Launch plans should be complex and messy

At Medis Consulting, we believe that pharmaceutical launch plans are messy and complicated.  Anyone who tells you otherwise either doesn’t understand how complicated healthcare delivery is, or is selling a limited solution that they want to claim addresses everything.

To begin with, the list of stakeholders that determine success is long and varied.  The ‘big three’ of clinician, payer, and patient is just the beginning.   Governments play a big role as regulatory bodies in addition to being payers, or they can set the model for private players to follow.  Depending on the category, the patient group can be a stakeholder universe just in itself, with patient advocacy organizations, social media stars, parents, caregivers, and other involved persons demanding a map for themselves.  In some categories, allied health group – the nurses, PT, occupational therapists, and other key providers – can play a larger role overall than physicians.  While in others the health system, especially for hospital products, rules the roost.

Internal stakeholders can actually prove the most challenging group to deal with for any brand leader.  Personalities play a key role here and any given launch may be dominated by a strong R&D, clinical, or regulatory group . . . or all three at once.  Some folks have lived with the molecule for years and set the commercial launch as validation of their devotion to the science.  This can lead to irrational expectations and prejudice about the nature of the market that is hard to dissuade through data.  And don’t get us started about senior management.  Anyone who has lived through a couple of pharma launches knows at least one VP who has a favorite KOL on speed dial and is always citing that person’s brilliance as the reason your market research is wrong.

So what is a commercial lead to do?  We have some pragmatic thoughts from our experience on both sides of the aisle as marketing and market access leads, medical professionals, and consultants that have been brought in to optimize a piece, or an entire, launch plan:

1. Build an environmental / situational understanding early and make sure all of the key internal stakeholders are part of the research and bought in as much as possible with the conclusions.  Whether this understanding includes market landscape,
2. Consider all the factors and all the players.  But then focus on the top three, or the top five, or the top whatever number rises up, stakeholder perspectives.
3. Determine your key issues early and focus tightly on the top ones.  It’s usually not more than 3, but you’ll know when there is a drop off in importance.  These will typically fall into one or two big buckets, like reimbursement, clinical story, sales force, promotion, or patient support.  Somebody will always want you to focus on a key issue that doesn’t land in the top (see VP and favorite KOL above) and you may have to put some effort there to maintain the peace, but always know what will make this launch a success.
4. Take into consideration the long view when needed for investment, but try to limit your focus to the first three years.  Your success or failure will come in those years and if it doesn’t then you are going to create a new launch plan before they are up in any event.
5. Do not go backwards if you can avoid it.  Once you make some decisions, move on to the next decisions.  This is why internal buy in is so important because different groups will try to make you rethink decisions you’ve already made if they never liked them to begin with.
6. Similarly, don’t exhaust yourself on certain elements.  This is especially dangerous when they are elements that you like.  If you find it fascinating to map out a sales force plan, great.  If you love to design branding and positioning, then have at it.  If you think the price is the pivotal piece of the puzzle, focus on it.  But once you’ve done it, move on.  There are a million workstreams in a good launch and even if you’ve disciplined yourself to a few key issues, you’ll find a high percentage of those workstreams impact your issues.  Make them all good, not just a few.

Of course, having an external partner who can delve deep into all of this is important.  Some like . . . cough, cough . . . Medis Consulting for example.  They can bring a wealth of insights and guidance from the front lines of the research.  But always balance their advice with the practical nature of managing a messy, complex launch.  You are steering the ship, just let us tell you where the icebergs might be.