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Many companies—even those with extensive, high-performing sales forces—do not seem to have the ability to get new services to market. The lack of new services for existing customers may be the biggest missed profit opportunity they have.

Many factors may contribute to these missed opportunities, but we believe the biggest contributor is the lack of focus on new development and the lack of a process to support that development. In today’s tightly budgeted market, extra resources for experimentation and investigation are all but gone. Yet, often there are customers begging for new capabilities, or market-changing events happening that are ignored.

For example, there have been several events over the last 25 years that have resulted in great changes in pharmaceutical marketing and the data that measure the market:

• Start of 3rd party payers and Medicaid reaching half of all business

• Medicaid rebates and best price (1990-92)

• Medicare Part D (2003-2005)

• Health care reform (2011-?)

• Increases in electronic prescribing to over half of all doctors (2012)

Another Shift in Pharmaceutical Marketing

Companies developing services for the pharmaceutical industry need to listen to two audiences. First are customers, but frequently—especially in pharmaceutical companies—they are more focused on the past and less reactive to current circumstances.

For example, many company executives have stories about brand teams that woke up to Medicare Part D just months from the program start, even though more than a year of notice was clear to all.

The second audience to listen to is the overall healthcare marketplace. Changes in the market (even the lagging pharmaceutical market) can often be predicted quarters or years in advance.  Preparing and prototyping samples of new concepts may be the primary way to test the market, identify future needs or validate new capabilities.

In these cases, skipping over a customer to understand their customer’s needs might be the best bet for the insight needed to develop new services in the marketplace.

Capitalizing on the Opportunity

If a special effort is needed to see the opportunities in the market because your sales team isn’t readily identifying them, what is the best way to tackle and identify those opportunities? 

First, you need a good management team that is listening for opportunities. Finding the macro trends is more about reading the Wall Street Journal than trade publications.

Second, you should engage in consistent market research and, if possible, do research with your customer’s customers to understand what they are facing.

A third way to capitalize on new ideas is to prototype so you are prepared when opportunities present themselves. We believe you can use some existing resources, but using an outside, facilitated process is even better. 

The Pharma Acumen team can help you prepare, monitor and prototype. Contact us to lean more.