Like 2011, 2012 will be another year of budget cutbacks, deadline setbacks, and “must-do-today” desk-clearing tasks. Do not despair. This blog entry provides tips and tools to help you streamline your time and save money. It is my gift to you — Happy New Year! Managing e-mail madness AwayFind liberates you from the never-ending burden of checking your e-mail. When an important message arrives, you are alerted with an SMS on your ...
In my last post, I wrote about some of the changes that may result when sales representatives' performance evaluations are measured against the value and service they provide to their customers rather than sales targets. According to a 3-year longitudinal analysis of IMS Health value metrics, value received correlates more strongly with physician prescribing behavior than conventional sales force effectiveness (SFE) metrics. That sounds great, but what metrics can you use to measure your ...
You have probably read about GlaxoSmithKline’s move to base their sales representatives’ performance evaluations on the value and service provided to customers rather than individual achievements of sales targets. Here’s my take on some of the ways this may change the way we — and our clients — will do business. We will see more of an account management approach to sales. What healthcare professionals (HCPs) really want is help to better manage health outcomes, ...
This New York Times article about a disastrous set of circumstances that is now being faced by the Niaspan brand team really got my attention. The set-up: NIH stopped a large study with Abbott Laboratories’ cholesterol-fighting drug 18 months early after results showed that taking Niaspan in conjunction with a statin failed to prevent heart attacks and may also have boosted stroke risk (despite raising HDL levels and lowering triglycerides). The sum-up: The playing ...
Sometimes, the best way to move someone from point A to point B is via point C. Take yoga mats, for example. Instead of telling people to buy a yoga mat, explain the health benefits of yoga and motivate them to stretch 10 minutes a day. This is an approach that behavioral guru BJ Fogg calls elegant persuasion (see his book: Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do). Smart ...
When building a brand story, we are always finely tuning what information we should play up — and what we can ignore. This is more important than ever, as cognitive reasoning is becoming too difficult for many target audiences today because of information overload. Specifically, a recent Newsweek article confirms what I’ve always believed about changing behavior: providing too much information can actually prevent people from making desired decisions. Over-analysis causes paralysis Researchers have ...
Pharma marketers have traditionally believed that you must end a sales call, promotional piece, or DTC ad with a strong call to action. But as I’ve already pointed out, telling people what to do may actually have the opposite effect. You may experience push back — or complete dismissal — from a physician who has been using the same drug successfully for many years if he or she sees no reason to ...
While “in-your-face” and “buy-it-now” sales approaches work well for low-investment or disposable items (think PedEgg®, Zorbeez™, and EmeryCat®), they are not as effective in pharmaceutical marketing. And, as I’ve mentioned previously, telling people what to do can result in push-back, or worse, cause them to do the exact opposite. Our approach has always been to bring our target audiences on a journey with a brand. We build a brand story that not ...
In this 3-part series, I discuss why marketers should consider changing the way they talk to physicians and patients. For years I’ve been saying that people are averse to change. Recently I came across several studies that provide more proof. There is compelling evidence that people will be resistant to strong persuasion or advice that conflicts with their opinions. This is actually a proven psychological response called reactance, a term that was first coined by ...
American academic John M. Richardson once said that when it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened. We choose door number two and offer five New Year’s resolutions in response to some changes and trends that had an impact on pharma marketers in 2010. #1: We resolve to keep pushing the envelope when promoting brands, despite ...
