Main Subject - Business

Do you know that some of the greatest salesmen do it on the phone?

Yet, I keep hearing how cold calling is a nightmare, how they hate it, and how even some sales gurus say "cold calling is dead." Here are so

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

me of the reasons I’ve heard from my own sales trainees, at least in the beginning:

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

Examples of combination products may in

urns my calls.

And there are others, but most come back to the same thing: the obstacle you are facing isn’t out there in the cold cruel world. It resides right between your own two ears. Your own belie

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

fs are the obstacle. It isn’t anywhere else.

For this article we’re going to deal with the “all” syndrome and rejection.

A client and I once developed a cold calling campaign plan. He was to make 200 cold c

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

lls in the next week. We developed the general idea of what he was going to say, who he was going to call, and how he was going to say it. Then we practiced it until he sounded natural.

When we got toget

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

Combination pro

her the following week, I asked, So, how’d it go?

“Horrible, all I got was phones slammed in my ear, P.O.’d people and No’s galore. It just didn’t work at all.”

How many calls did you make?

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

“30, and after all those No’s, I gave up.”

How many appointments did you get?”

“Only one.”

So, what was your success ratio? How many appointments for how many calls?

“Let’s see, I think

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

hat is….1 in 30, or 3%.”

And what was our original estimate. Wasn’t it 1 in 25? So, how can you say that it was a failure? You weren’t far off.

“…….but….but…all of those No’s, 29 out of 30. That w

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

as mostly failure!”

Let’s see, at 1-2 minutes per call for No’s, and maybe 5+ for the yes, how many minutes did you spend to get just one appointment? Isn’t that around 60 minutes to get an appointment?

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

Not bad if you ask me. What would have happened if you had made all 200 calls?

“Maybe 6-7 appointments….Wait a minute, didn’t we target 8 appointments for the 200 calls?!?!”

How many calls were n

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

cessary to achieve your goal of 8 appointments a week? (This is probably THE MOST important question since it tells you clearly what you have to do to get the needed RESULTS).

Another thing would have

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

Following aspects would a

happened if he had made the 200 calls: He’d have gotten better and better, gotten over his fear, and probably would have seen his call success improving toward the 1 in 25 calls, or even better.

I tell most

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

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

of my clients that they need to make about 500 calls to get good at it. The trouble is that most never reach 500 calls, or if you do it takes them 2 years to do it, and by that time either the boss has elimin

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

ated you, or if you are a business owner your overhead costs have eliminated you.

It all started with the “all” syndrome. In other words our belief that

ALL we got was no’s,
ALL we got were V

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

ice Mails, and that NO ONE ever returned a call.

It’s the glass half full or half empty issue. That is a belief that in this case isn’t valid.

Use the Plan – Do – Improve/Optimize scenario.

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

Plan what you are going to do,

Do it (make sure to measure the results so you know what works and what doesn’t), make changes (new plans), and

Go back through that loop over and over.

Let’s

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

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

apply that to the scenario above.

Develop what you are going to say, how you are going to say it and to who. Find the reasons why someone would even want to talk to you and develop it.
Measure y

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

ur success, measure how many successes you had out of how many calls. In most cases, it really isn’t as bad as everyone makes out.

Now that you have the key measurements—fix them. That means, change what

.

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

you say, how you say it, or who you say it to, and watch the numbers. Do they go up, or down? Capture what works, and learn from what doesn’t. You’ll see those numbers constantly moving up.

Learn the be

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

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

st way from the experts…get every book you can, go to training classes, hire a sales coach.

You are always in control. Don't be at the mercy of anything, someone else, the environment, the market place

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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Efficiency in business is paramount to turning a profit and it therefore makes sense to study efficiencies in all types of businesses and apply those principles and theories to your business where possible. For those of us in the service business with service vehicles; we know that the costs to deliver those services have gone up considerably in the last decade; fuel, insurance and labor for instance. Things such as over regulation, lawsuits, traffic and customer demands have also increased to record highs. Shortages of labor and trained employees are also crucial, as quality labor supply dries up.

Managers are trained to manage business process's. Why should we then be surprised when they fail to manage people.

One of the competitive advantages quick-serves have long enjoyed is customer convenience due to the shorter cook times and the ability for the customer to pick up their food in a drive-thru or drive-in. That's no longer the case. I recently passed a full-service restaurant that had a drive-thru for call-ahead and pickup orders. While it might sound crazy, it's not that far-fetched. With so many full-service restaurants offering to-go and curbside pickup, drive-thrus are not far behind for them. Either way, the advantage you once had is shrinking.

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Main Subject - Cold Calling -- Turn the Nightmare of Cold Calling into a Sales Success

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