Service Insight: Emerging markets – a business development task or extreme fishing?
pharmafile | March 7, 2011 | Feature | Sales and Marketing | Service Insight, Surelines Ltd, emerging markets
SERVICE INSIGHT
Emerging markets, new business; call it what you will but invariably the responsibility for grasping this nettle falls to a much maligned group!
Often identified by the ‘development’ word in their job title, business development and commercial development personnel tend to fall into one of the following categories:
Logical opportunist – these are seen by most as a ‘safe pair of hands’ and spend time avoiding perceived risk and concentrating on the production of endless spread sheets – each seeking to prove a solid ‘return on investment’. Nonetheless, they are very adept at spotting an opportunity and supporting the business case by the application of undiluted logic. The truth is, all categories of business development folk have to visit the logical approach at some time in their examination of income potential within emerging markets!
Spontaneous/intuitive – ‘big hitters’ but only as good as their last big success; often short-lived. Suspicions abound that this group has in its midst those who claim others ideas as their own and are often the quietest at ‘brain storming’ sessions; indeed some say the claim for spontaneity or intuition is always retrospective, and then only in relation to successful forays into the emerging markets quagmire? Failure is skilfully under reported and conveniently forgotten, often buried behind a smoke screen of ‘bigging up’ even the most modest success!
Grinder – Former snooker world champion Cliff Thorburn was known as ‘The Grinder’ and those who saw him play will know where this is going! This group set an objective and grind away at detractors, especially those putting up buyers objections. Some say ‘The Grinder’ is a mean adversary as their failure to recognise the existence of refusal or rebuttal is the principal tool in their toolbox? They often succeed where others fail, even if their ‘success’ is a small piece of the pie.
Indeed, many claim their ‘reward’ is just recognition for sheer persistence; even if it is born out of a buyer’s need to dispense with that persistence!
Which one am I? The truth is I am largely a chameleon trying to choose the best tactics inherent in each definition to suit the situation and the end objective. Indeed, most survivors in the business or commercial development world end up doing just that. Equally, each of us has a prime tendency and I guess my own start point is ‘logical’.
To illustrate the point I will indulge myself in an anecdote set against a time line, beginning in the Spring of 2009 and still running. In March, 2009, I was scanning the horizon when up popped a Department of Health announcement that ‘health checks’ would be offered over a five-year period to all adults aged between 40 and 75.
Was this an emerging market with suitable opportunities?
Logic said:
• Government departments supporting political imperatives will end up with more money than most in times of recession
• All political wings were keen on talking up preventative health measures
• Dilution of the proposition was likely due to cost but any shrinkage was unlikely to be ‘fatal’
• Outsourcing was likely to be popular with commissioners
• A service offering can be developed that reaches any patient group the commissioner chooses
• Capital investment will be relatively low
• It looks possible to deliver a service at a price consistent with commissioner’s probable aspirations and company income requirements – endless spread sheets here!
Our conclusion was an opportunity existed and so we produce the website, promotional material, recruitment; the final number crunching is done – and we sit and wait with baited breath for ‘sign off’ by the clinical director and managing director. After a time we get the ‘green light’ but what has happened to the emerging market and more importantly, the logic that says it is a winner?
The World Health Organisation has started the H1N1 ball rolling is what has happened! More despondency than alarm abounds but then a junior colleague quietly announces that the proposed UK vaccination programme cannot be supported by the current number of trained vaccinators. I immediately tassume the role of the ‘sponta-neous/intuitive’ and go through a process and end up justifying a parallel proposition by being able to offer a vaccination service or vaccination training as well as health checks. Now all the bases are covered!
But wait – there is talk of a general election and worse the prevalence of H1N1 is much less than predicted! Now everyone has put their spending plans on hold! Time to assume the role of ‘The Grinder’!
We grind away and do get a small piece of the pie. Our team of nurses deliver a few hundred health checks and train a few hundred vaccinators before the general election. The systems, the training and the IT all work well and so we enter a brief period of self-congratulatory indulgence.
It has to be brief as assuming the mantle of ‘The Grinder’ is full-time manual labour and the change of government just means more persistence is required. Indeed, we continue to pick up training commissions, especially for vaccinators. Is there any failure here? Well, if there is I have skilfully under reported it!
I struggled to identify any moral in this story; then I watched ‘Robson Green’s Extreme Fishing’ (Channel Five) in which Robson sets out to land odd-looking fish whose habits or habitat make them incredibly difficult to catch. It just reminded me of the approach to emerging markets I have described in this article – with Mr Green applying logic, opportunism, spontaneity and huge helpings of determination and persistence to land his chosen fish.
So should the approach to emerging markets be classified as simply a business development task or is it extreme fishing? You decide!
Russ Brookbanks is the business development director at Surelines Ltd. For further information visit: www.surelines.com
For more information on Service Insight features contact InPharm’s sales team on +44 (0)1243 772 010 or email pharmafilesales@wiley.com
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