Home > News & Articles > PERISCOPE > Periscope — October 2011 Issue

Periscope — October 2011 Issue

 

New Business Opportunities for Companies Serving Pharma

October 2011

The PharmSource PERISCOPE provides valuable insight into sales issues and trends for companies that sell goods or services to bio/pharma. It helps you recognize new business opportunities, and overcome sales obstacles. Enjoy the October issue.

The PharmSource Team

275 overall leads for pharma vendors were reported by the PharmSource Lead Sheet in September 2011:

Lead Type September 2011 YTD
Non US 149 1,205
Early Dev 74 670
Late Dev 47 523
Large molecule 48 550
Small molecule 117 1,075
Newly-funded 47 662
New sourcing 14 171
Parenteral 58 704
Oral 72 669
Total Leads 275 2,998

Below are two actual leads from recent issues of the PharmSource Lead Sheet (PLS), the weekly, web-based information service that delivers new business opportunities and key market intelligence information to companies serving Bio/Pharma. It includes new information on products in development, acquisitions, alliances, financing transactions, and more, and delivers up to 70+ fresh leads each week in pharma/biotech companies around the world. Use the PLS to stay on top of opportunities as soon as they’re announced, to keep attuned to market activity and trends, and as a key resource for targeted marketing.

For The Week Of
October, 9th 2011



Back To Top

This section of the PERISCOPE summarizes a sampling of the many recent appointments of new people to high-level positions in pharma/biotech. For more information of this nature, see the “Key Appointments” section of the weekly PharmSource Lead Sheet.


Back To Top


By David W. Cooke

Far too many businesses are unnecessarily struggling with the notion that they have to convince customers to buy from them. Besides not having enough prospects, the number one complaint is that their customers are taking too long to make decisions. And, when they do, these decisions are predicated on price.

While it’s true that clients have become more deliberate in their decision making process, their criteria is not price – it’s value! Does your product, your offering, your benefit, and your package offer the value to justify their investment?

Every one of your prospective clients makes an investment—not just in price or cost—when they decide to do business with you. Before they make that investment, they need to assess the risk associated with that investment. Here are the five components of risk they assessing when going through the decision making process:

1. Replacement Risk: Chances are quite likely you are replacing an incumbent supplier. While they may not be receiving all the benefits you have to offer compared to their current provider, the risk of replacing you – an unknown supplier – is greater than keeping their current one.

2. Professional Risk: Although they may have a high degree of confidence in you, your company, and your offering, their decision to make a switch will come under severe scrutiny if your team screws it up. In today’s economy, people are fearful of making high-risk decisions that could adversely affect their jobs.

3. Credibility Risk: Despite all the best efforts to convince someone that you have what they need, how trustworthy and reliable you and your organization are, there is still a risk. If you are like most salespeople you have done a marvelous job of telling them all the great things they need to know about your value, your company, your service and your experience. Do you think you are the only person shoveling that? Unless you have really built a strong relationship and established an incredible level of trust, your credibility will be scrutinized.

4. Productivity Risk: Making a change is much more complicated than simply making a decision and placing an order. Change involves budget assessment, administrative processes and approvals, receiving and delivery adjustments, and end user training and awareness. Whenever a new supplier is brought in, there are a lot of changes – some significant – that will occur in your client’s organization. It is not always that easy to simply plug your product in and replace the other guy. These changes can have, and often do have, an effect on the productivity of the team. Like it or not, any effect on productivity is a cost and a risk to the organization.

5. Financial Risk: The most important consideration is the financial risk. Companies look for products and services that make them money, save them money, improve a process, or fulfill a need. These are the only decision making criteria for purchasing from a supplier. With every one of these criteria comes a financial expectation of value and performance. Until this risk can be assessed, quantified and measured you are not getting the order.

Next time you think it’s taking your client forever to make a decision, remember this—there’s a lot more going on in the decision making process than simply cost or price. If you aren’t aware of or addressing these issues through an extended relationship development process—you will be spending a lot of time waiting for people to respond to your proposals.

It is not your client’s fault it’s taking so long to make a decision—it’s yours if you spent too little time earning the right to do business with them!

