Pharma marketing, management and leadership

Working together to innovate marketing practice can indeed provide meaning and direction to an organisation. Pharma marketing is no different from basic marketing needs through constant reinforcement on sensitivity to the environments, market and customers and absolute cohesiveness with all departments to achieve identified objectives.

In the highly competitive and volatile pharmaceutical market, it is imperative to follow and practice innovative marketing. Pharmaceutical marketing is the soul of all activities related to the products to reach the customer’s mind, build an identity for both the products as well as the organisation. In India, mostly similar molecule/combination compete in a specific therapeutic segment for their brand share, identity and longer product life. In pharmaceutical selling, creating brand equity is the cardinal factor.

Pharma marketing deals with the propagation of products (brands) through advertisements or through medico-need based presentation to the medics. Medico marketing encompasses therapeutic product features related to diseases and its comparative advantages to the patients, and needs approval from clinicians. Following inter-relation are highly pertinent in medico marketing.

Products, people, medics and strategic focus 

Besides all the above, communication plays a crucial role in the overall brand value management. Personalised communication, need-based medico communication and persuasive communication really matter a lot.

Leadership in pharmaceutical management and marketing

Effective leadership is an essential part of pharmaceutical management and marketing as people are involved closely at all hierarchical managerial positions. In pharma management, leading and developing a team and organisation relevant to today’s pharmaceutical business need is the key objective and one of the most important functional areas. A fine tuning between managerial function and leadership behaviour and vision is the desired synergism of organisational success.

Pharma management, through its core leadership function, develops and motivates people to excel and achieve their desired goals. The greatest motivator Dale Carneige said, “Truly inspiring people aren’t driven to lead people, they are driven to serve them.”

Here, the word ‘serve’ relates to the developing people, to nurture them on their potential and to induce them to follow certain values rather than preaching to do so. Functional leaders in pharma marketing should be of the same concept and group as they are supposed to build a team by inspiring an individual or a team through their ideas, knowledge, skill and values. Technical competencies, behavioural understanding, inter-personal skills and emotional intelligence are a few valued proficiencies that pharma leaders cherish for their individual and organisational success.