But This Is Really Hard

My previous post talked about the difficulty companies face when they need to change an audience's behavior.  But what do you do when you don't have one audience but the entire company - from the top down!  That's hard.

This article from Business Week highlights the problems pharmaceutical companies are facing selling drugs to Doctors.  Someone better be not only thinking about the "what" needs to change but the "how" to change it.

What normally happens is the company will focus on the "feet on the street" and provide training and incentives to sales people to teach them how to get to the Doctors differently.  I submit the problem starts further up - the company needs to look at the entire model and figure out a new way to get Doctors to want to prescribe their drugs.  Can they use social networks to get Doctors to provide recommendations and input on the success of the drug?  Can they leverage their consumers?  Is there a WOM (word of mouth) effort that could be used?   What if they used Doctors more in the design and development of the drugs to "co-create" the drug?  I'm sure they would have a built in sales force when the drug hits the market.

I'm sure there are smart folks in the pharma camp thinking of these things.  My bigger point is that the behaviors associated with these changes are as different from direct selling as on-line is to off-line retailing.  And the behavior change is exponentially more difficult when things are that different.