About the Author

Dave Cooke is the CEO of Strategic Resource Group, LLC (www.srgroup-llc.com). As a nationally recognized speaker, author, trainer and growth expert, he leverages his 25 years sales and marketing experience to create and implement strategic initiatives and develop educational programs which increase both revenues and profits. Dave is proud of his experience with turbulent and chaotic work environments. Having taken the lead in multiple corporate turnaround projects and post merger transitions, Dave understands the challenges organizations face in challenging and difficult times. It is these experiences that shape his commitment to team, relationships, communication, leadership, and a cohesive, collaborative strategy for revenue growth.

Reprinted with permission. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_W_Cooke


Back To Top

By David W. Cooke

Why does one company grow while another fails during an economic crisis? In its simplest terms, it comes down to vision, flexibility, value, and connectivity. Having had the opportunity to work in several different geographic regions this past year, I have had the pleasure of observing how successful businesses operate regardless of what they do or where they are located. While leadership and corporate culture are important, it is these four components that define a business’s success:

  1. Vision: Vision is having a clear direction of where the business is going, with leadership and management providing a consistent message throughout the organization of what that direction is and why that path is critical to the business. This is analogous to a cruise. When the chartered course is clearly charted and defined, the destination is always attainable. Even in the midst of a storm, simply maintaining focusing on the destination enables the captain and the crew to get there. Simply heading out of port for a “three hour tour” could put your business on Gilligan’s Island as a result of the missing vision. You may survive; but you are certainly “lost.”
  2. Flexibility: Businesses need to know how to anticipate and maneuver away from disaster before it strikes. Failing businesses lack vision and flexibility and stay on course, oblivious to the dangers and the obstacles in front of them. There is a clear and easy highway from Detroit to Grand Rapids, Michigan. However, if I-96 is suddenly closed, a flexible and nimble business would sense the obstacles and get off the highway and find a new way to Grand Rapids. The rigid or myopic business drives right to the obstacle and then sits in traffic with the rest of the lost and wonders how they are going to get to Grand Rapids now. There is more than one way to the road to success, knowing when to get off the easy road without losing your way is the key to sustainable success, even in times of crisis.
  3. Value: This is what dooms every business-not knowing what their true value proposition is. There are three things companies offer their clients-product/service, experience/capability, and value. 100% of the lost think that the first two are the differentiators. They are not. Your competitors promote the same things you do when they are talking about their business to your clients. Just because you think your business is different, does not make it so. What makes your business different is that unique value that you bring to the client relationship. Identifying that value is not done in a brainstorming or vision session with your marketing team or your leadership group. No. It starts by finding out from your best clients why they do business with you and what you bring to the relationship that they value. Ask enough clients and you will identify that common thread that truly makes your business special. Then you can go out and claim your greatness. Truly knowing what that value is makes your message all that more powerful. And, it is that component that you can leverage when times get tough. When a business does not know what their unique value is, a bad cycle is going to blow them completely off course.
  4. Connectivity: Your relationship with your clients and your suppliers is the key to everything. Too many companies simply do business with their clients and suppliers. Great businesses built strategic connections with their clients and suppliers. Effective client relationships are so interdependent and interwoven that it would be difficult to break them apart because of the collective value everyone brings to the game. The problem is that businesses are so focused on selling their stuff instead of really identifying and solving problems, that they become suppliers and not solutions based resources. When the conversation comes around regarding your value to your clients it becomes a difficult one because you have no idea if your client would even be able to answer the question. If you are uncomfortable going to your customer and discussing your value as it relates to your performance, your business is already at competitive risk. If this is the case, you have probably positioned yourself as a supplier and not a solutions based resource. Look out—there’s a storm coming!

About the Author

Dave Cooke is the Founder of Strategic Resource Group, LLC (www.srgroup-llc.com) – a business committed to helping businesses find the sustainable and profitable road to growth through effective sales strategies. He leverages his 25 years of sales and marketing experience in conjunction with effective social media tools to educate and enlighten his clients and his contacts with a direct and informative approach to effective business and sales tactics. He is most famous for his sales persona, Sales Cooke, and has an active blog and video blog that can be found at http://www.salescooke.com. Dave is also a member of the cast of The John Adam Show heard weekly in the Phoenix, AZ market.

Reprinted with permission. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_W_Cooke

Back To Top

Prospect Profile highlights a newly funded bio/pharmaceutical company each month. This includes important insights into the featured company’s product pipeline, manufacturing and business relationships, and likely sourcing opportunities.

