Tag Archives: Insights

Positioning Statement Development for Medical Devices

The Story

Once during a staff meeting, the marketing team was discussing the portfolio of products that were under development. Of the Product Managers gathered at that time, five of them were preparing to launch new products and two were post-opportunity recognition and pre-requirements planning.

The discussion worked its way around to the realization that only one of the seven managers had formally written the “positioning statement” for their respective products. We bantered about the question of when should you write the positioning statement for the new product. There were positions voiced around the table that ranged from, after verification testing, to after limited market evaluations.

Coming out of that meeting all seven managers were given the assignment of writing position statements for their new products.   Not surprisingly, over the next three days I was asked, “What makes a good positioning statement?” I was also asked, “Why one needed to be written them at all?”

Why write product-positioning statements?

I have always believed, that the most enjoyable part of being a Product Manager was the early phases of defining a potential new product. No boundaries, no conditions, a clean canvas upon which you painted a dreamscape for your product. This is when you reach for the stars. This creative writing exercise, for me, often resulted in two-to-five pages of text and included a description of the clinical environment, the nature of the clinician character, the problem statement, the perfect utility that the product could deliver, a forecast, a theme and never, never was restricted by the technology that was known to my company at that time. Very few of these stories have ever been read or even been seen by my colleagues. I used to think that it was a silly indulgence. What I now believe is that it is a critical aspect, which differentiates good new product definitions, from great ones.

What are marketers, if not the inventor of the story and the keepers of the vision?

Book with light

Why write them?

Simply, we need to write the Product Positioning Statements to be able to concisely describe a vision to others, so that they can join us in making that story come to life. It is our elevator pitch to the organization and parallels the sales persons elevator pitch to the clinician customer. It is the executive summary of the multi-page story.

One real benefit to me has been that writing and telling the story imprints a vision of success in my mind and spirit. These visions of success often infected those around me, and instill a sense of confidence within them.

When should we write them? 

So I think it is obvious that the value proposition should be written before the requirements planning process. The expense associated with research and other VOC activities is significant. You owe the organization a complete vision before you incur those expenses. If you can’t generate some excitement with your vision then you shouldn’t move forward, yet. Requirements planning reduces the grand story to something particle, that is tied to internal limits of resource and capability. The initial positioning statement never survives to the launch. Keep it current and revise it as needed.  Always ask the question, “Is it still worth going after?”

What makes a good one?*

For the first ten-years of my marketing career I didn’t know what made a good positioning statement.  I wrote good ones instinctively and mine were never consistent from product to product. At some point I took a class and some really smart instructors from Stanford laid out a template. I use this template as a starting point for every positioning statement I have written since then.

There are seven distinct elements required for a complete positioning statement:

  1. Customer identification
  2. Description of those customers problem
  3. The name of the product (preliminary)
  4. A basic description of the product utility
  5. A description of the components that offer the most relevant value (functional or emotional benefits)
  6. How it is different from competition
  7. Reasons to believe

 Format of a positioning statement

The statement is typically written as a single paragraph, I use two.  However, your style can vary as long as you include the seven elements, can recite it in 15 seconds, and it test as a strong statement. The paragraph typically follows the following structure:

 For… . Who… . The… . Is a… . That… . Unlike… . It… .

 Example (completely fictitious):

For the cardiovascular surgeon, who believes in the clinical benefits of beating heat surgery. The Squid is a combination rib spreader, holder, and electrical isolation device. The (that) Squid offers maximum visibility and access to the heart, hands-free stabilization and counter traction, with the added ability to electrically isolate small areas of the muscle, all to provide a still and placid surface on which to sew. Unlike many devices on the market today that perform only one of these functions and do not offer an integrated solution to the problem of high quality stitching on a beating heart, such as the: [list competition here].

The Squid (it) is offered by the leading manufacture of surgeon-focused equipment in the World today. It was designed for the unique requirements of the CV surgeon as directed by Dr. Spock, head of surgery at the Never-Never Land Heart Institute.

