Upstream marketing Archives - Page 2 of 5

16Dec 2023 by cesare ferrari

Holiday Season

Downstream marketing, Sales, Upstream marketing

The holiday season is a hectic time for many people. Between holiday shopping, holiday parties and holiday cooking, it can be difficult to find the time or energy to read during this busy time of the year. This is the reason I normally take a pause during the holyday season. This is my last article of 2023, and I would like to re-share a few posts on important topics for medical sales and marketing professionals. Business plans I have a pragmatic position on business plans and business cases. I do not consider realistic plans and planning useless. However, before starting to write a long and detailed business plan any entrepreneur or intrapreneur should focus on building and testing the product and the business model. I have analyzed in detail the…

22Oct 2023 by cesare ferrari

Customer Orientation In The Medical Business

Sales, Upstream marketing

I recently met an ex-colleague and we discussed for a couple of hours several decisions made by the management of a MedTech company that we both felt were not focused on the customer. We agreed that those decisions were evidence of putting the business needs over what was best for the customer.    For this reason, after this eye-opening conversation about how far small and medium-sized medical device companies are from being customer-centric, I decided to return to this topic.   If you follow this blog regularly you should already know that I’m a strong advocate of customer centricity and customer orientation. Read on to find my takes and solution to building a customer-centric medical business. What is customer orientation?  Customer orientation is a business philosophy that puts the needs of the customer at the center of the…

06Oct 2023 by cesare ferrari

How do you find customers to talk to? (Part 2)

Upstream marketing

Remember the first post on customer interactions where I shared essential tips on how to find customers to talk to? Great! Here’s the follow-up and I’ll be talking about how to effectively find customers to interact with. Just in case you missed the first post (part 1), you can go over it here. It’ll help you understand how to define the profile of a customer and the general strategy to approach them. Let’s move right into the focus of this content, which is customer interactions. 5 ways to generate fruitful customer interactions Once the profile of the customer and the approach strategy is well defined the next step is to find an appropriate number of customers to speak with. Here are 5 practical examples that show you how. 1.…

23Sep 2023 by cesare ferrari

How do you find customers to talk to? (Part 1)

Upstream marketing

From my writings, you can tell that I believe meeting, talking, and observing the customer are critical steps in any new product development. I’ve also shared with you the importance of customer interactions. However, for example, when discussing with some healthcare start-up founders, I found out that many still have some difficulties accessing “customers.” And that’ll be the focus of this article. You’ll learn more as you read on. Possible challenges with accessing customers Here are a few, yet common examples where access to customers can be challenging: You are a start-up or small company You have an extremely limited budget You are addressing a completely new segment You are targeting new stakeholders You need customers in a new geographic area You have no KOL network In these situations, for…

13Jun 2023 by cesare ferrari

Change this common mindset to develop better medical devices

Upstream marketing

If you have worked in the MedTech business or even in Pharma for a few years, you've probably heard some variations of this common mindset: "The user will benefit greatly from this technology that a good enough product will be okay. There is no need to investigate customer's need further." "The patient would die if they are not using our product, so the user will not consider how the product looks." "These stakeholders (nurses, scrub techs, sterile processing technicians, etc.) are not so influential; therefore, their needs will be satisfied by this basic design." "In the next generation of our product, we do not need to develop a new design because our current product's aesthetics and perceived quality are considered okay. Actually, nobody complains about it." Does this sound familiar?…

12May 2023 by cesare ferrari

How to tackle MedTech over-engineering

Upstream marketing

Welcome back! Still, on MedTech over-engineering, I think this sentence from "The Elements of Style" is a great guideline for over-writing and can be transferred to over-engineering: "A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts." After analyzing the major causes of over-engineering in MedTech, now is the time to understand the consequences and the strategies to prevent it. Let's unfold that. Consequences of over-engineering There are many consequences from over-engineering a new product, but ultimately it limits the chance of product success by creating a misalignment between the product and the market. The most significant damage over-engineering can cause is creating a medical product with features and functions…

29Apr 2023 by cesare ferrari

Over-engineering is not only the fault of narcissistic, egocentric, and sociopathic engineers

Upstream marketing

Over-engineering in medical devices is more common than we think, and it can severely impact products and companies. Today's post is directed to all the people involved in the process of new product development, especially engineers, no matter their role—for instance, R&D engineers, founders, CTOs, project managers, and designers. We all know the sentence, "the devil is in the details." Well, over-engineering seems to be the natural solution, and R & D engineers might not even see it and do not see its associated risks. Read this step-by-step guide to understand over-engineering in MedTech, its cause, and its effects. What is over-engineering? According to Wikipedia: "Overengineering (or over-engineering) is the act of designing a product or providing a solution to a problem in an elaborate or complicated manner, where a…

18Mar 2023 by cesare ferrari

Do you consider customer complaints a good proxy of customer satisfaction? You may regret it!

Downstream marketing, Upstream marketing

Medical device companies must seriously treat customers' complaints in compliance with regulatory quality standards. However, compliance with regulations does not necessarily mean you're focused on customer satisfaction. Most MedTech companies are small and medium-sized, and customer satisfaction is sometimes not fully understood and considered for different reasons. Imagine this scene: You are with a colleague discussing a product feature that produces customer's dissatisfaction. And to support the thesis that this is not a real problem, he/she shows you that none of the complaints collected about the product is related to that feature. Despite having anecdotal feedback on the problem, you do not have robust data; therefore, customer satisfaction with this feature is considered good. Let's have a look at the impact of customer satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and customer complaints to see…

10Feb 2023 by cesare ferrari

7 strategies to avoid the commoditization in the MedTech business

Downstream marketing, Sales, Upstream marketing

In my previous post, I discussed the commoditization of medical products. How it is becoming very common and a visible threat to company profitability. As a result of commoditization, business models that MedTech and pharma companies were able to implement in the past are becoming unsustainable. Today's post is about strategies you'll have to implement to avoid commoditization in MedTech. Strategies countering commoditization of MedTech products To begin, the ideas and the strategies to avoid commoditization presented here are not a panacea. Every company must find its way of countering commoditization's power, exploiting market knowledge and core competencies. The company facing commoditization has 2 options: compete within the trap or escape the trap. It is also possible to work on both strategies simultaneously to increase the chance of success. Compete…

23Oct 2022 by cesare ferrari

Is customer orientation a priority for your entire company?

Downstream marketing, Upstream marketing

Today any company, big and small, active in the medical business declares openly that it is customer oriented. I would say that being or stating to be customer oriented or customer centric is both fashionable and necessary. However, as you can imagine there are different levels of being customer oriented, a big difference between saying and doing. And inside the companies, it is possible to have different departments with variable levels of customer orientation. Why Customer Orientation? The essence of customer orientation is focusing on the customer and potential customer, identifying customer needs (current and future), and satisfying those needs. Customer orientation is an important driver of a company’s performance as described here and companies that “truly” follow this “religion” with its behaviors, practices, and commandments are examples of success…

Category: Upstream marketing