Affective marketing with h:)mour

by Admin 1. July 2005 10:03

Many of the most memorable ad campaigns around tend to be funny. Advertisers use this strategy to attract customers to their product. Audiences like to be entertained, but not pitched. People will pay more attention to a humorous commercial than a factual or serious one, opening themselves up to be influenced. The key to funny advertising is assuring the humour is appropriate to both product and customer. The balance between funny and obnoxious can often be delicate; and a marketer must be certain the positive effects outweigh the negative before an advertisement can be introduced.
The best products to sell using humour tend to be those that consumers have to think the least about. Products that are relatively inexpensive, and often consumable, can be represented without providing a lot of facts, and that’s where there’s room for humour. Candy, food, alcohol, tobacco and toys/ entertainment related products have proven to benefit the most from humour in their campaigns. One of the most important things to keep in mind is relevance to the product.
Lets just mention the Crazy Frog. It started off as a ring tone with a humorous ad campaign.
It has now become the biggest selling ring tone in the world and has reached number one in the music charts. They have used humour and have captured the market, lets just hope it goes away as quickly as it arrived!
Another point to consider when using humour in advertising is that different things are funny to different people. A commercial that may leave one person gripping their sides from laughter may leave a bad taste in another’s mouth. The target market must always be considered. What’s funny in a client presentation may not be funny on an airplane, at a country club or in a hospital.
Humour in advertising tends to improve brand recognition, but does not improve product recall, message credibility, or buying intentions. In other words, consumers may be familiar with and have good feelings towards the product, but their purchasing decisions will probably not be affected. One of the major keys to a successful humorous campaign is variety, once a commercial starts to wear out there’s no saving it without some variation on the concept. Humorous campaigns are often expensive because they have to be constantly changed. Advertisers must remember that while making the customer laugh, they have to keep things interesting, because old jokes die along with their products.

Scott Baker
If you would like advice on a new ad or promotional campaigne then contact Blow-UK Media on
01423 522455

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Listen To Yourself

by Admin 1. July 2005 10:01

I believe most people are good and honest. I believe that most managers act in ways that are beneficial for their employers and their employees. I do not believe that most of us are driven to take from others regardless of the cost. Certainly there are unscrupulous people running businesses, but most managers are honest, scrupulous people.
Having scruples, or being scrupulous, means sometimes having doubts about doing something because it might not be right, because it might go against your principles. We all have an inner voice telling us when something we are considering isn't right. We might not always listen to it, but it is always there. As a manager, one of the best things you can do is to listen to your inner voice. If something isn't right, if your scruples kick in, if your inner voice tells you not to do it - listen.
Do you want your fifteen minutes of fame because of something you did well or are you willing to settle for fifteen minutes of infamy for having lied, cheated, or stolen? Sure, it can be tempting to take the easy way out, to tell a small lie because no one will be able to prove you lied, to claim credit for someone else's work because they work for you. Yet you will always know that is the wrong choice. Your inner voice will tell you. Some people are better at ignoring their inner voice than others. They think they can talk loud enough, live fast enough, that they can drown out their inner voice. They can't. It's always there. So is yours.

The Upside

When you have scruples, when you listen to your inner voice, life is easier. You never have to remember your story. If you always tell the truth, you don't have to worry about what you told who.

You are more effective

When you know you are doing the right thing, it is easier for you to get behind it and push to make it a success.

You sleep better

When your inner voice isn't nagging you, you sleep more soundly. You aren't fighting with yourself.

The Downside

If you decide to ignore your inner voice, there will be consequences. They may not be obvious or immediate, but they will come.

You will be found out

Regardless of how clever you are, or how practiced a liar you become, you will slip up. Someone will catch you in your lie.

You will be less effective

You will spend so much time and energy covering your tracks that you will get less done. You won't like yourself very much Even if no one else knows, you will know.

Manage this issue

The easiest course of action for any manager, the best course, the most effective, is to follow your inner voice. If something seems wrong, don't do it. If you use that moral compass as your guide, you will be a better manager and, others will sense it too and you will like yourself more.

