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Pharmaceutical Company
CHALLENGE: One of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies faced a very difficult challenge. The company had developed a breakthrough drug for a specific therapeutic area but lacked the right business model, and the necessary credibility and relationships with physicians and other healthcare specialists to market its product successfully. Additionally, the company’s marketing department was a disjointed team, newly formed by a series of acquisitions. The company needed to quickly determine its business model for this specific therapeutic area, build its business plan, form credible relationships with specialists, and initiate a plan of action for its sales teams.
RESULTS: By the end of its first Syntegration, the company had developed a business model specific to the therapeutic area, and without knowing it, had actually aligned around the model through the process of creating it. In just two and a half days, they had a business model and strategy, and had outlined the implications for their marketing, sales and medical teams. Syntegrity conducted a Social Network Analysis (SNA) to map the network of influence among the specialists the company would soon need to engage. This research produced important insights that helped the company decide who to engage with for more cost effective sales and marketing spend, and quicker impact.
Syntegrity was then asked to facilitate a series of three separate day-and-an-evening Syntegrations that brought the company together with key specialists, opinion leaders, nurses, pharmacists, hospital administrators and others who together formed the system of healthcare professionals that treat patients with a specific disease. The strategy to use Syntegration to forge external relationships was a sales and marketing breakthrough. The question posed to specialists by the pharmaceutical company was: Given emerging therapies in this particular therapeutic area, what must we do together to advance patient care, and how can we partner now and over the next two years? Quite distinct from traditional pharmaceutical sales communications – which are basically product show-and-tell promotions – the Syntegration events represented an industry effort to address a critical healthcare issue. The Syntegration served to bring together a microcosm of the healthcare system to cross their boundaries and find its collective genius. The strategy served to pull answers from experts instead of pushing products on them. The pharmaceutical company instantly increased its credibility because of the transparency of the process. There was no sales agenda within the meeting itself and everyone was placed on an equal playing field to address treatment as an interrelated group of professionals, each of whom represents part of the solution. Once the pharmaceutical company’s new drug was launched, it asked The Syntegrity Group to facilitate a Syntegration to unite its sales representatives, sales managers and its marketing team around a comprehensive plan of action. And once the new drug was being used, the pharmaceutical company continued to hold Syntegrations with healthcare professionals. Regional meetings asked the question: What must be done to optimize patient care when using the drug?
In just 18 months, the pharmaceutical company was considered a player in the therapeutic area, and was on its way to assuming a leadership position. And it did so while establishing a solid and credible reputation as a company that is working closely with healthcare professionals to improve patient care - facilitating interactions among healthcare professionals on the topics they care about and achieving a highly effective knowledge transfer among doctors and nurses, specialists, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals.
The company has also established a united sales and marketing team driven by a superior process for interacting with its external audience. Syntegration has created a vital dialogue between the company and healthcare professionals. The company is gaining important information that its competitors are not, and is seen by many as more than a drug maker.
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