Step Up your game in big pharma
For the past 19 years, I have been working for Big Pharma companies across the globe. To make my way up the ladder, I had to demystify decision-making in the context of Big Pharma. Along my journey, I have learned through trial and error, and from experts in marketing, leadership, and behavioral psychology about how to succeed in making sound decisions and mobilizing teams to execute strategies to achieve their desired outcome.
Primarily, I have used my academic training and professional experiences to build strategic marketing plans that are backed by research, solid analyses, and industry insights. In the early stages of my career, most of my time was dedicated to engaging leaders to get the input I needed to build strategies that were bullet-proof. This included establishing a proof of concept prior to selling new treatment modalities. Our rapid, post-launch uptake beat industry benchmarks. Other strategies involved creating inflection points in the sales trends that took them to a higher level. My work has taken me to all corners of the healthcare sector, and I have tried just about every market research method – from advisory boards and landscape research to ethnography research – while partnering with the top three global consultancy firms in the world.
In hindsight, my professional growth started with one question: What is the best way to connect the dots to navigate the complexity of massive volumes of data? Through this discovery process, I realized that there is no shortage of data but there is certainly a scarcity of meaningful information that calls for savvy decision-making to create marketing strategies that enable organizations to capture and maintain attention.
It ended up taking me 19 years to learn how to mine for meaningful data and uncover valuable connections between seemingly disparate pieces of information. Even among my moments of glory, there were full-blown disappointments. I built some plans in my early days where I depended on my understanding of the situation and defended them with my ability to persuade the leaders through good presentation skills and creative ideas. This worked until I developed a plan that aimed to break a strong belief physicians had and it was a failure.
Finally, in 2014, I arrived at a deeper understanding of how to map market opportunities, overcome biases in the choices that I made along the marketing plan, and mobilize the organization to bring these strategies to life. This had been mysterious to me and my team for years – revealing trends and clues that led me along a new journey.
My newfound approach gave me success in local, regional, and global settings. With each passing year, I have tested and refined my approach – moving from a bullet-proof strategy to one that is cannonball-proof.
So what does it take? My approach has 6 foundational principles that I will walk you through so that you can replicate my success.
Principle 1 - Cannonball proof your decisions by knowing your MoM (Market Opportunity Map)
Draw the 8 blocks of the customer journey in a comprehensive way.
Principle 2 - Uncover leverage points in your MOM
Identify the opportunities within the customer journey.
Principle 3 - Start with the qualified leverage points
Use the unique scoring process to identify the commercial value.
Principle 4 - Climb the slope of enlightenment to overcome decision biases
Choose the right information strategy to overcome the decision biases.
Principle 5 - Engage leaders through conversational speeches
Persuade the leaders and let them own your decision
Principle 6 - Mobilize your organization by addressing its interconnected system
Address the broader effect of your decision on the whole organization
BE PART OF THE COMMUNITY OF KEY PEOPLE IN BIG PHARMA
What if instead of making assumptions about the MOM you lived the patient journey? What if you knew all the stakeholders, their priorities, and their emotional triggers? What if you knew this even better than the script of your favorite movie?
My short answer to this series of questions is: You would get rid of unnecessary tasks and actions, and strip clean your brand strategy to reveal your real brand value. You would become relevant to all stakeholders, attract and sustain their attention, and secure their long-term commitment. It would mean positively impacting millions of patients’ lives in dynamic and rich ways by bringing them into your brand’s world, benefits, and values .