Strategy

Just because outside contractors and vendors are experts does not mean everything will happen exactly the way you want it to. There's a lot of oversight.

Advice for new leaders: Forget the irrelevant meetings, the 300 e-mails, and the 50 voicemails.

These "guns for hire" bring the science and marketing savvy that clients need, often with in-depth category experience, but without the commitment and cost associated with hiring a full-time employee.

What does it take to keep your employees on board? In the 1980s, employees looked for performance pay. In the 1990s, they wanted job security. Employees' needs have changed as society has, yet one thing has remained the same: Employees are always looking for something more out of their jobs. They want better quality of life at work.

In an article for the New York Times, reporter Damien Cave pointed out how few heroes have been publicly recognized by the Administration in the current war. Despite the fact that there have been incredible acts of heroism and gutsy leadership on the ground of this Iraq war, the powers that be, for the most part, are calling no attention to it-at least no prime-time attention. Damien's most damning example came from Major Bruce Norton, a military historian and author of Encyclopedia of American Military Heroes, who recounted how a Marine recently received his Navy Cross, the second-highest military honor-not with ceremony and honor, but in the mail.

Valeant is banking on Viramidine, a pro-drug of its longtime cash cow, ribavirin, to catapult the company to the next level.

Growing by Indication, Genentech Has a New Type of Blockbuster

Martin Soeters (pronounced soo't rs) has dedicated a quarter century-almost half his life-to the company at which he's now president of US operations. Novo Nordisk, where Soeters has worked since 1980-in various executive roles and locations, from The Netherlands (his homeland) to Belgium to France-is a leader in diabetes treatment, with the largest portfolio in the industry.

No brand manufacturers plan to market generic versions of their own product, at least not until the patent expires. And why would they? As long as the branded version enjoys patent protection, marketing a cut-rate product would eat away profit margin during the years when a drug makes the most money.

To get along with the CFO, drug companies need to express more data in units that a health plan can integrate into its own internal actuarial analysis. The financial decision makers at a health plan want to know how a new drug affects the value of expected claims on the whole.

There comes a point when people have enough stuff in their lives, but they can never have enough meaning. Leaders have to find opportunities for their eams to do more than turn the machine of profit.

Market researchers often fail to realize that whenever they collect competitor information they are in fact collecting competitive intelligence. The same is true in reverse.

Not surprisingly, the biotechs hold three of the top five rankings in percent of sales invested in R&D. Even more impressive, then, are the ratios for Big Pharmas like Schering-Plough and Eli Lilly, in third and fourth place, both at a bit more than 19 percent.

When rebate strategies are coupled with sales force and DTC spending, it results in "margin-negative" business-that is, sales that bring in less than the marginal cost of selling, promoting, and manufacturing the drug.

BMS' use of investigational toxicology puts it in good stead with FDA, which, under its Critical Path initiative, is pushing for more complete toxicology packages.

Western pharma companies call on only China's largest hospitals in the biggest cities. By some estimates, this amounts to only 20,000 doctors.

Leadership evolves from the dynamic of particular situations. Without Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill may have been remembered as a quirky backbencher.

Eyes in the Back of Your Head

These are demanding times for pharmaceutical marketers.

We all remember the Greek myth about old King Sisyphus. In life, he was a trickster, but the gods got the last laugh in the afterlife by making it his fate to push a huge boulder up a mountain only to see it roll down just before reaching the summit-again and again for all eternity.

Without common reporting standards in place, researchers have little incentive to share data with scientists elsewhere in the company. When researchers don't sharedata on a regular basis, they can begin to feel proprietary about their work-and even less inclined to disclose their results.

Without common reporting standards in place, researchers have little incentive to share data with scientists elsewhere in the company. When researchers don't sharedata on a regular basis, they can begin to feel proprietary about their work-and even less inclined to disclose their results.

Accept distortions and untruths. Don't try to undo them. The point is not to win an argument; your critics' views are legitimate, irreversible realities. It's time to give the public something new to think about.

Pharma trial sponsors and their CROs should enlist the support of high-level executives to make sure designated decision makers are fully confident in their ability to act.

A leader can reframe a situation. By recognizing that her own perspective may be incomplete, the leader can expand her frame to include more options for action than simply repeating herself.

Pharma companies are committed to using electronic data capture in clinical trials. Technology adoption will continue to grow, as FDA and consumers want faster safety data.

Pharma companies want to promote their own, rather than hiring senior people away from competitors or other industries. But given the narrow backgrounds of the coming generation, fewer and fewer managers have the coordination and foresight needed to succeed in a general management job.

A small company with an ambitious goal-to prevent infections instead of treating them after the fact-is about to start a revolution.

I realized that, as president of a pharmaceutical company, I am now a representative of the entire industry. As such, my toughest challenge is listening to and seeing the kind of scrutiny our industry is taking.

If you work for a company that isn't interested in increasing sales across your portfolio, don't read this article. Otherwise, you'll learn that your district managers (DM) are the keys to doing just that. DMs select and hire new sales reps, guide product knowledge, develop selling skills, provide feedback, and take action to turn around or terminate poor performers. The average industry DM is responsible for generating tens of millions of dollars in sales through his or her teams. But, only 45 percent of industry DMs achieve their sales goals. Companies that succeed in raising the overall effectiveness of their DMs will create sustainable competitive advantage.