Useful Advices - Business

Do your salespeople have unlimited access to your company's technical resources? Do they take technical experts with them to first meetings with prospects? Does your management team make CONSCIOUS DECISIONS to a

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

llocate technical resources to opportunities, or do salespeople make those decisions on their own?

How often does this happen?

An excited salesperson contacts his or her sales manager and alerts them to

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

Examples of combination products may in

a new opportunity. The sales manager assigns a technical expert to visit the prospect with the salesperson. The salesperson and the technical expert drive (or fly) to the prospect's location and spend days or we

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

ks analyzing the prospect's situation. They perform product demonstrations and evaluations. Eventually they prepare a detailed proposal and deliver it to the prospect.

Unfortunately, the deal never closes...

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

The opportunity languishes in the salesperson's pipeline for many months and is eventually deleted. Even more unfortunate, all of the time and money your company invested to pursue the opportunity (salespe

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

Combination pro

son and technical expert salaries, travel and entertainment expenses, product demonstration and evaluation costs, proposal preparation costs, etc.) was COMPLETELY WASTED.

If your want to minimize wasted technic

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

l resources, hold your salespeople accountable for collecting specific information PRIOR to allocating expensive technical experts to assist them with their opportunities. At minimum this should include requirin

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

g your salespeople to provide reasonably detailed answers to the following questions:

What BUSINESS PROBLEMS does the prospect have?

What is the IMPACT of these business problems on

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

he prospect's business?

Can the impact of the business problems be QUANTIFIED?

How does the quantified impact COMPARE to the (estimated) cost of solving the business problems?

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

br>

Is this quantified impact substantial enough to justify the PROSPECT investing time and resources to pursue a sales cycle?

Is the prospect WORTHY of time and resource investme

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

ts by your company to pursue a sales cycle? For example:

Are they CREDIT WORTHY?

Do they have a BUDGET they can allocate to solving the business problems?

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

Following aspects would a

Have all key DECISION MAKERS and INFLUENCERS been identified?

Has the INFORMATION the decision makers need to have to enable them to make a buying decision been identified?

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

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

>Does the prospect TAKE PROPOSALS OUT TO BID? If they do, what benefit will your company receive for designing a solution?

Armed with this information, you will be prepared to make CONSCIOUS

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

resource allocation decisions.

This will enable you to focus your expensive technical resources on QUALIFIED opportunities, maximizing your company's return on time and resources invested. Plus, rather than

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

acting as a crutch to help your salespeople perform initial opportunity qualification, your technical experts will be able to focus on working with prospect companies' technical experts to troubleshoot business

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

problems, determine root causes, and identify potential solutions.

Other benefits can include reduced product and service training costs and increased size and quality of your company's sales opportunity pip

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

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

line.

How? If your salespeople become experts in FINDING and QUALIFYING opportunities, as well as LEVERAGING EXPERT RESOURCES to help them convert opportunities into sales, it will take less time for them t

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

o learn what they need to know to prospect effectively. Plus, if they focus the bulk of their time on finding and qualifying opportunities, they will source more qualified opportunities!

In summary, if your wan

.

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

to maximize your company's return on technical resource investments, hold your salespeople ACCOUNTABLE for collecting specific information PRIOR to allocating expensive technical experts to assist them with opp

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

rtunities. Then, make CONSCIOUS technical resource allocation decisions. You should see immediate and significant improvements in your sales expense and sales opportunity close rates!

Copyright 2005 -- Alan Rig

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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