Why Is It Important To Paint A Patient Profile In Pharmaceutical Sales?

Why do you think that it's essential to paint a patient profile in pharmaceutical sales?

Why talking about what your drugs treat, their advantages and disadvantages are not enough?

Why put the patients first?

Let me begin with a story...

A tired pharma rep came home after long hours of traveling and making doctors' call. He was greeted by his 7 years old son at the door.

"Yay! Daddy's home!" shouted the son enthusiastically.

"Daddy, would you play with me?" the son asked with a voice full of hope.

"Um, let's see," said Dad.

"Let me freshened up first," he added.

He lifts the son and put him on the couch. He went up to his room.

A few minutes after that, he came down and find his son already gathers some toys in front of the TV.

"Daddy, Daddy, lets play," he said to Dad with his enthusiastic voice.

His Dad was standing still.

Actually, Dad was looking for an excellent excuse not to play with his son. He just remembered a quotation he needs to e-mail to his sales manager.

And he saw a newspaper with a picture of the earth almost fill up the whole page. He took it and walked to his son.

"Son, why don't we play this new game?" he said confidently to his son and sounded like an actual salesperson. He tore the pages into pieces and turned to his son and said, "How about putting these pieces together? If you can do it, then we'll play GI Joe," he said to the son.

He made his way to his working table.

Dad thought that the son was going to take a few good hours to put the pieces back together. He gathered that, since the son had no knowledge of how the earth looks like, he could finish his quotation before his son did.

As he was about to finish his second paragraph of the quotation, he heard a shout, "Yey! Finish! Daddy, we can play GI Joe!"

Daddy could not believe his ears. He walked up to the son and examine his own-made jigsaw puzzle. To his amazement, his son DID finish putting the pieces back together. That really puzzles him.

"How did you do it so quickly son? How?" he asked with a puzzled look on his face.

His son turned the page where the earth's picture was on, and there was a picture of a gentleman wearing a hat.

"I got this one right," exclaimed the son.

Dad flashed a huge smile and walked over to play GI Joe with his son.

So, what's this story got to do with painting the right patient profile in pharma sales?

It's simply this:

When you get the man (woman) right, you get the world right...

...when you get the right patients, you can offer the right solutions.

That's what basically the message we can get from the story. There's also a concept that I've preached many times on this blog: there are no safe drugs, only safe patients. No matter how potent the drug is, if it was given to the wrong patient, no therapeutic effect can be gained from it.

That's a solid reason for painting the right patient profile when selling pharma product.