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The New Way

by Admin 1. July 2005 10:00

THE NEW WAY

- to get a referral from someone you don’t know

It is ‘who you know’ that makes a difference when it comes to the right introductions. It always has been easier to reach a person who you don’t know if someone he or she respects is prepared to make an introduction.
You may have learnt that a smart networking approach is to list out all of your contacts and try to find out who they are all connected with, where their contacts work, and what they do. If you could do this, you might expand the number of people whom you can reach, through intermediaries, from a few hundred to tens or even hundreds of thousands. This is a great idea on the face of it. It is a small world. Each of us can reach anyone in the world (all six billion souls) through a maximum of six other people. The six degrees of separation has been widely publicised and talked about. A scientific study demonstrated the truth of it. By way of letters, researchers asked people to forward a polite request to whoever amongst their contacts was most likely to know a particular person. They found they were able to get a message through to randomly selected people via only a few links. The calculated maximum distance between any two people in the world is 5.5, in terms of the number of people it will take to pass on a message.
As astonishing as this may be, it is not of much practical use unless you can identify the right links. If you were to ask any but your closest contacts to give you a copy of their address book, you would probably get the bold reply of silence. If you sought out these same contacts and while eyeball to eyeball, asked again for the favour, you are likely to have your request refused or side stepped.
You might be able to persuade a contact to pass on a message to whomever they know who might know a person who you would like to contact, and then ask their contact to pass on the message to the person you are trying to reach. At this point you may be protesting at the convolutions this approach could force you to deal with. ‘I know a man who can’ is far from an empty phrase.
We teach sales people how to increase success rates for contacting senior people in prospect organisations using a letter and call. For companies who can express their value in definite, verifiable commercial terms, the approach is very effective. Perhaps surprisingly, the hard part is for companies and sales people to articulate their value and present it in a way that will win attention from busy senior executives. Knowing someone who knows the person you want to reach and arranging an introduction, is a much easier route to making contact. In fact senior executives rank an internal introduction to a sales person as the approach they are most likely to respond to.
If you knew someone who knew the person you wanted to reach, you might try this approach before beginning a cold call or letter plus call campaign. In most instances however, you won’t know if you have a contact who can help.
What has changed is the advent of online networking tools such as LinkedIn, Spoke, and Ryze. One in particular solves the problem of discovering how you are connected to the person you want to reach. Finally, after six months as a member of LinkedIn ( www.linkedin.com) , I have come to understand the power this tool offers. With only about sixty contacts in my immediate network, I can reach 1.8 million other LinkedIn members around the world. One hundred and sixty thousand of these people are in the UK. What is more, my extended network is growing by thousands of people every day.
Initially I was concerned that once hooked on using the tool, I would be required to pay for the service. LinkedIn’s FAQ states that the basic services will remain free and that after the beta period is complete there will be charges for premium services. This should be no surprise. If there is genuine value in the service, paying for it will not be an issue. Many benefits accrue to those who get ahead of the game by investing time in this new solution to an old problem.
I was also sceptical about numbers of people that the LinkedIn web site claimed were in my extended network. With the LinkedIn web site projected live on the wall in front of a classroom of sales people, I invited a participant to suggest a prospect company name to search on. After a couple of seconds a list of names appeared.
These were all people linked through my network (only 37 people at the time). I was delighted and more than a little surprised to succeed at the first attempt. There on the screen, near the bottom of the list, appeared the name of a senior IT manager in the company we searched on. He was only two links away. In other words, one of my 37 contacts knew him. This sparked a rush of requests for specific searches from the other course participants. The demonstration couldn’t have had more impact. A few days later, while explaining to a friend how LinkedIn worked, I invited him to test the system in the same way. He asked me to search for contacts in a particular division of a major company. My confidence in achieving a repeat of the earlier success slumped, because he had chosen a company outside the industry that most of my contacts are associated with. I need not have been concerned. The search produced a list of twelve people. Eleven of them had worked for the company concerned and one was a Director of the division my friend was interested in.
At this point, the remnants of my doubt about the usefulness of LinkedIn evaporated. I immediately began developing my LinkedIn network. While this is a time consuming activity, I found it very rewarding. By uploading a list of my contacts to LinkedIn, I found that many of them were already members who I could immediately invite to join my network. The LinkedIn system makes it easy to send invitations to members and non members. You can use your own words or standard messages. It also tracks who you have invited and provides an easy way to manage your invitations. Because those I invite are amongst the people who I feel I know well and trust, most accept the invitation. The most rewarding part is rediscovering friends and colleagues in other people’s networks whom I have lost contact with. While I can’t see their contact details I can send a request via the links I have. Again, LinkedIn makes the process simple and easy to manage. If my rediscovered contact agrees to be reconnected, I receive a message containing his or her email address.
Everyone who becomes a LinkedIn member is invited to complete their profile showing their professional history. When a person agrees to become a link in your network, they can see the names and brief information about role and position, for each of your contacts. You can hide your list of contacts although I think this defeats the purpose. Likewise, if their list of contacts is open, you can see who they are connected with. The search tool looks for contacts who are in your network up to four links away. You can search by name, company, industry etcetera. When you find a person you are interested in contacting, the system shows you who among your contacts is linked to this person and how many links they are away from you. Then to contact someone who you don’t know, you compose a request to your contact and your message to the person you want to reach. Each person in the chain of links can decide whether or not to pass on your request. Using LinkedIn to contact sales prospects will depend on your ability to write a compelling message that expresses clear benefit for the person you want to reach. If the end recipient is three or four links away, your message also has to convince each intermediary. This is no easy task. In my view, LinkedIn provides an exciting alternative method for contacting sales prospects who are difficult to reach. It is an alternative to a cold telephone call or a letter and follow-up call, however; it is no magic short cut. Constructing the right message is just as important for success with either approach. It is a topic that warrants study and justifies the one day training course we run on the subject.
The success of LinkedIn depends on members trusting the system and encouraging their contacts to join. The authors of LinkedIn have taken great care to construct a trustworthy system, or at least a system that I have come to trust. The more people who use it for professional networking, the more effective it will become. Thousands of new people join every day, giving it the momentum to become the most used online networking tool.
‘The old adage, "It's not what you know, but who you know," could, paradoxically, be the motto for the Information Age’. This is a direct quote from a paper by Bonnie Nardi, Steve Whittaker and Heinrich Schwarz. Bonnie and Steve are from AT & T Labs. Heinrich is at M.I.T. If you want more evidence that personal professional networks are increasingly important to success, read their conclusion at http://www.firstmonday.org/ issues/issue5_5/nardi/index.html
Don’t get left on the back of this wave. Put your network in order and regularly spend time developing it. You will reap the rewards over the full span of your career.

