There are two kinds of Project Managers (PM’s) who spend budget in the medical device marketing sector: those setup up for success and those who are destined to fail.
Poor performing PM’s inability to guide a product and command expenses can have negative effects on long term budget planning and subsequently a launch.
Many times a poor PM got their position from an internal search by their company, and it might have been a promotion for the employee but ultimately is a bad fit. Many times a very good engineer becomes a very average, or poor PM.The problem with this type of placement can be that being a quality PM requires more business-to-business experience than some engineers or mathematicians, for example, posses out of graduate school. Business Negotiating and Marketing 101 aren’t usually requisite for the sciences. There are of course exceptions to this rule, and I’ve met and worked with many high-end PM’s from the science side – but they are very special people.
More successful PM’s have more marketing authority and business training and go about their business in a very methodical manner – they’ve been prepare for their station and are mostly a strategic hire for their company.
Often, some of the poorer performing PM’s exercise the inability to hear guidance, this causes them to make bold and brash moves that potentially jeopardize the success of a product launch. Just because a PM knows where to go it doesn’t mean they know the perfect route or understand all the undulations that the current marketing landscape holds.
There is a Chinese proverb that goes like this, “clever men are sometimes the dupes of their own cleverness”. I think sometimes PM’s fall into this trap. They become so enamored with their past victories they forget that there was always help along the way, from one professional or another.
Healthcare expense management is a hot topic right now, and from my seat as the COO of a Medical Device Marketing firm, I’ve seen a lot of waste over my 15 years in the industry and have worked constantly to minimize it. That’s been a goal of our firm from day one – sell value, not widgets (or cars for that matter).
Car sales is a tried and true profession, and it has its place. But Product Managers at Fortune 500 medical device companies shouldn’t be in the business of “car shopping” to get a product launched. “Price shopping” to get a product launched or to get tactical materials developed has the expected outcome – the seller always wins. And usually the buyer pays top dollar for the industry average, or less.
Quality PM’s do a few key steps before they spend any corporate money:
1. No matter how imminent their timeline is, they sit and develop a vision and goals for their launch.
2. After that, they assign very specific dollar amounts to their preferred tactics but leave a specific amount of budget assigned to strategic planning/guidance and unknown (to them) tactics.
3. A plan document is developed that guides any potential marketing firm on what needs to be done, when it needs to be completed, how goals have been accomplished in the past, and why certain aspects of the plan are non-negotiable. It also designates how much budget is available to accomplish the plan – and as stated above – allows room for strategic guidance and future development.
Once these steps have been completed, the best PM’s reach out to a few proven, trusted firms and request a strategy document that addresses all of their needs. Then an evaluation is done in an apples-to-apples manner. This is a request for proposal method, or RFP.
The poorest performing PM’s manage their product launches in this manner:
1. Call in a few agencies to talk.
2. Blue-sky about big ideas, in a few unrelated meetings, with unrelated audiences.
3. Identify a few “must have’s” – these may change depending on the day.
4. Sit back and wait for the magic.
The main difference is solid planning, full budget disclosure and expectation setting. Too many PM’s see themselves as the audience to be wowed, where successful PM’s see the ROI as the wow factor and understand that they are a channel through which great results are found, but they are not the end user. Further, successful PM’s understand that an industry agency is allowed access to competitive information that they can’t find within their own corporate silos and they use this distinct feature to their advantage.
ROI minded agencies want to provide value above and beyond the scope of any project. With a prepared, experienced buyer, agencies are able to deliver high-end results as well as value-added elements found throughout a creative/strategic process. Having an agreed upon platform that defines the relation between the PM and the agency, combined with the extra rope that allows for strategic vision is that mechanism. That extra rope can also be used to hang said agency partner if the launch fails, but agencies who have experience in medical device marketing welcome that challenge. It’s what separates niche agencies from car dealership agencies.
So what will it take to get you in this fine automobile today? Would you like a clear coat on that paint – you really need that clear coat, sir.
