My agency friend Wendy Blackburn (CORR: Jim Dayton; see comments) cited "an expert in marketing communications and PR strategy" who compared social media with a high school lunchroom in her post, "Social Media: It's Your Conversation."
"Social media is a lot like a high school cafeteria, each group with their unique interests sitting at their prescribed table discussing what's relevant to them," said Blackburn.
When the conversation turns to your product, Wendy advises pharma clients "it is your conversation. Whether you want to own it or not, it's yours."
Wendy provides good advice for how to engage in the conversation:
First, listen.
Second, learn.
Finally, answer.
IMHO, Wendy left out one important step: Asking permission to join as in "Mind if I join you?"
In the commercial e-mail world we have a rule called "double opt-in" to make sure that the recipient really intends to get bombarded by commercial e-mail. Double opt-in is kind of like asking for permission and making sure we have it.
Asking for permission should also be a rule for marketers wishing to join in social media discussions. Just as in a high school lunchroom, if you do not ask to join THEIR conversation, you might just get YOUR ass kicked!
When I attend industry conferences, for example, I always follow the proper social etiquette at the luncheon and ask "mind if I join you" when I select a table to sit at. Then THEIR conversation can become MINE.
Pharma marketers who wish to make someone else's conversation theirs should abide by the following rules, which I modified from Wendy's abridged list:
FiercePharma and other online news outlets earlier today published a press release from GSK (originally distributed through PRWeb) that said the company was offering a 50 percent discount on meds for U.S. patients who are uninsured "no matter a patient's income level or whether he or she qualifies for public programs" (see archive here).
I immediately tweeted the news via Twitter and a few of my 1200 or so Twitter pals retweeted (RT'd) and a few of THEIR friends RT'd and so on. As a consequence, it appears that GSK was besieged by calls from consumers seeking more information.
"A GSK spokesperson, as well as a PRWeb manager, contacted us to say that the release was published in error," said FiercePharma Editor Maureen Martino. "The release 'was a test publication which was accidentally distributed through PRWeb,' according to the manager. 'We are currently in the process of retraction for Comtex and TradingMarkets.com. Needless to say, GlaxoSmithKline is extremely unhappy about this.'"
You know who is also unhappy? All those consumers who need this price reduction, that's who!
In the "erroneous" press release, Deirdre Connelly, President US Pharmaceuticals at GSK, was quoted as saying:
"It's innovating to help people afford their medications. We are pleased to introduce our Prescription Cost Relief Card, which will help no matter a patient's income level or whether he or she qualifies for public programs. We feel this is simply the right thing to do, especially in this economy."
You may remember Deirdre from a previous post to Pharma Marketing Blog (see "Lilly's Connelly: The Diversity Issue") when she was working for Eli Lilly, I believe. Maybe she'll be out of a job soon herself and seeking help paying for HER medications! I hope not.
So, what is GSK doing? It's back pedaling, that's what! Referring people to its standard Patient Assistance Program, which while laudable, has a lot of restrictions. Many working uninsured people, for example, probably would not qualify.
The idea of offering a 50% discount to all uninsured US citizens is a brilliant one that, if GSK were to keep its promise, would win a lot of admiration from the public and raise awareness of the plight of the uninsured in this country.
Maybe the powers that be -- eg, insurance companies -- got to GSK and threatened to remove GSK drugs from their formularies. Or maybe GSK just was not ready to pull the trigger and it is telling the truth about a "vendor error." I don't know.
All I know is that an official public announcement was made by GSK that promised a deal to consumers of its products. Then that announcement was "withdrawn" due to some kind of "error."
Whatever! I think that GSK should live up to its initial promise or else this whole episode could be what the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) calls "consumer fraud."
The next big thing, according to some of my Twitter pals, is interactive billboard ads such as this one for McDonald's:
You get the idea...stand across the circle (ie, circus) and strike up an appropriate pose making sure your head is correctly aligned with the action in the ad. Voila! you've got a nice souvenir shot to send home! Uh, I mean post on your FaceBook page.
Now imagine if the UK allowed direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of Rx drugs and Pfizer created the first interactive billboard ad for Viagra! Here's my vision of how it might look with someone posing in front -- I can't show you the animated version. Just imagine the Viagra pill growing larger and larger until it reaches the size shown.
I added a little more innovation by including a celebrity endorsement of a sort in an adjoining ad space.
The ABC of sales, according to Alec Baldwin in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, is "Always Be Closing." Baldwin's character -- Blake -- is from "downtown" (ie, headquarters) and he won't hear about "weak leads" as an excuse for not selling real estate in Florida to retire folk. See the scene in the YouTube clip at the end of this post (WARNING: Explicit language!).
Tuesday, I attended eyeforpharma's Sales Force Effectiveness USA 2009 conference in Princeton, NJ and I heard about some evidence that closing skills may not be that important for pharmaceutical sales reps who "sell" to doctors that are definitely not retired!
