Pharma marketers spend countless hours talking about patients. Physicians. Market research. Segmentation. Positioning. Omnichannel strategy. Brand plans. There’s just one problem: Your strategy also needs to resonate with an entirely different audience if you want to win over senior executives. Senior executives, who may be organizational influencers, are your audience, and you need to sell them and win them over.
You can have the best strategy in the world. But it doesn’t mean much if you struggle to secure funding, resources, or organizational alignment because no one understands why your recommendation matters.
The strongest pharma marketers develop two seemingly unrelated skills:
- They understand the marketplace.
- They can translate that knowledge into a business decision senior execs can act on.
Stop Presenting Marketing. Start Presenting Business Decisions.
Marketers make the mistake of thinking executives want to know every detail that went into their recommendation. They usually don’t care.
The marketer may have spent months analyzing:
- Patient journeys
- HCP attitudes
- Claims data
- Market research
- Competitive intelligence
- Segmentation
- Message testing
- Digital engagement
- Field feedback
While all that work is probably necessary, the CEO, commercial president, or CFO doesn’t care about most of it. They want answers to three basic questions:
- What is happening?
- Why does it matter?
- What should we do about it?
…and then the finance guy will want to know:
- What will it cost?
- What happens if we don’t do it?
Question #5 is critical. Executives don’t judge investments based on potential return alone. They also factor in the cost of inaction.
Weak marketers say:
“We need another $5 million for omnichannel engagement.”
Strong marketers say:
“Our research shows a significant share of target physicians remain unconvinced about the clinical differentiation of our product. Until we address that barrier, we’re unlikely to see the level of adoption we need to hit forecast. We recommend investing $5 million to change physician perceptions.” Same ask. Completely different conversation with executives.
Know the Numbers Better Than Anyone in the Room
Pharma marketers sometimes focus too much on marketing metrics. Impressions. Click-through rates. Email open rates. Website visits. Engagement rates. Those are important metrics, but they aren’t necessarily the ones senior executives care about most. Here are some hints:
Executives think about:
Revenue.
Market share.
New patient starts.
Persistence.
Gross-to-net.
Operating income.
Forecast accuracy.
ROI.
Competitive risk.
If you want credibility with senior management, you should understand how your marketing activities connect to those business outcomes. Say your campaign drives 10 million impressions. Big deal.
More importantly, did awareness change? Intent to prescribe? Did prescribing behavior change? Did patient starts increase? Did the economics work? Did we get a positive ROI? Executives don’t want marketers who can recite activities. They want marketers who can clearly articulate the business impact of those activities.
Understand the P&L
If you want to be seen as a future commercial leader (not just a marketer), learn how your brand makes money.
Figures like:
- Gross sales vs. net sales
- Rebates and discounts
- Gross-to-net dynamics
- Cost of goods
- Marketing expenditure
- Sales-force expense
- Patient-support costs
- Contribution margin
- Forecast assumptions
Should all be second nature. You don’t have to be the CFO, but you should know how your decisions affect the brand’s financial performance. When marketing people can fluently discuss financial metrics, you suddenly become a lot more credible in the eyes of senior management. “The marketing department wants more money” turns into, “Here’s the exact investment we need to protect the forecast.”
Challenge the Forecast
Ask any sales leader what they hate most, and they’ll say something about sales reps questioning forecasts. But it’s absolutely acceptable — and even encouraged — for marketers to challenge assumptions. Forecasts can create a false sense of certainty. X is going to grow 20% next year. Why? What has to happen for that growth to occur?
Physicians need to start using the product earlier in the treatment algorithm.
Payer access needs to improve.
Patient abandonment needs to decrease. Physician awareness isn’t the issue. HCPs know about the product but are unsure if the differentiation is clinically meaningful. Good marketers work backward from the forecast, then assess whether the commercial strategy can truly drive the required changes.
That, my friends, is strategic marketing.
Bring Bad News Upstairs Early
Senior executives hate bad news. They hate surprises more. Marketing research shows declining intent to prescribe? Tell someone. Are competitors gaining share? Say something. That expensive awareness campaign you launched last month is completely falling flat? Tell me.
Forecast looks increasingly unrealistic? Don’t keep that to yourself. But never approach senior management with a problem and no solution.
