SKILLS FOR SUCCESS

July / August 2007

FOCUS ON…

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

Stand Up and Be Counted!

Ginger Graham
Former CEO and Founder
Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

During my career in the healthcare industry, I’ve learned several best practices in terms of forging ahead. This Top 10 list is fluid, as I am still learning as I go, and in five years this list may be completely different. In the meantime, here are 10 lessons learned along the way that might be helpful to you as you navigate your career paths.

  • Showing Up
    The oft-repeated phrase, “90% of life is showing up” is a misleading statement. Just being there is not sufficient; one must be diligent, disciplined, and fully participatory to have an impact and to truly live. In business, many of us will go to great lengths to “show up,” so much so that once we’re there, we’re frustrated, cranky, tired, etc. This defeats the purpose. We need to slow down, to prioritize, to be truly present in order to have a real impact on the situation and the people involved.
  • Honesty
    Nothing works better than honesty. Women often “sugar coat” the truth, particularly when they are in a managerial role. Brutally honest feedback is a gift. This enables us to realize how we are being perceived and to thereby have a choice to be perceived differently. The ideal is to respect people enough to tell them the truth.
  • Words Really Matter
    The words we use to communicate with one another should be chosen carefully. Words cannot be taken back; one can apologize, but the damage has been done. Over the course of my career, I have seen the negative impact made by harsh criticisms. I want to remind everyone that kindness carries no expense nor does giving someone the benefit of the doubt.
  • Being Excellent at Your Craft is a Choice
    Practicing your craft when no one’s watching means you’re truly committed. Women need to practice effective communication skills. Many women tend to “discount” what they’re saying by their own language. No matter their level of confidence in the content, their delivery tends to lean toward the questioning instead of the declarative. I recommend that women practice the craft of persuasion, this will give fellow workers confidence in their competence.
  • No Regrets
    I am a proponent of the “it’s my life and I own it” way of thinking. Women must be responsible for their choices, even the bad ones. There is considerable pressure on women in terms of how to be a “working woman”—not too tough or too weak, not too harsh or too soft or easy. In the end, we need to be ourselves, for good or for bad, because if we try to be someone else at work, in the end we are less effective. Be accountable to yourself and choose who you want to be.
  • Title Does Not Equal Leadership
    Rather than having titles define who leaders are, it is far better to define leaders—across the ranks—as special people who choose to act in a certain way. The two main attributes of a leader are that they are true to themselves and they do what they say they are going to do. To sum, leaders are the people who stand up when everyone else ducks and who move the ball forward.
  • Role Models
    In the tough times, we see who people truly are, personally and professionally. Always keep in mind we influence people at work; we are all role models to some degree… and someone is always watching.
  • Let Go
    Women tend to have, or to take, more responsibility outside of work than men. We like to keep control in all areas of our lives. But much of the time and energy spent on keeping control could be better spent on refining our communications and influencing our peers. We need to delegate more, micromanage less, and let those who work for us make their own mistakes.
  • Laughter is the Best Medicine
    We have our roles at work, but we’re also human. If we always enter a business meeting as a “task master”—no chit chat, no humor—it lessens our effectiveness. Be approachable, have a sense of humor, dare to model a different way of being at work, one that includes laughing at yourself.
  • Have a Life
    Finally, it comes down to this: you cannot be an effective leader if you don’t have balance. This balance can mean pulling away from obligations occasionally to be there for yourself and those who need you. In particular, it is vital to have women friends, people outside of your family and work who add needed perspective to your life. This does not necessarily mean “opting out,” currently a popular term—in fact, there is no “opting out” for women today, there is only “opting.” Women now have the freedom to choose; the blessing is we get to choose who we want to be and how we want to live.

HOT TOPIC…
NON-PERSONAL SELLING OPTIONS

The Evolving Face of Pharmaceutical Promotions

Terry Goldston
Executive Director, New Business Development
Communications Media, Inc. (CMI) and Compas, Inc.

How effective is a brilliant marketing plan if the tactical execution is flawed?

With the strategic process for 2007 well underway, brand managers are turning their attention to developing tactical plans for 2008. Their increasing challenge is to deliver and implement a brilliant tactical plan in support of the agreed upon brand strategy.

Identifying the Challenges
Personal selling is the mainstay of most pharmaceutical brands, with sales details as the most desired medium for the delivery of the brand message to targeted physicians. In the absence of a sales representative, the brand’s samples, share of voice, reach, frequency, and impact are significantly reduced and the brand market share suffers.

Sales force effectiveness is diminished by “no see,” hard-to-see, and decreasing time physicians are willing to spend listening to details. Therefore, overcoming limited access to physicians is the key to marketing success.

Developing New Initiatives
In response, brand managers are turning their attention and resources to innovative non-personal selling initiatives that can keep their brand message in their customers’ lines of sight throughout the day.

These challenges have created a growing need for pharmaceutical brand managers to fi nd strategic and innovative ways to maintain and bolster brand prescriptions when there is either a lack of sales representative support or a need to augment:

  • Smaller brands that cannot afford a full sales force effort;
  • Relaunch of a brand to targeted segments of highest potential prescribers;
  • Cost-eff ective, extended coverage of lower decile physicians; or
  • Ongoing, vacant territories due to maternity leaves, illnesses, or resignations.
Traditional responses to these brand challenges have included hiring rent-a-reps, sending staff from the home office out to do rotations in the field, or doing nothing at all. But while these options can be extremely expensive, they may have minimal impact on delivering the brand message and increasing market share.

Non-Personal Selling Programs
The evolving face of pharmaceutical promotions is raising the stakes for developing highly effective non-personal selling programs that can be completely integrated with personal selling efforts and demonstrate a positive return on promotional investment. For the first time, this will give brand managers a complete view of the promotional landscape and enable them to identify and fill any promotional gaps in their tactical execution.

Fully integrated non-personal selling programs, such as professional journal advertising integrated with targeted professional media vehicles, are an excellent way to bolster the sales force’s efforts. A fully integrated, micro-segmented professional media plan enables brand managers to deliver the right brand message to the right physician the number of times needed to influence prescribing decisions.

By extending and augmenting the personal selling efforts, brand managers will be able to deliver tactics that provide additional impact, frequency, reach, and exposures to the highest-value physicians, ideally down to the individual physician level.

Looking Ahead
As we head into 2008, it will be the brands with brilliant strategies and fully integrated non-personal media programs that successfully deliver their brand messages from concept to customers to drive brand growth.