The pharmaceutical industry's singular obsession with the marketing funnel has created a critical blind spot in how companies engage with healthcare professionals (HCPs) after initial acquisition. According to Wayne Simmons, who brings an outside-industry perspective from customer-intensive sectors like hospitality and retail, pharma's commercial excellence requires evolving beyond the traditional funnel to embrace a more comprehensive customer lifecycle approach.
"The funnel has many names, it has many forms, but we all recognize it. It could be the most successful framework in business," explains Simmons. "We've created a language around it—Tofu, Mofu, Bofu—no one else will understand that but us."
While the funnel excels at customer acquisition, it falls short after the purchase. Simmons notes,
"The bottom is purchase. Boom. You get the purchase, you get the script, you get the customer. After that, it gets very nebulous. Who owns beyond that?"
The Evolution to Customer Excellence
Simmons advocates reframing customer experience as "customer excellence" to elevate its importance within commercial operations. This approach positions customer excellence as the foundation for commercial excellence, creating value for both HCPs and pharmaceutical companies.
The evolution follows a simple formula: moving from a one-dimensional focus on acquisition to a three-domain competitive framework that includes retention and expansion. This transformation progresses from the traditional funnel to what Simmons calls a "bow tie" (adding retention) and ultimately to a "flywheel" model (incorporating expansion).
"The win here is this gives us as commercial folks two more domains to compete in, two more domains to differentiate ourselves from our competitors," Simmons emphasizes. "All things equal on product and brand, experiential stuff that drives retention and expansion—I can do that. And you'll never know what it is. It's my secret between me and my customer."
Structural Changes Required
Implementing this customer-centric flywheel requires fundamental changes to how pharmaceutical companies operate. Simmons identifies several structural barriers that prevent effective transformation:
1. Understanding the Complete Customer: Pharma knows HCPs professionally but fails to recognize them as consumers with expectations shaped by other brands. "We think that she spends 24 hours a day thinking about us and our content. No, she's a consumer. She has brands that she loves, she engages with, and are setting her expectations."
2. Moving Beyond Product Focus: The industry remains fixated on product attributes rather than experiential factors. "We like to talk about ourselves and our brands. We love talking about efficacy and safety. But in driving that flywheel, getting to that customer-centric model, we've got to start talking about experiential factors."
3. Expanding Marketing Capabilities: Today's marketers need to evolve beyond traditional skills and digital marketing to incorporate experiential expertise. "What we're trying to do is build this new Terminator marketer. That Terminator marketer has another layer around them, and it's experiential stuff."
Fueling the Flywheel
The customer-centric flywheel is powered by two key elements: customer voice and customer context. Measurable customer feedback provides insights into what customers are saying, thinking, and intending. This information, combined with understanding the customer's complete context, drives meaningful engagement across the entire lifecycle.
"This whole thing is customer-centric, it doesn't work any other way. It's not campaign-driven, it's not creative-driven, it's not salesforce-driven, it's customer-driven." - Simmons states.
Key Takeaways
1) The traditional marketing funnel is optimized solely for acquisition, creating a gap in customer management after the initial purchase. "The funnel is super optimized for customer acquisition. This is what it does," notes Simmons.
2) Customer expectations differ across acquisition, retention, and expansion phases, requiring tailored approaches for each stage. "A customer who's been acquired thinks differently than a customer who's already there."
3) Experiential factors represent an untapped competitive domain where pharmaceutical companies can differentiate themselves beyond product attributes.
4) Understanding HCPs as consumers with expectations shaped by other brands is essential for creating meaningful experiences. "We don't set expectations in pharma for experiential interactions. These other brands have."
5) CMOs and marketers must lead this transformation rather than relying on dedicated experience officers. As Simmons concludes, "There's no such thing as a Chief Experience Officer. It's a fantasy. So CMOs and marketers need to drive this change."
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