Clive Miller

E-mail: info@salessense.co.uk
Web: www.salessense.co.uk

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DIAGNOSING PERFORMANCE PROBLEMS

by Admin 1. July 2005 09:58

One of the toughest tasks for any manager is to determine the cause of a performance problem. Since decisions to remediate the problem will depend on the diagnosis, accurate assessment is crucial. In this article we will outline a model of factors influencing employee performance, so that you are less likely to ignore a possible source of performance deficit.

The Nature of Performance

Work performance is influenced by a number of factors. When performance is excellent, it is a result of a number of circumstances that work together to make this excellence possible. So, stellar performance requires that ALL relevant influences on behaviour are in place.
Sadly, poor performance can result from a SINGLE factor or influence that drastically reduces effectiveness. Frequently, a performance problem that is allowed to continue unchecked will expand as other influences turn from positive to negative.

A Seven Factor Model

We can suggest seven factors that influence or determine the level of performance. These factors are multiplicative in nature. For those of you whose favourite subject in schools was NOT maths, this means that performance will be as strong as the weakest link in the chain of performance determinants. If there is a deficit in any one of these factors, performance will suffer.

Factor 1: Aptitude Aptitude refers to a person's native ability to perform the task or tasks. Each of us has strengths and weaknesses that determine if we can learn or perform a task. Poor aptitude for a task could mean that the person could never learn how to do it, even with all the supports in the world. Assessing aptitude is very difficult.

Factor 2: Skill Level
Even the simplest responsibilities require skills. Skills differ from aptitudes in that they can be learned, up to the limits imposed by aptitude. To assess whether a performance deficit is a result of lack of skill, ask the questions, "If his/her life depended on it, could the person do the task?" If the answer is no, then it could be a skill problem.

Factor 3: Understanding of Task
A person must understand the nature of the task, and what is expected. If this clear communication is lacking, no amount of skill or motivation will bring about effective performance. Performance management is the common means for conveying understanding of the task. The best way to assess an employee's understanding is to ask questions within a coaching environment.

Factor 4: Choice to Expend Effort
This and the next factor are motivational factors. If a person has the aptitude, skills and understanding of the task required, it may be that there are factors causing the person to "not make the effort". These may be personal or related to the work environment. Assessing whether there is a motivational problem is difficult, and can best be done by examining other indicator behaviours (absenteeism, lack of participation in meetings, or other factors that suggest a motivational problem.)

Factor 5: Choice of Degree of EffortTo Expend
Sometimes effort is not an on/off thing. An employee may be putting in a limited amount of effort and therefore producing inferior results.

Factor 6: Choice To Persist
Performance requires that effort be initiated and sustained over time. This motivational factor may result in projects started but never completed. If an employee is not persisting in tasks, it can indicate boredom, fear of failure, or may relate to a lack of skills. Careful, diplomatic discussion is required to uncover if and why this may be occurring.

Factor 7: Outside Factors
Performance can be reduced due to factors beyond the control of the individual. The organization itself may be setting barriers to performance, or uncooperative co-workers and managers may contribute. Discussion with the employee during performance management should include reference to factors outside the control of the employee that impede progress. If these outside factors are allowed to continue, unacknowledged, motivational levels will drop, complicating the issue and creating a chronic under-performer.

Conclusion:
It is important that performance problems be addressed as soon as they occur, and the above factors be examined to determine whether they are contributing to the problem. By working with the employee in a cooperative way, it is possible to identify and remediate some of the underlying causes of work performance problems.

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Did you know -

by Admin 1. July 2005 09:57

Did you know -

that you had a role to play in the CE Marking of medical devices?

