Useful Advices - Business

Those who analyze the reasons for their success know the 80/20 rule applies. Eighty percent of their growth, profitability and satisfaction come from 20 percent of the clients.

Three golden rules

1. Marketing, and the whole firm, should focus on

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

providing a stunning product and service in 20 percent of the existing product line. That 20 percent being the small part that is generating 80 percent of the profits.

2. Marketing, and the whole firm, should devote extraordinary endeavor toward delighting, keep

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

ing forever, and expanding the sales to the 20 percent of customers who provide 80 percent of the firm's sales and profits.

3. The product you are marketing must be different and either unobtainable elsewhere or provided by you in a product/service/price package t

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

hat is much better value than is obtainable elsewhere. These conditions are unlikely to apply in more than 20 percent of your current product line, and you are likely to obtain more than 80 percent of your true profits from this 20 percent. And if these condition

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

apply in almost none of your product lines, your only hope is to innovate. At this stage, the creative marketeer must become product led. All innovation is necessarily product led. You cannot innovate without a new product or service.

Be customer cente

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

red for the few right customers

Important as focus on the few best products is, it is much less important than focusing on the few best customers.

Direct your attention where the real threats of competition exist. Know who the top revenue- producing cus

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

tomers are and make sure you meet their needs.

Keep in closest contact with the 20 percent of your clients who give you 80 percent of you business. Each week, go through contract management files and jot a note, send a card, or make a call to anyone you haven't h

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

ad contact with of too long.

Lock in your core customers

1. Know your core customers and the profile of the heavy and frequent consumer.

2. Provide exceptional or even outrageous service to them. Anticipate their needs when you can and rush i

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

like a SWAT team when they ask you for anything else. This may have short-term cost but will have a long-term reward.

3. Target new products and services at the core 20 percent of customers, developing them solely for and with this group. Develop improvements

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

to existing products, or develop totally new products, that are wanted by, and if possible, developed in liaison with, your core customers.

4. Aim to keep your core customers forever. Your core customers are money in the bank. The real measure of a healthy busi

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

ness lies in the strength, depth, and length of its relationship with its core customers.

Attention to the core 20 percent of customers must be a company-wide obsession

Your organization cannot be centered on 100 percent of its customers: it can

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

be centered on 20 percent. Your core customers will see and judge you by the efforts of everyone in the firm, seen and unseen. This makes marketing the job of everyone in any organization.

Salesperson Performance

1. One often neglected import

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

nt item is to hang onto the high performers.

2. Hire more of the same type of salesperson. Maybe not with the same qualifications. Personality and attitude can be much more important. Ask your sales superstars to help you hire more people like them.

3. Try t

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

o identify when the top salespeople sell the most and what they did differently then. The 80/20 Principle applies to time as well as to people. 80 percent of sales by each of your salespeople were probably generated in 20 percent of their work time.

4. Get ever

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

yone to adopt the methods that have the highest ratio of output to input. Do more of what makes the best use of time and money. You could analyze this, but it may e quicker and cheaper simply to observe how the top salespeople spend their time.

5. Switch a succ

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

essful team from one area with an unsuccessful team from another area. You will soon find out whether the good team can beat the structural difficulties or vice versa. Or you may want to split the teams so that some are left in each area.

6. Only train those wh

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

you are reasonably sure plan to stick around with you for several years. Get those who are the best salespeople to train them, rewarding the sales superstars according to the subsequent performance of their trainees. Invest the most training in those who perform

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

best after the first series of training. Take the best 20 percent and invest 80 percent of the training effort in them. Stop training the bottom 50 percent, unless it is clear that you are obtaining good payback on this effort.

The Vital Few Customers
.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de
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Some customers are vital. Most are not. Some sales efforts are wonderfully productive. Most are inefficient. Some will lose you money. Channel marketing and sales effort where you can offer a minority of potential customers something that is unique, be
elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip
tter, or much better value than they can obtain elsewhere, provided that you can make higher profits in the process. Any successful enterprise draws its success from this simple principle.

Suggested Reading: The 80/20 Principle, by Richard Koch, ISBN 0-385-49174-

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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Useful Advices - Finding the Right Customers

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