Sales & Marketing

These "guns for hire" bring the science and marketing savvy that clients need, often with in-depth category experience, but without the commitment and cost associated with hiring a full-time employee.

More than high-call frequency will be necessary to succeed in an increasingly competitive sales environment.

Physicians seek point-of-care info and updates in friendly formats. Data should be available when and how they need it, and in exactly the right amounts.

Sanofi-Aventis' campaign for Taxotere elicits an emotional response from oncologists.

Despite heightened scrutiny from industry advocates and the beginnings of self-imposed regulation, pharma companies' violations of DTC regulations have been getting worse, says Tom Abrams, director of FDA's Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising, and Communications (DDMAC). Abrams has been on all sides of drug marketing, from receiving promotions as a pharmacist to creating promotions as a member of industry to regulating promotions as the head of DDMAC. As such, he's in good position to see the big picture.

While the typical brand invests more than $100 million in annual sales force support, it spends on average less than $2 million to determine whether the detail piece is driving prescriptions.

PhRMA Guiding Principle number 10 calls for the banishment of reminder ads. While there are many reasons why drug ads truly advance the public health, there are no good arguments for why reminder ads advance public health in any way.

The most important result for pharma firms of the changing sales structure is a reduction in the amount of training resources that are available to them.

The circumstances of Crawford's departure may complicate the process of securing a permanent FDA leader. Congress and HHS are investigating whether his confirmation process failed to uncover important facts.

Valeant is banking on Viramidine, a pro-drug of its longtime cash cow, ribavirin, to catapult the company to the next level.

Growing by Indication, Genentech Has a New Type of Blockbuster

Think of the role compliance plays in your job. Now imagine that level of concern increased by 25 percent, 50, or even more. That's what pharma has to look forward to in the next few years, as the effects of old regulatory initiatives, such as 21 CFR Part 11 and Sarbanes Oxley, start fully kicking in-and as we experience the as-yet-unknown regulatory fallout of the new concern with drug safety. It's no surprise that a great portion of this volume of Pharm Exec's Successful Product Manager's Handbook series is given over to compliance.

Sales reps should be able to access, in a central location, company-enerated influences that have affected a given physician. This type of closed- loop marketing creates a more customer-centric approach that provides etter influencer-level insight by connecting each resource, providing direction and metrics, and continually re-evaluating key influences and ROI.

Product managers would be less disrupted if compliance activities at pharma companies were more anticipatory than reactionary.

As the industry thinks about new sales force models, it should look beyond ROI numbers, toward a new paradigm that not only works for pharma, but also for its customers.

No brand manufacturers plan to market generic versions of their own product, at least not until the patent expires. And why would they? As long as the branded version enjoys patent protection, marketing a cut-rate product would eat away profit margin during the years when a drug makes the most money.

Data suggest that pharma companies engage the same key opinion leaders on assignments in three to seven departments or product groups at once.

To get along with the CFO, drug companies need to express more data in units that a health plan can integrate into its own internal actuarial analysis. The financial decision makers at a health plan want to know how a new drug affects the value of expected claims on the whole.

There comes a point when people have enough stuff in their lives, but they can never have enough meaning. Leaders have to find opportunities for their eams to do more than turn the machine of profit.

Market researchers often fail to realize that whenever they collect competitor information they are in fact collecting competitive intelligence. The same is true in reverse.

The pharmaceutical industry devotes more of its promotional budget to samples than anything else, unless you count the army of sales representatives that delivers them. This year, the average wholesale price of samples passed out to doctors will approach $15 billion-roughly twice the value of samples five years ago. And although few in the industry have come to grips with it, the federal regulations governing this enormous investment have undergone drastic changes.

It's important to empower individuals to understand and accept the responsibility for being stewards of their own health.

Partnerships with geriatric pharmacists will be critical for brand teams that market products specifically to seniors.

If pharmaceutical companies hope to improve their marketing efficiency, they have to change how they approach their customers. For years, manufacturers have been practicing the "more is better" direct-selling approach to physicians. But research now shows what common sense has long suggested: More has become too much. Education has given way to inundation, clamoring for face time with physicians has led to diminishing sales returns, and relationships with major pharma stakeholders have broken down. Physicians, regulators, consumers, and legislators have come to mistrust manufacturers' motives and integrity. As pharma asks how its marketing strategies have missed the mark, it may discover answers in reinventing something it once relied upon: strong relationships with customers.