You probably thought that the responsibility for complying with the UK Medical Device Regulations lay principally with your Company’s management through the activities of its’ Technical, Regulatory, Quality, Clinical and Production Departments.
You are quite right in that understanding; however that is not the whole story. Would it surprise you to learn that you have an important role to play and a contribution to make in maintaining that compliance?
The UK Medical Device Regulations call for the monitoring of the performance of medical devices in clinical use. A term that is currently used to describe this action is “post-market surveillance”. The clause in the Regulations that covers this requirement states that manufacturers must “institute and keep up to date a systematic procedure to review experience gained from devices in the post-production phase and to implement appropriate means to apply any corrective action”. This is “postmarket surveillance” or PMS for short.
The contribution that you can, and should, make to the maintenance of compliance with the Regulations is covered under postmarket surveillance.
In the course of your work you will be visiting clinical areas in the region for which you are responsible. This could include hospital wards, perioperative clinical areas, primary health care locations, nursing homes and patient’s homes, etc.
During those visits you may well be observing the clinical use of the medical devices that you are promoting and supporting. With good design there should not be any problems in the use of your products. On the other hand you may observe some concerns or problems in such use.
It is important that you report your observations to your Company, and it would be prudent for you to make a dated record that you have done so. Some Companies already have established a routine by which their field staff can regularly report such observations to them. In the unfortunate situation of an enquiry resulting from a problem in use with your medical device then your documented reports would provide a desirable personal defence.
Some examples of situations that would qualify for PMS reporting are as follows:

problems in opening the package (particularly significant for sterile devices)
problems in assembly or preparation
problems in use
use of a device for a purpose other than that for which it was designed
inadequate, ambiguous, or misleading labels and/or instructions for use
reuse or multiple use of a single-use device.

On receipt of your observations the Company would then review them and take the appropriate action which could be one of several:

review and change the design under principles of good quality management,
revise the labelling and/or instructions for use,
reinforce the designed and intended use of the device in more precise and emphatic labelling and instructions for use, and possibly by other educational methods,
consider the retraining of clinical staff in the use of their device.

These actions would result in an improved design and/or a better understanding in their use with the objectives of improvements in clinical benefit, patient and user safety, enhanced reputation of the Company, and protected or increased sales.
This PMS feed-back of information to your Company’s management is the part that you can play in helping to maintain their compliance with the Regulations.

A brief summary of the Regulations is set out below.

The UK Medical Device Regulations are the transposition of three EC Medical Device Directives and their amendments and complementary Directives. These are the Directives for Active Implantable Medical Devices¹ , for Medical Devices² , and for In Vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices³ The Medical Devices Directive was amended by two Directives to include stable derivatives of human blood or plasma⁴ , and complemented by two further Directives, for the reclassification of breast implants⁵ , and to cover medical devices utilising tissues of animal origin⁶
The Medical Devices Directive was initially transposed into UK Law under the Consumer Protection Act as Statutory Instrument (SI 1994:3017). This SI was superseded by The Medical Devices Regulations 2002 (SI 2002:618), and by The Medical Devices (Amendment) Regulations 2003 (SI 2003:1697). These two current SIs incorporate all the three EC Directives, their amendments and complementary Directives and other relevant administrative UK legislation.
The UK agency for overseeing compliance with the Regulations is the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency⁷ (MHRA). It is an Agency within the UK Department of Health. A British based company that manufactures medical devices has to review the UK Regulations, design them to comply, and sign a statement that the medical device meets all of the essential requirements that apply to it. The “essential requirements” are fully described in the Regulations. The medical devices must be designed to ensure and demonstrate that they are safe for patients and users for their intended purpose. The Company must have a quality system, undertake a risk analysis for the product, and have justifiable clinical evidence for its use. Compliance with the regulations then requires the display of the CE Mark on the product or its’ labelling, and in the instructions for use; and this provides freedom of trade within the European Union.
Product design is generally a “dynamic” process and is not a static condition. Design review is an important element in an effective Quality System. Design changes and improvements rely on intelligent observations, customer feedback, product complaints and other sources of information, and this includes the observations that you have in the use of your products which you feed back to your Company. These concepts equally apply to medical devices. The Medical Device Regulations also cover the reporting requirements of Medical Device Vigilance. These deal with the reporting of adverse incidents arising in the use of a medical device. Adverse incidents are described as those causing death or serious injury and hence are obvious candidates for design review or other action.

