Cases - Business

Lesson 1

If you really are in B2B then you will know all of your customers pretty well because they’ve been placing orders with you for a while and should continue placing orders with you for a good while longer. The reality is that many salespeople,

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

for whatever reason, not only don’t like administrative tasks such as maintaining databases but also regard their customers as their customers, not the businesses.

Action Point

Ensure that your business keeps an up-to-date record of the most important

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

Examples of combination products may in

decision makers and key influencers. If you must, give the database an unthreatening title, such as the Christmas Card List. Cost: ?nil

Lesson 2

Just who are your most important customers? Are they the customers that spend the most with you? Are th

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

ey the ones that give you the biggest margin or the most profit? Or are they the organisations that you currently do some business with but could do a lot more?

Action Point

Make it clear to the sales teams exactly which type of customers are importa

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

t, and what sort of mix is required, and why. You might need the large accounts to pay for the overheads, the high margin accounts to contribute to profits and the growth potential accounts to fit into the growth plans you’ve got. Not to mention the in

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

Combination pro

evitable customer churn. Once this is done, the Director of Sales can manage how time, effort and resources are spent, making sure that they are in line with your plans. Cost: ?nil

Lesson 3

We all need to sell more to stand still because of the natu

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

e of customer churn. When pressurised into producing Growth Plans we must always bear in mind the “hierarchy of risk” map. This hierarchy goes in three stages.

Low risk is selling more to existing customers.

Medium risk is selling your existing rang

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

e to new customers and selling new stuff to existing customers.

High risk is selling new stuff to new customers.

The safest route to take is to sell more to your existing customers and the easiest way of doing this is through the Windows of Opportunit

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

.

Action Point

Take the list of your Most Important customers (the Christmas Card List), perhaps also using Pareto’s 80:20 rule to refine the list still further, putting the names in the left hand column. Then, across the top, list out the products o

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

r services that you offer. This may be Nuts, Bolts and Washers; Vales, Pumps and Actuators; or PR, Copy Writing and Consultancy. Now, against each item in the matrix, put the estimated level of penetration (or wallet-share) you have with each customer

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

gainst each product or service you offer. Show this as a rough percentage – 100% or 80% or 30% - something simple that everyone can understand. You might need help from the sales people on this. Better still, use the delivery drivers. They often get

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

Following aspects would a

o see the inside of the customers’ warehouses and they know who’s buying what from whom. This is your Window of Opportunity. Cost: ?nil

Lesson 4

So far this exercise has cost you nothing but time, effort, and the embarrassment of not having this vit

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

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

al data to hand in the first place. We should now have on a single spreadsheet a list of the decision makers and key influencers at your most important customers, cross referenced with who buys what and how much of their spend you’ve got. This list ne

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

ds to be prioritised a bit further.

Action Point

Take the list of customers and add a column for Annual Revenue. This can be for last year, or the last twelve months, or even the last six months annualised. Now sort the list with the highest revenue c

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

ustomer at the top. Cost: ?nil

Lesson 5

Fine-tuning the list based on the Windows of Opportunity can have a huge impact on the direction of the business as a whole. It is best to take the whole figure for penetration rather than the individual score

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

for each market segment, as this next stage doesn’t want to get too messy.

Action Point

Create a new column entitled Overall Penetration and stick to simple percentages such as 50% or 75%. Now divide the revenue by the percentage figure and the resul

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

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

t should be the account potential. Sort the spreadsheet again, with the highest potential, shown in Pound Notes, at the top. This should be a list of your softest targets. Cost: ?nil

Lesson 6

We’ve touched on customer churn already in this exercise.

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

ome churn is unavoidable – mergers, acquisitions and bankruptcies all contribute – but in general at least two-thirds of customer migration can and should be caught before it happens. If you have a churn rate of 15%, it should be possible bring that fi

.

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

gure down to just 5% within a few months, thereby putting an extra 10% on revenue forecast.

Action Point

To do this you need to Listen to your Customers. Find out their little niggles. Find out whether there are any personality clashes between your s

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

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

les people and their buyers. Find out what is stopping them from giving you all of their business; from passing you on to other buyers of your goods and services within their organisation. And find out what issues might be driving them to look elsewhere

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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