(First of 2 parts)
I recently received some feelers and invitations to join the sales and marketing industry again, and while tempting, I said to myself that to help others while pursuing my first and last love, it would be of great help if I could write topics related to sales and marketing.
For a start, lest I would be construed as an expert, I was just a practitioner in medical sales for the last 20 years. The hardest products next to selling insurances and memorial plans would be medical, since it entails necessary expertise on allied health and there is a risk of killing rather than lengthen the patient’s life.
For starters, I would like to share my thoughts on 4Ps. This is not the dole out assistance given by the government to indigent Filipinos. The Ps represent Product, Price, Promotion and Placement. Others have added another P, representing People. With this in place, the marketing plan follows how to market based on these 4 Ps.
Having a perfect Product with the right Price and Promotion and Place in the market by the right sales Persons, will definitely make you a market leader. These 4Ps, however, will only be successful if paired with the right 3Cs. No matter how perfect your 4Ps without the right 3Cs it will not make you Number 1 in the market. Your marketing plan should revolve not only on your 4Ps but also on your Competition, Company mission and vision and Customer’s acceptance of the product you are offering.
When I was product manager, I had been lucky to have the proper product training from Instrumentation Laboratory and Beckman Coulter. I stayed for a week in Milan, Italy for a week to be trained on Gem 3000 in 2006. That was the year Italy won the World Cup in football. To celebrate their victory, people were running on the streets including women half naked.
When I came back, I had to prepare a marketing plan based on the 4Ps and 3Cs. We studied, or I studied, since among all product managers I am the only one without a product specialist to conduct a demo. In short, I was abused but had no choice since I was obligated to complete a 2-year contract or else they will sue me and I need to pay P200,000 to recover the cost of training. I was a one-man-army.
I found out based on focus group discussions that I conducted that our product is good, the company is accepted, but the consumers don’t have enough knowledge on the benefits of the new cartridge technology. This even got worse due to competitors misinformation that the spoiled samples will invalidate the whole cartridge exposing the hospital to hundreds of thousands in losses since all clotted samples do not come with replacement warranty.
As product manager, we must find means to destroy the barriers of entry for our product. I recommended that warranty be extended to clotted samples. Management did not approve it. I proved to them that the apprehension was created by competitors and that their disapproval of my suggested solution to market barrier at hand, helps the competition win. And viola, after their approval, Asian Hospital, Mary Mediatrix and Makati Medical Center approved our proposal. From a 1M sales in 2004 annually, the Gem 3000 was selling at 100M plus sales a year. (to be continued)