MannKind Corporation

MannKind Corporation is a public pharmaceutical company that develops therapeutic products for diseases such as diabetes, cancer, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. As reported in the September 29, 2011 issue of the PharmSource Lead Sheet, MannKind will raise $370 million through the sale of senior secured discount notes due 2017.

Corporate Highlights

  • MannKind was incorporated in the State of Delaware in 1991.
  • Corporate Headquarters: Valencia, California – approximately 142,000 square feet of laboratory, office and warehouse space.
  • Other Properties: MannKind leases approximately 23,000 square feet of office space in Paramus, New Jersey, pursuant to a lease that expires in May 2012. The company also owns a 328,000 square-foot facility in Danbury, Connecticut that houses R&D, administrative, manufacturing, filling and packaging functions, primarily for AFREZZA.
  • As of December 31, 2010, MannKind had 436 full-time employees, 47 of whom were engaged in R&D, 155 in manufacturing, 132 in clinical, regulatory affairs and quality assurance and 102 in administration, finance, management, information systems, marketing, corporate development and human resources.

Sourcing Opportunities

  • MannKind intends to use the proceeds for development and operating capital, including completion of the Phase III clinical trials of AFREZZA, preparing for commercialization of AFREZZA, continuing the build-out of MannKind’s Danbury, Connecticut manufacturing facility, ongoing R&D and general corporate purposes.
  • MannKind relies on collaborators to produce drug substances required for its clinical trials and marketed therapies.
  • The company has limited experience in filing and pursuing applications necessary to gain regulatory approvals.
  • The company currently has no sales or distribution capabilities and has no experience in marketing or selling pharmaceutical products.
  • MannKind is in the process of qualifying a manufacturer to produce the supply for their next-generation inhaler and the corresponding cartridges.

Business Relationships

  • In June 2009, MannKind acquired a quantity of bulk insulin from Pfizer Manufacturing Frankfurt GmbH, a subsidiary of Pfizer, as well as Pfizer’s rights under a license to manufacture insulin for pulmonary delivery. MannKind also acquired an option to purchase additional insulin inventory, in whole or in part, at a specified price, to the extent it remains available.
  • MannKind currently purchases the raw material, from which Technosphere particles are produced, from a major chemical manufacturer with facilities in Europe and North America.

Pipeline

Product Candidate Indication Dosage Form Status Next Anticipated Step
MKC204 Cancer and Inflammatory Diseases Unknown Preclinical TBA
MKC253 Diabetes Powder Phase I TBA
MKC1106 Cancer Parenteral Phase II Results from Phase II trial are expected in H2 of 2012
AFREZZA Type 1 and 2 Diabetes Powder Filed Plans to conduct two Phase III studies in response to the FDA’s January 2011 response letter


Finances

(In $ thousands) 2009 2010
Revenues - 93
R&D Expenditures 156,331 112,279
General & Administrative Expenditures 53,447 40,312
Total Operating Expenses 209,778 152,591
Capital Expenditures 18,852 9,542


MannKind Corporation Key Officers
28903 North Avenue Paine Alfred E. Mann, CEO
Valencia, CA 91355 Hakan S. Edstrom, President & COO
Phone: (661) 775-5300 Peter C. Richardson, Corporate VP & CSO
Web: www.mannkindcorp.com/index.htm Juergen A. Martens PhD, Corporate VP, Technical Operations & CTO

Back To Top


The PharmSource Lead Sheet is the weekly web-based information service that identifies fresh business opportunities for companies serving pharma and biotech. Respected, endorsed and depended on by the top companies, the PLS informs you of new business opportunities. It lowers your prospecting costs, raises the productivity of your sales staff, and helps keep your lead funnel full.


If you’re not yet a subscriber to the PharmSource Lead Sheet, we invite you to take a complimentary test-drive to see for yourself how this service can be a vital tool for growing your market share and building your brand recognition.


Subscribe by October 31, 2011 and

get 10% off! *

*This offer is for new subscribers only at the Corporate subscription level or above.

To request a free test-drive of the PharmSource Lead Sheet, call Nathaniel Celentano at 1-703-383-4903, ext. 112 (ET USA) or complete this simple form and we’ll contact you:

  1. (required)
  2. (required)
  3. (required)
  4. (valid email required)
  5. (required)
  6. You are:





 

cforms contact form by delicious:days


Back To Top


Print This Page Print This Page