I R Cutler

BSc, FIQA, FTOPRA
Theatre Skills Training Faculty

References

The Active Implantable Medical Devices Directive: 90/385/EEC
The Medical Devices Directive: 93/42/EEC
The In Vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices Directive: 98/79/EC
EC Directives 2000/70/EC and 2001/104/EC: medical devices incorporating stable derivatives of human blood or plasma
EC Directive 2003/12/EC: reclassification of breast implants
EC Directive 2003/32/EC: medical devices utilising tissues of animal origin
The UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency – MHRA www.mhra.gov.uk
The European Commission www.europa.eu.int
The Directorate General within the EC that deals with medical devices is DG Enterprise: http://europa.eu.int/comm/enterprise/medical_devices

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SELLING TO - CURRENT CUSTOMERS

by Admin 1. July 2005 09:55

Sometimes we all get so caught up in marketing our services to new customers that we forget about the easiest sell.

I find myself often dwelling on how to reach new customers to broaden my customer base, when really that isn't always the best path. When you stop to think about the real goals of your company, increasing income is likely the highest. In most cases broadening your customer base is a way to get to that goal and should not be the goal itself. In this article I will show you the importance of marketing to your current and past customers.
The most important reason for marketing to current and past customers is that you have already sold your products or services to them once. Selling them something similar is always much easier. One good way to market to current customers is to make special offers. You should always have a good database of current and past customers and the ability to target these customers with a product that is similar or complementary. If you have sold a thousand customers red widgets, try selling blue widgets or a red widget holder to those same customers.
Service providers will get the added benefit of reduced support costs on top of any easier sell. Current customers will already understand your process and will need less handholding then a new customer.
However, you may have to deal with prior customers with a certain measure of finesse. For one reason or another your services are no longer being used. There may be many reasons for a specific customer to have stopped using your services. Reasons can range from the cost of the service to the level of service given.
Your offer should take these things into account. Try offering an "improved" service at a lower cost. There still may be the fact that the client no longer has a need for your service. However, down the road they may and reminding them of what you have to offer will have benefits on it's own.
If your business only offers one type of product, this may be a very good reason to branch out into other areas. Think of products that are not only similar but even complementary to what you already offer. These are people that, if happy with what you have already given them, will trust you with their other needs.
Letting your customers do some marketing can also give you great results. One way to do this is to give them an incentive to refer others to your product, or to provide you with a testimonial. At the very least, if you are treating your customers right, word of mouth will do wonders for you. I want to stress that if you want to be successful at marketing to your customers it is paramount that you have been offering a level of service that allows for it. No matter how good your offer is, if they don't trust you they are not going to buy.
Remember that increasing long-term income is the goal and sometimes you need to step back to re-evaluate the best way to get there. In all cases, a major factor is going to be how well you treat your current customers. Treat them well and they will buy from you again and again!

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The NHIS Update

by Admin 1. July 2005 05:00

The NHIS update is intended to give a monthly overview of some key issues affecting the NHS. Full access to the National Health Intelligence Service allows these stories to be put into context, by providing background information and facilitating on-going investigation.

Because Labour are back in power, the NHS has at least avoided the major disruptions to its structure promised by the other two main parties. The resulting Cabinet reshuffle saw the departure of John Reid as Secretary of State for Health – off to play soldiers – and his replacement by Patricia Hewitt. This involved someone who had got to the state of appearing to be on top of his job being replaced by someone who has to learn the job from scratch. The system of Cabinet reshuffles might be compared to removing the boss of GlaxoSmithKline and replacing him with the chief executive of, say, Tesco, and then waiting until he had learned the ropes, and then bringing in the Post Office Chief Executive. However, that wouldn’t happen because people would think that it was pretty stupid and it would not be effective. Although we may now be in another brave new era, the start has been pretty low-key while Patricia gets up to speed. Not much emerged from Mission Control in May. The exact course of change in the NHS over the next few months and years is not certain, but at least we should be pleased that Modernisation per se appears to have run its course. It has been replaced by Choice and Public Health, and perhaps Improvement, as key drivers; but it is the emergence of another M-word – Marketing – that will result in a more profound cultural change than was caused by Mrs T. splitting purchasers from providers. The financial industry, which once upon a time considered that it offered professional services, has now accepted that it sells products and has to compete in a marketplace. The healthcare professional will have to make the same transformation, and it will not be easy. The forthcoming Primary Care White Paper is sure to introduce competition, and the fallout could be dramatic. The traditional British way of thinking told you that if you had a good product, people would come to buy it. No more! With price now out of the equation, each health service provider will have to think about its own USPs – and start to learn what a USP is, and how to make sure its customers know as well. However, GPs have shown that they know a thing or two about extracting money from the system. In the Quality and Outcomes Framework, they earned a few hundred million pounds more than they were expected to. So if their jobs are on the line, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that they could get really commercial and pack marketing courses around the country. In the meantime, someone is having to think hard about how to find all that unplanned extra QOF cash.

