Training in excellence

Many organisations have put in place, or are considering, 'marketing excellence' programmes to help drive performance. The key challenge for companies is to prepare marketers for the future rather than just focusing on their current or past needs. So the question is what form will excellence take?

Many organisations are still using a series of templates as the way to ensure marketing is excellent across brands, business units and countries, generally in PowerPoint as no one seems to have time to read written documents these days. However, as smart marketing managers are recognising, their teams are becoming adept at completing templates but not actually achieving the excellence that is required. The necessary quality of thinking is just not there, and too often the end plan is no different from how the company has always gone about its marketing.

Those who recognise that templates are not the way forward have assembled sets of tools and a logic structure to try to get true insight by putting the customer at the centre of everything. From this base the hope is that excellent marketing strategies and plans can be developed. However, if marketers and their bosses do not know what excellent is, then the end product can still be lacking.

So what is going to drive success in the future healthcare environments and as a consequence, what does excellence look like?

There is now evidence to suggest that sales at the end of Q3 after product launch predict sales at Q20 (five years post launch) and consequently peak sales (Source: INSEAD). Plus the quicker a product gets to market, the longer there is to maximise peak sales. Interestingly, what the analysis also shows is that the post launch trajectory is not about being first to market or being the best molecule.

An important element of excellence comes from the R&D and commercial divisions working together effectively, which involves managing thought leader segments to shape the future for the molecule, generating insight for market development, as well as the evidence base for the product and its future positioning. This is a critical area in creating value and developing competitive advantage.

Then there is effective management of market access and market entry, including ensuring timely and acceptable pricing along with formulary approval post-launch.

Above all, product launch is about developing and sustaining a momentum for the product. This means ensuring the customer's initial use of the product is positive and provides a foundation on which to build. This is achieved by helping the clinician identify the right patient for the product and by managing his or her, and the patient's, expectations appropriately.

Discover the unknown
Insight, from a marketing excellence perspective, is about discovering or recognising previously unknown, overlooked or unappreciated reasons behind why customers behave in a particular way; their motivations. These can then be used to drive change.

This requires real tenacity in probing into what is seen and heard. It is about assimilating and interrogating data, facts and observations to glean and really understand the underlying drivers. It is an iterative process that looks for and then tests new patterns and explanations that have not been recognised previously.

When true insight has been generated, it is so obvious, with the benefit of hindsight, once the end of the process has been reached. Arriving at that point involves perspiration with a little inspiration. It is about having the eyes to see and the ability to really listen.

Delivering value
The terms 'value' and 'value proposition' are being used more and more in healthcare marketing these days. The problem is that many people see the value proposition as purely part of market access and, specifically, the pricing and reimbursement package pre-launch.

The challenge for marketers is to demonstrate value to a number of different and diverse stakeholders over the whole life cycle of the brand, not least as value means different things to different people.

To payers, it is all about the economic benefits of treating whole populations, and hence drug cost. In the UK, the intent to move to Value-Based Pricing (VBP) is all about improving National Health Service (NHS) patients' access to effective and innovative drugs. Value for the UK government includes impact on 'burden of illness' (the seriousness of the condition, including severity, and threat to life, after treatment with current best practice) and 'therapeutic innovation and improvement' (the scale of clinical benefit provided by the medicine, beyond current best practice).

Also important are non-health benefits, such as impacts on time spent with carers. The VBP assessment is intended to yield a price range that represents the value of a new medicine to the NHS.

To healthcare professionals it is more about treating the individual patient, but within the local operating environment. It is about the medical or therapeutic benefits of the treatment.

However, even then value differs across the healthcare professional spectrum.

Specialists have a strong bias towards evidence-based decision making with a dose of personal experience and practice, the extent depending on the speciality. So value for the specialist is driven by the strength and depth of the clinical evidence. For the generalist, it is more about patient recognition and the value comes from the medical benefits plus the practicalities of managing the patient over the course of treatment.

For the patient, value is different again. Here it is about outcomes focused around the patient/caregiver benefits, such as pain, anxiety, social/emotional wellbeing, functioning and ability to work.

The challenge for the marketer is that the relative or perceived value of a product will change over the life cycle, given changes in the competitive set, like brand leaders going off patent and new entrants offering greater benefit. Hence life cycle management takes on a different dimension. Rather than just managing label or indication extension, the marketer needs to continue to develop perceptions and the evidence of acceptable value.

Focus
With the necessary change in business models, away from pure salesforce numbers and share of voice, there is a natural tendency to try to cover all the bases in case something important is missed. However, then marketers end up with little focus and no clear direction.

Resources, including time, people and money, are stretched increasingly as businesses become more efficient and more effective in order to operate profitably. Consequently there is an increasing need to reduce the number of tasks being done without compromising achievement of ever more challenging objectives. That means being confident of what really drives success for the brand.

The challenge is having the clarity to recognise what is important and what is not, and the courage to let go of what may be comfortable and familiar and not to repeatedly do things that have always been done.

Marketing excellence can be defined according to the different elements of bringing the product to market and maximising success. It is about:
• Maximising speed of market entry
• Effectively managing the thought leader base across the life cycle of the product
• Ensuring timely and acceptable pricing along with formulary approval post-launch
• Generating true customer insight that allows the marketer to understand underlying motivations and drive change
• Helping the clinician identify the right patient for the product and managing the clinician's and the patient's expectations appropriately
• Delivering value, based on that insight, to a wide range of stakeholders across the life cycle of the brand: customer value management.

Excellence is about identifying what marketers have to do and what they want to do. Anything else is a waste of resource.

The Author
Dr Paul Stuart-Kregor is director at The MSI Consultancy