Advice You - Business

What do the following things have in common: brushing your teeth, regular exercise, eating a balanced diet, paying your bills on time, cleaning your gutters, spending quality time with your spouse and kids…?

They’re all forms of regular “self-care

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

” that, if you neglect them for a period of time or take the wrong approach, there will be costly negative consequences.

The same goes for marketing.

Do any of these symptoms sound familiar?

• Your phone does not ring regularly with new prospects

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

Examples of combination products may in

.

• You don’t regularly hear, “Hey, I’ve heard of your company!”

• Your sales pipeline is dry, so you go to some networking events, get some leads, then stop.

• People don’t respond quickly to meet or talk with you after an initial introduction 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.

rough networking.

• The leads you do get trickle in slowly.

• You spend a lot of time looking for opportunities, but aren’t getting the results you want.

• You can’t safely project your firm’s income for the next 6 to 12 months.

• You’re finding

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

it hard to attract and retain top talent, even in a recently tough economy.

• Relationships with clients tend to be short and one-off projects (i.e., no repeat business).

• You rely heavily on one or two income streams (i.e., consulting or coachi

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

Combination pro

g).

• Most of your eggs are in one basket (i.e., one or two major clients), and if they went away, you’d be in trouble.

• You’re too busy to look for more clients.

If any of these symptoms ring true for you, one of two things is probably happen

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

ing. Either you’re not marketing on a consistent enough basis to generate reliable results. Or you’re not using the right approach to get the kind of results you want. Or both!

Consistency is Key

The American Dental Association recommends brushing

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

your teeth at least twice a day. The USDA’s food pyramid maps out a balanced approach to eating. Your mortgage company or landlord stay happy when you pay them monthly on time. Experts urge us to clean our gutters twice a year. You get the idea…

D

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

we really follow all of these guidelines to the letter? Probably not. But within reason, people who consistently follow healthy habits over time, get better results, live “younger” longer, and incur less cost (financial, physical, emotional) than t

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

hose who do not.

This is definitely the case with marketing for professional services. You simply cannot dabble in lousy messaging, offer an unwanted service, do occasional networking, or disappear from your target audience’s radar, only to reappea

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

when you need more work. Benign neglect and sporadic attention will get you predictable results.

Here’s why: clients come to you in a very vulnerable position…they need something from you that they can’t do for themselves or don’t have the experti

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

Following aspects would a

se to solve on their own. So they need to trust that 1) you won’t lead them astray, wasting their time/money; and 2) you have their best interests in mind.

How can they begin to trust you, then, if you disappear from sight, inconsistently communica

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

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

te with them, or say things that they can’t understand or relate to?

Taking a proactive, consistent “preventative maintenance” approach to marketing is the key to building trust in the marketplace.

Here’s how to make marketing a healthy habit:

ST

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

P 1: Offer what the market wants. Sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how often I see firms selling what their clients “really need, they just don’t know it yet.” Or, “this is such a worthy cause (new approach, cutting edge strategy, etc.), I jus

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

t know it’s needed.” Unless you have the PR and marketing budget to fund a major, long-term educational campaign, you can’t afford to take this approach.

STEP 2: Say the right things to the right audience, at the right time, in the right way. What

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

ou say (messaging) is more important, and harder, than spreading the word. The biggest waste of time and money is to spin your wheels promoting your services when you’re saying the wrong things.

STEP 3: Do some form of marketing every week, if not

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

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

every day. Even if you’re swimming in more work than you can handle now, you can’t afford to stop promoting your services. Ever. Pick a “theme” for the week and just do it: prepare a talk, draft an article, network, write your monthly keep-in-touch

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

e-newsletter, ask for testimonials, add case studies to your website, send items of interest to clients and contacts, write thank you notes, do a postcard mailer about your next talk, call an old client, write and send out a press release, provide g

.

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

eat client service, develop a valuable freebie to give away, and so on.

Successfully marketing professional services is about establishing and sustaining trust through a consistent approach to meaningful visibility with your target audience.

Ignor

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

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

e this advice, and in short order you’ll suffer the equivalent of cavities, leaky gutters, bad credit, and an expanding waistline…and end up paying the expense of emergency surgery, instead of the smaller investment of taking a preventative approach

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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The E-Myth is an easy read and yet the information that Gerber shares is pivotal to anyone who runs a business.

During my many years of lecturing university business school students on entrepreneurial topics I have been pleased, and surprised, at the relatively large numbers willing to take the plunge and pursue new business opportunities. The surprise is that modern students are willing to forego a corporate job right out of school; a job that for so many has been a pre-occupation (and the dream of tuition strapped parents). Choosing a major course of study, a syllabus and internships in many cases are structured solely to enhance and magnify qualifications deemed necessary to excite future corporate employers.

Competition nowadays is very stiff and as a businessman, one can no longer ensure the stableness of his business like the way it used to be. Different enterprises has been sprouting like mushrooms that in just a blink of an eye he will just wake up and realize that his business is already down to its foreclosure. Entrepreneurs cannot always rely on the loyalty of the customers either since if they are given a more attractive price, goods and services, then definitely, they won’t even hesitate to switch to its competitor. Now this is where marketing enters the picture. The most important thing in business is retention and to always keeps the business in the spotlight. And establishing contacts always does the magic when marketing is the topic. It’s just a matter of getting the right information from the right person. So how does one establish contacts anyway? There are several ways on how to produce wide arrays of connection to make product marketing much easier. Ever heard of the term “Mailing list?” Mailing list is a list of names and e-mail addresses.

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