If you have problems or want to know more, email info@nhis.info.

cdm Monitor Informing the NHS about key resource developments for the management of chronic disease

GPs have shown that they know a thing or two about extracting money from the system A Report has been published by the Ad Hoc Advisory Group on the Operation of NHS Research Ethics Committees, setting out recommendations for the operation of these committees in order to ensure that they review applications for good quality research consistently, promptly and efficiently. In a move to push forward open access publication of scientific literature, the Wellcome Trust – the UK’s biggest non-Governmental funder of biomedical research – has announced that from 1st October 2005, all papers from its new research projects must be deposited in PubMed Central or in UK PubMed Central (once the latter has been formed) within six months of publication. Wellcome spends £400 million each year on producing almost 3,500 papers. After examining the issues, a report on ‘The Ethics of Research Involving Animals’ from Nuffield Council called for a reduction in the level of animal testing, saying that the industry must challenge the demand for animal testing in medicines development. Funding of £74 million was announced in May to provide a major boost to experimental medicine in the UK. Working together as partners in the UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC), the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Wellcome Trust, the Wolfson Foundation, the Department of Health and the Scottish Executive Health Department have committed funding to a new co-ordinated initiative designed to help experimental medicine develop new treatments for patients. Having complained about the choice of NILSI as a name for the new National Institute for Learning Skills and Innovation, the DoH took our criticism seriously and, even before it had been set up, changed it to the National Institute of Innovation and Improvement. The end is NIII! A list of deadlines for the submission of research proposals provided by the National Health Intelligence Service is provided at www.nhis.info/display/display.asp?id=319

As the premier source of knowledge about the way the English NHS works, the National Health Intelligence Service is a mine of up-to-date structured and “contexted” information, and its very bulk can be intimidating. If you think you are not yet getting the maximum benefit from your use of www.nhis.infoand that you would profit from advice and/or training please contact us at .

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A place to meet

by Admin 1. July 2005 05:00

“Wow, look at this house in the magazine, it’s fabulous!” “ . . . it’s two hundred miles from your work.” “It’s got a lovely big garden!” “ . . . it’s three hundred thousand more than our budget.” “The kitchen looks great!” “ . . . it’s all open plan – where can I have my home office?” “Oh don’t be boring – let’s just buy it!” When you’re buying a house, you don’t normally start by looking through magazines and picking one that looks good. You need first to establish where you want to live, how much you can spend and what accommodation you need. Similarly, when you are organising a meeting, you shouldn’t start by looking through brochures or restaurant guides. You need to ask yourself a number of important questions before you even think about location. 1. Why are you holding the meeting? The key requirement of the ABPI Code of Practice in relation to meetings is that there must be a clear educational purpose, so the first thing to do is to identify what this purpose will be. Note that making a promotional presentation can, in this context, be considered an acceptable “educational purpose”. 2. What will the content be? This may range from a short product presentation by you to an in-depth study of a whole disease area presented by leading experts. It is likely that you will consider this question together with the next one. 3. Who will you invite to the meeting? You can invite health professionals, and also administrative staff if the content of the meeting is relevant to them – for example, you could invite PCT members who are not health professionals to a meeting about healthcare costs, or Practice Managers to a meeting about screening programmes in general practice. 4. Where should the meeting be held? If at all possible, you should hold a meeting within the attendees’ normal place of work – such as a Postgraduate Centre or a meeting room in a GP practice. (Remember that you cannot make any payment to doctors or groups of doctors for room rental.) If these options do not offer the facilities you need, you should look for a suitable venue as close as possible to the normal place of work. If attendees are coming from a wider area, you should aim to hold the meeting at a location that is as convenient as possible for as many of the attendees as possible. 5. How should the meeting be arranged? You should arrange a meeting in a way that allows you to achieve the educational objective while disrupting the attendees’ work as little as possible. For example, a short promotional presentation could be held during a lunch break; a meeting involving one or two presentations by a local expert could be held after work in the evening. A meeting lasting more than a few hours may need to be held at the weekend. 6. Is accommodation needed? Whether or not overnight accommodation is needed should be dictated by the meeting itself. Every meeting thus needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis – but as a general rule, if it is not possible for attendees to travel to the meeting, attend the meeting and travel back from the meeting within the time-frame of a reasonable working day, then it is generally acceptable to offer overnight accommodation. 7. What is the budget? It is very likely that your company will have set limits on the budget for various different types of meeting, and you obviously must work within these. However, simply keeping within the company limits may not always keep you in line with the ABPI Code. The Code requires that the cost of hospitality should be no more than the attendees would normally pay for themselves, and that it should be appropriate to the occasion. If your company limit for lunch is £25, it would still not be acceptable under the Code for you to spend £25 a head on a buffet lunch when you carry out a short promotional presentation in a GP practice. Keep it simple Once you have asked yourself all of these questions, you are ready to start looking for somewhere to hold your meeting. But there is one further crucial point to bear in mind. The Code requires not only that the meeting must have a clear educational purpose, but that this must be the primary purpose. It follows that any associated hospitality must be a secondary consideration. This is the reason for the restrictions described above: holding the meeting near the place of work, offering accommodation only when strictly necessary and spending no more than the attendees would pay for themselves. An overly expensive meal or an unnecessary hotel stay can make the hospitality appear to be the main purpose of the meeting. This is also the reason why, when looking for a venue, you also need to make sure that the venue itself does not ‘upstage’ the educational purpose and become the main attraction of the meeting. Ask yourself: “If I choose this venue, will people come along mainly because they are interested in the content of the meeting, or mainly because they are attracted by the venue?” Remember that the answer depends to some extent on who you are inviting: a venue that may be considered quite ordinary by consultants may be considered exceptional by nurses. How does it look? Once you have done all of this, you need to ask yourself one final question. Meetings organised by pharmaceutical companies for health professionals have received considerable attention recently in the Health Select Committee report, the medical press and the lay press. The criticism has often been made that companies are inappropriately ‘wining and dining’ doctors and nurses in luxury hotels and restaurants. This statement is often made, not with full knowledge of all the arrangements for a meeting, but simply on the basis of how it looks. So even if you feel that you can justify a venue in the ways described above, you still need to ask yourself: “What impression does this venue give to the people I am inviting? … to the people I am not inviting? . . . to the media? . . . to the public?” Remember that the most important thing about a meeting is not the location chosen but the impression given.