Here’s what you should do:
Problem > Evidence > Recommended action
“Our analysis shows new-patient starts are 12% behind launch assumptions. The primary barrier isn’t awareness; it’s physicians being uncertain about which patients are appropriate candidates. We recommend moving budget from awareness to HCP education and field execution.”
Voila. Executives can make a decision with that type of information.
Stop Defending Your Marketing Plan
Marketers become too attached to strategies they help create. Don’t fall into this trap. Your job is not to prove you were right. Your job is to prove you’re still right.
Plans change. Strategies evolve.
Markets change. Patients change. Physicians change. Competitive dynamics change. Payer policies change. The data change.
…and when the data change, your strategy better change too.
Far better to say,
“The data tell us our assumption was wrong.”
than try to BS your way through a problem.
No executive likes uncertainty.
What kills confidence is when people refuse to accept reality.
Learn to Say “I Don’t Know”
Corporate meetings love people who have answers. Sometimes, you won’t know the answer. And that’s OK. Don’t be afraid to admit it.
Here’s what you should say:
“I don’t know. But we can figure it out. We need to conduct X research to learn more.”
As long as you’re willing to own the problem and show how you’ll find the answer, you’ll maintain your credibility.
No executive expects you to have all the answers. But they do expect you to be intellectually honest.
Make Your Presentations Shorter (& Sugary)
If you need 50 slides to persuade management of your idea, you probably haven’t drilled down to the core issue. As you’re preparing your next presentation, ask yourself this question: If the CEO walked away from this meeting remembering only one thing, what should it be? Answer that question. Put it at the top.
Here’s what a winning executive narrative looks like:
- Here’s what’s happening.
- Here’s why it’s happening.
- Here’s the financial impact if we do nothing.
- Here are our options.
- Here’s what I recommend.
- Here’sthe decision we need to make today.
Everything else is details. Throw it in an appendix.
Don’t Confuse Consensus With Leadership
The pharma industry is one of the most cross-functional industries around.
Legal has concerns.
Regulatory has concerns.
Medical has concerns.
Market access has concerns.
Sales has concerns.
Finance has concerns.
Alignment is important.
But too many focus meetings will water down your strategy until it offends nobody and excites nobody. Strong marketers get input from stakeholders. Then they make a recommendation.…and sometimes that recommendation should be:
“We’ve heard everyone’s concerns. Here’s what I recommend and why.”
Executives aren’t just evaluating the strategy. They’re judging your ability to lead.
Spend More Time With Customers
Here’s another way to earn executive credibility that many marketers miss:
Know the marketplace better than senior management does.
Talk to physicians. Listen to patients. Shadow sales reps. Read MSL feedback. Talk to payers. Analyze prescription trends. Study competitive prescribing patterns. Stop guessing why physicians aren’t prescribing your drug. Ask them. When the president of the company asks you,
“What’s going on out there?”
You should know what’s going on.
That’s how you earn your seat at the table.
You Become the Person Who Connects the Organization.
The best marketers in pharma understand:
- Medical science
- Physicians
- Patients
- Competition
- Sales
- Market access
- Finance
- And our commercial goals
Once you understand all those things, you become the internal function that can connect everything together.…but that will require pharma marketers to evolve beyond simply managing campaigns and promotional tactics.
The marketer of the future will need to think and act like a GM who just happens to specialize in marketing.
Want to influence senior executives as a pharma marketer?
Start by asking yourself these 6 questions before your next presentation to senior management:
- What business problem am I trying to solve?
- What evidence do I have that proves this problem exists?
- What are the financial implications if we don’t act?
- What happens if we do nothing?
- What specifically am I recommending we do?
- What decision do I need from executives?
If you can’t answer those questions quickly and concisely, chances are your presentation still isn’t ready. Because in many ways, becoming a better pharma marketer isn’t about improving your skills in advertising.
It’s about thinking and acting more like a businessperson. The marketers who become leaders inside pharma companies are usually not the best scientists or strategists. They’re simply the ones who senior management learns they can trust. Staff members who show up with data, not opinions. Who prevent problems before they escalate into crises. Who know how their recommendations impact the bottom line. Who have the guts to admit when something isn’t working.
And who, when everyone else is explaining why something can’t be done, step up and tell management what should be done next.
Now that’s a pharma marketer who can lead a business.
