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[P283]Pharmaceutical Marketing And Sales

by Glenn Antoine, Gle

This is something that I felt compelled to write for one simple reason. All too often I am working with people new to the Network Marketing profession that missed the fact that they are now in sales. After some discussion what is discovered is that they really have a bad impression of what it means to be in sales or a profound dislike for sales people. Many times this has been brought about by growing up with the impression that being a sales person is somehow a bad thing. For others they have had a bad experience with a sales person that acted in less than a professional manner.

First and foremost being in sales is not a bad thing in any way shape or form. As with anything in life there are people that will act in an unprofessional and/or try to take advantage of others. That does not make the profession any less of a true and needed profession. Think about all of the things that you have purchased in your life where you were truly helped by a professional sales person that addressed all of your questions, asked the right questions to discover your needs and then ultimately helped you with a purchase that has improved your quality of life.

Regardless of what you may call your business or profession (Network Marketing, Direct Sales, Relationship Marketing, Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), etc) you are now filling the role of a sales professional. More importantly if you are living and breathing you actually participate in a sales role on a daily basis.

WHAT??? Yes, you are often in sales negotiations and may not even realize it. If you have ever been on a date you were involved in a sales negotiation. You were trying to sell your prospective date on the fact that they really wanted to go out with you. Are you married? Well for most of you that was a long extended sales process. For those of you who have children of your own, if you have ever tried to get them to help you clean house, pick up toys, etc, etc, you were negotiating much like any other sales process.

In all reality we are all sales people when we want to be or need to be. However, all too often we do not want to acknowledge that fact and as such never spend any time trying to improve our sales skills. While there are some incredibly awesome sales training programs available to you, there is tons of information available to you that you can access as easy as turning your computer on or listening to your IPod. There are some well known sales training professionals that have a wealth of information either online or available as podcast downloads, whereby you can pick up golden nuggets of information daily.

Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar and Tom Hopkins just to name a few all have a wealth of information available. If you have a well established Network Marketing business, new to the Direct Sales industry or just starting to checkout Multi-Level Marketing to see if it is right for you, please take the time to improve your sales skills.

Oddly enough you will find that one of the most important people that you will need to sell on a regular basis is yourself. We have all had those internal battles whereby we are trying to make a very important decision that could have a profound impact on our lives and there seems to be no real clear answer. Well have no fear, as part of your new knowledge you should learn to ask very effective questions to uncover the true needs, desires and wants of your new prospects.

Communication plays a major role in your success. Learn to LISTEN!! In case you have never heard this before, there is a very important reason that God blessed us with two ears and one mouth. We should use them proportionately in all conversations and most importantly when we find ourselves in a sales role. Shut up and listen. By asking very key questions and then listening intently to our prospects we will discover the real needs, wants and desires of the prospect.

How cool would it be to only work with people that really wanted to work with you and your business opportunity? What if you had an in-depth understanding of your new business partner's goals, dreams and their WHY? What if you knew why they had failed in the past and how to help them ensure their success today?

The only way to know if your business opportunity is right for your new prospect is if you ask the right questions and they tell you. Please understand that you cannot tell them that your business opportunity is the best for them. You have every right to be excited about your business and you should be. However, it is not going to be right for everyone that you meet.

What if you had worked with ten people only to discover that they should be really be participating in another network marketing opportunity? Furthermore, what if you pointed them in the right direction, such that they were able to get engaged in an opportunity that dramatically increased their chances of success? I can tell you what. Those people would be eternally grateful to you and would go out of their way to help you with your needs.

Relationship marketing is more about helping people first. Focus on helping people get what they need and one day you will discover that you have everything you need and more.

You are in sales and more importantly you are in a people business where you are in the business of helping people achieve their dreams, goals and the financial security that so many people desire. Sometimes that means they will join your business opportunity and at times that means you help them get engaged in another business. Ultimately your goal is to discover their needs, and help them achieve success.

According to America’s most famous marketing professor, Philip Kotler, “marketing takes a day to learn, but a lifetime to master." Yet there is a popular belief especially among top management that marketing is nothing but common sense. As a matter of fact Hewlett-Packard co-founder, David Packard is easily remembered for saying “marketing is too important for the marketing department."