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RANBAXY - Talk to a Company that Listens

by Admin 1. July 2005 05:00

IN NOVEMBER 2003, Pf introduced its readers to Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited, a little known generic company with aspirations to become a research based international pharmaceutical company. Now, eighteen months on, Ranbaxy is starting to see its ambitions realised. Attaining its goal to be a $1 billion company by 2004, the company has seen an impressive growth in sales from $500 million to $1.2 billion in just 4 years, and is well on track to become a $5 billion company by 2012. Since 2003, Ranbaxy has continued to extend its influence internationally, now selling products in over 100 countries, with ground presence in 34 countries, 17 manufacturing locations and 9000 employees, 1000 of which are Research and Development personnel. The Vision for Ranbaxy UK As predicted in 2003, Ranbaxy has more than doubled its annual UK sales from £13 million in 2001 to £28 million in 2004, and is looking to be recognised as a top 50 pharmaceutical company by building a £15 million branded business by 2008. UK Sales and Marketing Director, Martin Gullis, told Pf, “Our vision hasn’t changed, but what was just conceptual in 2003, is now becoming reality.” So what is it about Ranbaxy that promotes such success? Martin highlighted Ranbaxy’s modern approach to account management as key to its achievements, “As a part of our brand strategy we have created an infrastructure and core competencies for brand pharmaceutical marketing that fit with the current environment. Our approach is to encourage project based discussions based on the needs of customers so that our personnel aren’t reps, they are surgery account developers, or what we call Healthcare Development Managers”. Changing the Rules In accordance with its shift towards R & D and brand marketing, Ranbaxy are currently researching new chemical entities in areas such as BPH and Respiratory. In the meantime the first of the in licensed products is a Mucolytic for use in the management of COPD. Mucolytics were given a NICE recommendation in March 2004. “The beauty of selling a Mucolytic,” Martin explained, “is that you’re not replacing an existing therapy, but you’re working with NICE guidelines, helping the doctor to get patients treated.” 2005 saw the launch of a new device for the treatment of Asthma, which has already been adopted by many GPs. Indeed, Martin described the case of one PCT that has endorsed the use of this device, “Access was difficult, but they were happy to correspond with our Healthcare Development Manager leading to a positive bulletin. So the rules of engagement are becoming quite different. The people we employ aren’t chasing numbers in terms of contacts, they are working to outcome based decisions on activity, we are all measured on sales.” A Fresh Start In November 2003 Martin spoke to Pf about the Ranbaxy culture and the company’s vision to provide an enlightened and refreshing attitude to people that would make Ranbaxy a rewarding place to be. This month we spoke to Barbara George and Nav Heer, both Healthcare Development Managers with Ranbaxy, to find out if the day-today reality of working for the company matches up to these ideals. “Working for Ranbaxy is constantly challenging, diverse, exciting and rewarding,” said Barbara, who joined the company in February 2004 from a large respiratory house. “Ranbaxy is a very different experience to working for other pharmaceutical companies. Ranbaxy allows me to be creative and put forward ideas and different ways of approaching the task. Little bureaucracy means that I am able to get on with the work without wasting time. The end result is what matters.” A relatively new employee, Nav expressed her first impressions of Ranbaxy: “What really impressed me was that when I joined the company all the HDMs attended a two day assessment course, so further training could be personalised to each individual’s level of experience. It’s very unusual to get that kind of feedback so early on unless you are applying for a job.” She went on to say, “I can only describe Ranbaxy as a breath of fresh air compared to previous companies. What really stands out is the level of autonomy and responsibility that is given, everyone is approachable here and you actually feel like you’re being heard.” “Ranbaxy is the perfect company for an experienced representative who has already proved themself and just wants to get on with their job. After only 6 months with the company I have already been given extra responsibilities and I’m really looking forward to what opportunities may arise in the future.” Keeping It Real A forward thinking company with a modern attitude to people, over the past year Ranbaxy has redefined the role of the sales representative and proved its vision can be realised. With such an impressive track record, we can only wait to see what Ranbaxy will achieve by this time next year. Ranbaxy is looking for more Healthcare Development Managers to join its UK team in the following areas: • SWANSEA / WEST WALES • AVON / SOMERSET / DEVON • BRADFORD / HUDDERSFIELD / HALIFAX • HAMPSHIRE • ESSEX • WEST AND SW LONDON • DERBY / STAFFS / SHEFFIELD If you are looking for real job satisfaction with a company that listens, please send a CV stating your preferred location to Nicola Cairns, HR Manager Europe at nicola.cairns@ranbaxy.com Closing date for application is 26th August 2005.

