Advice You - Business

So very few small businesses collect and use statistical data about the effectiveness of activities relating to the sales process, and as a result many business owners and sales managers are insisting that their sta

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

ff undertake activities that are wasting time, and robbing both the company and the sales staff of income.

Case Study – Real Estate Agency

A well-known agency insisted that its sales staff spend an hour a d

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

Examples of combination products may in

ay door knocking their neighbourhood, introducing themselves to home owners who might be potential sellers. At the same time it did not insist that telephone contact was undertaken, and nor was there any strategic

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

approach to telemarketing.

Statistical collection and analysis showed that the door knocking was not an effective use of the sales team’s time, and that more coverage, with better outcomes, could be obtained by hav

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

ing a strategic in-house telemarketing program that developed strong loyalty and public profile.

Other Time Wasters

Here is a brief list of other activities that are too inefficient for the sales person to

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

Combination pro

spend time on and/or actually prevent sales staff from engaging in sales activities:

Hanging around shopping centres handing out pamphlets
Letterbox dropping
Sponsorships (unless they are a well-planned s

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

trategy, not just a self-contained action)
Casual drop ins (unless they’re existing clients, and have been scheduled, not just to fall back on because prospecting is seen as the tougher option)
Giving gift

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

s/corporate souvenirs to people before they even become clients (it’s like a tacky bribe!)
Doing deals on the basis of a verbal agreement – no paperwork, doh!
Not having a proven schedule of activities, no

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

t diarising, documenting, tracking or analysing these activities
Being unaccountable
Allowing proven selling activities to be shoved aside (eg, not turning up to a networking event because a client called

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

– unless that client is leaving the country, this one is plain dumb because you are killing the goose that laid the golden egg!)
Turning office time into a social exercise

How to Assess Activities So Yo

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

u Choose the Most Effective

There’s only one way, and that’s to know your stats. Have a written plan of your sales activities, schedule them on a very strict basis, track their results, and analyse results reg

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

Following aspects would a

ularly. If an activity cannot justify its existence or compete against better-performing activities, drop it like a hot cake!

If you set this up on a well-formulated spreadsheet it will spit out the meaningful sta

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

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

tistics automatically, on a daily basis. Very few companies do this, and that’s why so very few companies actually survive. No-one would argue against the fact that it would be stupid to try to run a company witho

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

ut keeping financial records – and yet the majority of SME’s run their sales team without keeping adequate activity records! They track every dollar and cent, but they don’t track how time is used. Somehow it’s OK

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

for that part of the business to be some kind of black box.

Very rarely do companies keep the sort of statistical data necessary to develop each sales person’s Unique Selling Equation with precision. The USE that

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

you develop over this day will serve as the basis for concerted action on the part of the sales person, and will need to be refined over the coming months.

Analyse the data as you collect it, for each person as we

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

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

ll as for the whole team. You want to know conversion rates, and the efficacy rates in ratio to each activity. For instance there may be an overall conversion rate of 30% of appointments. However one sales person

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

may easily have a 30% efficacy rate converting referrals to appointments, while another may have 10%, and yet their overall appointment conversion rate is the same. This data is absolute gold to you and your compa

.

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

ny because it allows you to precisely pinpoint where and how superior performance is happening (and teach this to others) as well as precisely pinpoint where substandard performance is happening and address it.

If

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

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

a sales-oriented company is not keeping and utilising these kinds of records, it is flying blind and surviving on pure luck. It’s only a matter of time before they’re overtaken by a disaster they didn’t see coming.

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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