2020 has been a challenging year for all industries. For pharma and its HCP customers even more so. All eyes are on the companies developing vaccines and drugs for treatment of COVID-19, while doctors have closed their doors for pharma reps. Long established processes have been disrupted and complex market strategies have been rendered useless. Each pharma no matter big or small, innovative, or generic, had to improvise and come up with contingency plans to save the year. Some have been slower waiting for the old ways to come back, others have been more agile experimenting with digital and expanding boundaries, most are in the middle digitally curious but not risking too much.
Challenging times lay ahead for the sales departments in the pharma industry. The COVID-19 pandemic will surely not be the first disruption, as recent geopolitical tensions, and economic turmoil show. Agile and adaptive sales enablement is thus a must-have in the coming months and years.
The life of the Pharma marketer has always been a juggling act (Two hands, Three balls, Endless Effect! A Lifetime of Performance) of managing multiple aspects with adept emotional and mental skill sets. All this, while trying to remain sane in a dynamic and confusing world. As the marketer takes time to make sense of his environment, he attempts to find answers to perennial marketing questions such as:
How is the campaign performing?
What are the new avenues to target customers?
Is the messaging, right?
Are the vendors on track with their deliverables?
Are metrics that we track insightful?