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COMPANY IN VIEW: NORTH 51

by Admin 1. July 2005 05:00

Director Robert Miller, who has over 10 years experience in health service management including 3 years as General Manager of a Glasgow LHCC, explains: “We regularly run workshops to help candidates new to the industry understand more about the NHS and also offer more comprehensive NHS training to support experienced representatives who wish to move into Healthcare Development Roles. We are very aware that our success depends on enabling candidates to successfully manage their careers”. This expertise makes North 51 particularly effective in the recruitment of NHS liaison teams. Other services include the design and delivery of assessment and development centres for client companies. These can be based on existing competency frameworks, or developed using the output from robust job analysis. Such methods help focus attention on the competencies that really matter to increasing in-job performance. The expert evaluation of company selection processes is something that can make recruitment significantly more effective. Among other Directors with whom you can expect to be dealing directly are an ex National Sales Manager, Global Product Director, occupational psychologist and Head of Training. It is this breadth and depth of experience that helps North 51 be truly customer focused. Neil James, Recruitment Director says: “We think it is imperative that as Directors we have direct input to our candidates and not just expect junior consultants, that are often far less experienced than candidates themselves, to deal with them. It’s doubtful if any other agency puts as much effort as North 51 into candidate selection and preparation, helping optimise performance on the day. Much of this support is from the Director’s themselves. Gaining interviews for candidates is competitive so preparation is everything to make the most of the opportunity. We can’t guarantee they will get the job, but we are confident our candidates are of the highest quality.” Senior Recruitment Consultant Caroline Hunt is the latest addition to the North 51 team. An ex RBM, Caroline is now one of the most experienced Pharma Recruitment Consultants in the industry. “To be truly successful, you must really work with candidates to build up trust. Most of our candidates come from word of mouth referral which is testament to the service we provide and the trust our candidates place in us. Also, as all our consultants are ex-managers with a wealth of experience, we are confident that when we forward candidates, RBMs can have confidence they will match their specifications and expectations”. Managing Director Paul Dermody says: “We have recently moved to BioCity in Nottingham, the UK’s largest Pharma and Bioscience centre. This has allowed us to offer a first class service to both our candidates and client companies. We have conference rooms that hold up to 200 and even host client’s regional meetings free of charge.” North 51’s aim is to be regarded as the company of choice for the recruitment and selection of pharmaceutical sales and marketing personnel and for the provision of tailored contract sales teams and personnel in vacancy management positions. Our services include: • The provision of contract sales teams. • The provision of vacancy management representatives. • Targeted recruitment. • The design and delivery of assessment/ development centres. • Occupational testing. • Careers guidance/outplacement counselling. To discuss any of the services offered call the North 51 team on 0115 950 2500 0115 950 2500 Register at www.north-51.com or call Neil on 0790 4528090 0790 4528090 . So what do candidates and clients who have used North 51 say?

Mike Prideaux “North 51 helped me gain my first job in the industry and I am thrilled that my career in Pharma sales is up and running. I was supported through all aspects of the recruitment process and the tips given to me really complimented all the hard work that I put in to gain my first position. The help and support I received was first class”.

Chris Baker National Sales Manager of Axcan “I was very impressed with the service from North 51 and the very helpful attitude shown by everyone who has dealt with me as they helped build our team of new hospital representatives. It is obvious that North 51 makes considerable effort and takes great pains in selection, matching and offering candidates as close to the client’s requirement as possible. Should we need to utilise this kind of service again, we would have no hesitation in returning to North 51”.

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