Two presentations at this conference impressed me: one about "Getting Control of Email" (see Pharma Sales Rep "Hamsters" Waste Time on Email Treadmill) and the other entitled "The Race for Doctors' Minds. Factors that Drive Sales Rep Success." I'll focus on the latter in this post. The presenter, whose name I won't mention here without his permission (I call him MR Guy), was a market research manager at a subsidiary of a major healthcare/pharmaceutical company.
MR Guy presented some results from his doctoral thesis, which tried to determine what was the ideal balance between "soft skills" and "hard skills" that sales reps should have in order to be successful.
Soft skills were what MR Guy called Emotional Intelligence (EI), which included things like listening skills and dressing and behaving in a professional manner. Hard skills (or Consultative Selling Skills, aka CSS) include knowledge of the product, the medical condition it treats and, of course, closing skill.
[I won't go into the methodology of MR Guy's research here. I hope to cover this in more detail in a future article for Pharma Marketing News.]
Before presenting the findings of his PhD thesis, MR Guy polled the audience of about 75-100 and asked them which from a list of sales rep characteristics had the most influence on physician satisfaction. The results are shown in the chart (supplied by Meridia Audience Response) below (click on it for an enlarged view). The product brand name and specific medical condition are de-identified in the chart reproduced here.
While closing (poll choice "Asked you to prescribe/recommend (BRAND)") was not the audience's top choice, it was #4 out of 10 and far more popular than many of the "soft skill" characteristics such as "Follows up as requested," for example.
In contrast, MR Guy's thesis top 4 results were as follows:
Makes good use of my time (EI skill): 51%
Knows about the brand's market (CSS skill): 17%
Able to answer my questions (EI skill): 15%
Behaves in a professional manner (EI skill): 10%
Closing was not among the top five choices in MR Guy's research.
Note on Closed-Loop Marketing "Follows up as requested" was the #5 choice.
This is a good argument for implementing a "closed loop" sales effectiveness/marketing solution. However, that does not mean trying to implement a technical solution such as using a touch screen computer to present sales aids and seeing which route the physician takes through the screens.
The best closed-loop marketing technique, according to MR Guy, "may be a simple follow-up call." The rep can use sticky notes as reminders or a program on her notebook computer -- whatever system she/he is comfortable with.
At lunch, I heard some criticism of technology-driven closed loop marketing: implementation is a bitch! My lunch mates suggested it may take up to 5 years to fully implement such a system, by which time technology will have advanced so much as to make the solution out of date. For an idea that may be easier to implement and will never go out of date, see "Closed-Loop Marketing: A New Role for eDetailing"; PMN Reprint #73-04).
Back to the study and closing...
MR Guy also studied what sales rep characteristics were most important for getting the physician to prescribe the product being promoted. All other things (both EI and CSS skills) being equal, if one rep asked for the business (closed) and one rep did not, would the "closer" be more successful in selling the physician?
The majority of the audience response (68%) chose the closer, whereas MR Guy's thesis study said it made no difference whether the rep closed or did not close.
MR Guy pointed out, however, that you cannot conclude from this study that closing is not impactful. He did not measure, for example, the "quality" of the closing. A member of the audience suggested that a good sales rep could subtly be "closing" all throughout the sales call. I guess that person took Mr. Blake's point of view: Always Be Closing!
P.S. Coincidentally, someone called me yesterday to ask me some questions about pharmaceutical sales jobs. She had sales experience in another industry and was going on a interview for a pharma job today. She was worried if pharma sales reps were under a lot of pressure to make quotas. She just couldn't take that kind of stress. I didn't ask her if she had brass balls, which Blake in the above video clip assured his salesmen were necessary to close the deal.
Merck dermatology marketing director Kevin Nalty has a side job: as a YouTube comedy star, says Jim Edwards over at BNET Pharma. Edwards displays Nalty's talent using the following "sophomoric" farting in public video, which has received about 7 million views so far.
"Until this week," said Nalty, "'Nalts' [Nalty's YouTube personna] has had no association with Merck. But the MediaWeek story 'outed me.' I don't do videos about Merck, and generally keep my online persona far from my day job."
Nalty may not do videos about Merck, but he did at least one video spoofing adult ADHD, a medical condition that one pharmaceutical company thinks is serious. I used this video, entitled "ADHD Boy," in the post "Vyvanse Warning Letter: Too Late! Shire Got Rid of Ty Pennington Long Ago!" back in October 2008. Little did I know then that the star of that video was a Merck marketing director! While it's still available, take a look at this video:
In contrast to the "Farting in Public" video, "ADHD Boy" has been viewed only about 100,000 times so far!
I missed Nalty's presentation at the ePharma Summit in January. Otherwise, I would have recognized him right away and "outed" him myself!
"My engagement in social media is helpful to understanding how pharma can play appropriately in this critical space," said Nalty. It remains to be seen, however, if Merck thinks videos like "ADHD Boy" is an appropriate use of space by one of its pharmaceutical marketing directors! For the record, I hope they do!
My agency friend Wendy Blackburn (CORR: Jim Dayton; see comments) cited "an expert in marketing communications and PR strategy" who compared social media with a high school lunchroom in her post, "Social Media: It's Your Conversation."
