!

Barri Blauvelt Innovara CEO and adjunct faculty at U. of Massachusetts co-authors: Identifying Important Breast Cancer Control Strategies in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East/North Africa has just been published on BMC Health Services Research (http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6963/11/227).

There is a lot of emphasis now in the healthcare industry on the word "access", e.g. creating access, maintain access and crafting access strategies. It slowly crept into our language starting with the new millennium. This decade, "access" is THE buzzword.

"Access" is NOT something that you will not find in text books because it has really been the domain of commercialization strategy in the industry for the last three years. Access is fundamentally who holds the money, because who holds the money holds the power.

The package is one of the most underappreciated marketing tools that companies can use to directly communicate with the patient. With the exception of pills going into a pill bottle, which is unique to the USA, this is your moment to touch and talk to the patient.

There are two "moments of truth" – the sample package and the commercial package. Let's start with the sample package. Some of the most creative sample packaging that we have evaluated doesn't even include active ingredient in it. Shire's patch for ADHD is a great example of that. The doctor would give the patient (or the parents of a child patient) an educational sample package with a placebo patch so they could see what a placebo patch would look like and feel like before they made any mistakes when applying the actual, and very expensive, patch. The doctor also could then demonstrate how to wear the placebo patch and further direct them to the materials inside the sample pack to talk about that medicine.

The term marketing in the pharmaceutical industry is being challenged; it is morphing into commercialization strategies, not just marketing. More and more people are feeling that it is no longer about marketing a brand, it is about marketing a disease.

A client recently said to me, and I agree, "This is the future of marketing. It is not about promoting the brand, it is about promoting the disease and how you're going to be involved in that role of disease management. A company with a clear understanding of how they can help advance the management of a disease, that's the company that's going to win."