Subtly supporting this view is Jacques Chevron (1999) of the JP Group, who posits that marketing and its sister branding are too important to be left to marketers alone. But those in opposition to this position allude to marketing being 90% strategy and 10% execution (Al Ries 2005). The easy part, according to them, is the 10%, while the difficult part is the 90%.

“Marketing is no longer a business tool: it is at its very foundation" so says Tina Schneidermann, president of Global Leaders, based in South Africa. As companies engage in price wars, globalization and logistical challenges, selling a relationship and a product will surely make the difference between success and failure.

While most people agree that the marketing department should drive growth, a lot of marketers are too busy concentrating only on one growth area i.e. customer acquisition, using one tool to achieve it: advertising (Jonah Bloom 2005).

Marketers easily forget that growth will come through customer retention, innovation and the identification of growth markets. It is time we replaced old marketing with new marketing that is holistic, technology-enabled and strategic, enabling companies to reach their target customers’ activities, lifestyle, and social space more effectively.

The fundamental differentiating factor for all products is the brand, which Vincent Grimaldi (2006), managing partner of The Grimaldi Group, New York, defines as a combination of attributes, communicated through a name, or a symbol, that influences a thought process in the mind of an audience and creates value.

In this age of distinctive identity creation, it is posited that brands need to speak to customers in different languages; brands need distinctiveness and personality, which differentiate them from competitors in order to persuade their target market to identify and make a purchasing decision (Graham Taylor 2004).

Your brand is your name, your logo, your trade dress, your burning scar on the side of your product (Christopher Kenton 2005). There is a school of thought that believes you own your brand, while your customers own their impressions, and you can influence those impressions with the quality of your product. However, the customer is present in the mind of company management so that the latter’s vision of the brand’s values should incorporate all they know and feel about their customer.

‘Branding’ is described as a catch phrase in advertising and brand managers are now found in marketing departments of large corporations. Meanwhile it is opined that branding is a brilliant response to the fact that traditional advertising no longer works (M. Phillips & S. Rasberry 2003).

Branding is the foundation of marketing and cannot be separated from business strategy; it goes beyond putting a label on a fancy product (V. Grimaldi). The brand experience is very key to the image of the brand – this is the sum total of all impressions consumers gain from interactions with your product, company, etc. For example, how your receptionist answers the phone is as important as the courtesy shown by your truck drivers. All these strongly influence the brand image often closely associated with brand reputation.

A good image will certainly improve your brand equity, i.e. the sum of all distinguishing qualities of your brand, drawn from all relevant stakeholders, that result in personal commitment to and demand for the brand (brandchannel 2005).

Coca-Cola is probably the best-built brand in the world today (David Placek 1998) as it keeps adding and creating value. Before branding or even management emerged, it is understood that the company was already spending over $11,000 on mass advertising campaign as early as 1892. Its trademark, which was officially filed in the US that year, has consistently been displayed with the same script to this day.

It is the duty of every staff in an organization to successfully help implement a brand strategy, while the development of the strategy itself involves a small number of executives and their associates. If there is lack of consistency among all the contact points with the customer, you cannot build a great brand, e.g. the brand message makes a promise on which the organization fails to deliver.

Branding and marketing are so closely related that people usually mix them up .A brand is the result of marketing consistency. Marketing is extroverted while branding is introverted; both are separate disciplines (Jacques Chevron). While marketing is expected to work fast, branding is a slow process because communicating the personality of a brand is synonymous with communicating a person’s character; you cannot do it proactively. Communicating the character of a brand takes time and branding is complex by design; unlike the focused marketing message with its USP “hype."

The truth is the values and associations that constitute the character of a strong brand can never be one-dimensional, while the plurality of messages with which the marketer must contend, becomes the brand’s asset.

For an effective brand strategy, a company must not only be vigilant about its product and service quality, but it should also be prepared for emergencies.

Article Source : Network Card For Laptop

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Both Glenn Antoine & Yusuf Danesi are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Glenn Antoine has sinced written about articles on various topics from Marketing, Wellness and Supplements. A professional internet marketer, trainer and mentor in the network marketing (MLM) industry. I focus on helping Network Marketer's achieve their Goals and more importantly their Dreams.To learn more about me visit:. Glenn Antoine's top article generates over 135000 views. to your Favourites.

Yusuf Danesi has sinced written about articles on various topics from Advertising Guide, Site Promotion and Advertising Guide. . Yusuf Danesi's top article generates over 60500 views. to your Favourites.