The Normandy landings could have failed, we know it was successful but it could have failed.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote few lines in case of failure of the battle, giving himself to blame.

«Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone».

There is no perfect plan in war. The landing at Anzio, in January of the same year, was close to bankruptcy for the slowness and excessive caution.

Ready to respond

There is no perfect plan in pharmaceutical marketing. The only way to maximize success possibilities is to make plans. If you are interested in this aspect you should have a look at Exclusive New Research: Healthcare Marketers Trend Report 2014.

Understand managers’ behaviour in their war on the market can be really useful.

Currently, managers are rapidly changing the way they invest and this is shown not by their type of expenditure but by the model they choose.

Outsourcing, increase of mobile apps used, direct relations with patients and cut of conferences costs are just few of the innovative trends which are breaking old patterns.

The most important feature to have in war, as in marketing, is the ability to react: how to do it and when. Therefore, the ability to respond to external stimulus — read signs, perform competitive intelligence, analyze markets and trends — becomes a key requirement. In few words, pharmaceutical marketing has to move from problem solving to problem setting.

Now stop making plans and start acting, without slowness and too much caution.

Problem setting

Define a problem, we learned it from high school math, is often more important than be able to solve it. Lynne Taylor has efficiently analyzed data of a research conducted by KPMG: « pharmaceutical companies need to stop simply paying lip-service to patients and radically alter their business models if they are to meet increasing global demand while improving patient outcomes».

Pharmaceutical companies simply need to change their approach to the market, responding to what has already happened and it’s still happening. They have to fight this new war with new weapons.

Problem solving

Once defined a new framework, within the current regulations, pharmaceutical marketing, without canceling activities currently in progress, has to re-model them to make them work according to current needs. No need to cut sales force, it should be made ​​effective to meet changing demands of the doctors.

According to a research made by Manhattan Research, physicians wants more than a presentation on tablets; it’s clear that what comes to doctors during a rep visit is not enough in terms of scientific content and this does not certainly depend on the incorrect operation of tablets.

The use of tablets, alone, is not a solution: a browsable pdf is not enough. Pharmaceutical marketing does not need old reconditioned weapons but new ones.

Technologies, by themselves, are not enough to react to changes. We can’t use swords against guns, we need to train our troops with new weapons. Over 11,000 aircraft were engaged during the landing: more than those ones owned by the U.S. Air Force nowadays. This was decisive, not prudence.

And you, how are you facing the market? With caution and slowness?