How strong a statement is it?

Test your statement against the following four questions:

  1. Is it compelling?
  2. Is it distinct?
  3. Is it achievable?
  4. Is it sustainable?

Have a group or independent marketers score the strength of your statement against the above four questions. Have them provide the reasons for their scores and then try to incorporate their feedback until an independent group scores you strong on all four counts. Strong, average, poor makes a good scale.

*I have committed this template to memory and I don’t have any of the original course material. There is no way I can attribute this to its source. Suffice it to say that I did not create it and take no credit for it. I have used it more than 20 times and every time the exercise has proven invaluable to me.

“Experience is what you get, right after you need it most.”

Make it a great day!

Tim Walker

Tim Walker is the Principal consultant for The Experia Group. A small consulting firm that specializes in providing experience and expertise during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of success. www.theexperiagroup.com.

Building a Medical Device Marketing Team

The Story

In my last two job assignments my role has been to build strong marketing teams. Both times there has been a nucleus of talent that were identified as “Product Managers”. These product managers had a wide variety of knowledge, skills, education, background, and ability. Each manager was a valuable asset to the department; but only a handful had the classic marketing skills and education that one would seek in a prototypical Product or Marketing manager. The choices were pretty straight forward, 1) clean house and start from scratch, 2) build and develop the people you have on board already, 3) or some hybrid. In both cases there was pressure from above to selectively clean house.

 Building a Team

Great marketing professionals come in all types of personalities, backgrounds, and education. In general terms, you need a person who is creative and disciplined, analytical and decisive, service oriented and focused, listener and doer, in short you need a schizophrenic master of all things.

Another way of looking at it is, you need many, practical, aware, mature, talent rich, knowledge rich, persons who possess all the tools that you learn in MBA classes. Or, you need a collection of professionals all who have unique skills sets that when combined give you a capability that leads to success.

In my experience it is nearly impossible to find a number of prototypical marketers with which to build a team. Too many A-players can lead to disruptive environments. Institutional memory is too important to discount. In the medical device world, technical understanding, clinical understanding, customer relationships, and marketing skills all have great value. They are seldom present in any one person, at the start.

There are so many variables in building a team that it is almost impossible to account for them all, intellectually. Sometimes it just has to feel right. What I look for in a team member are the intangibles.

  • Positive attitude
  • Appropriate motivation
  • Ability and willingness to learn
  • Strong communications skills
  • Situational awareness

The tangible aspects of the team members are that they must bring significant value. The value typically manifests in a specific knowledge or experience base and are more than likely surrounding one or more of the following:

  • Technical knowledge
  • Clinical knowledge
  • Process skills
  • Marketing skills
  • Relationships
  • History

If your team members bring value and have all the intangibles (core skills) you are likely to be able to build a team that will be successful.

Framework for successful teams
Framework for successful teams

 

My advice

Set a timeline for yourself to evaluate the current team members in several different settings, say 90-180 days. Be intentional about that activity. Hold yourself accountable for personal de-briefing sessions. If at anytime you determine that a team member is lacking in one of the above five areas or does not bring significant content value, start planning an exit strategy for them.

 Watch out

Make sure that your direct supervisor understands what your approach will be and fully supports your approach. Evaluation over a 90-180 period might look like a lack of leadership or decisiveness. Don’t make that mistake; keep your chain of command fully informed.

 My answer

A hybrid approach to building the initial team has been my choice every time. After the evaluation period it becomes pretty clear who will stay and who will go. It is not always clear when the change needs to happen. Do I think that cleaning house has a place, yes I do. Do I believe that building a team without any change to personnel is possible, yes.   If you do clean house be prepared for significant disruption and long nights.  If you don’t clean house, be prepared for a slow, patient, teaching process.

In my career, I have only needed to make three (3) changes out of 60 inherited team members.  By choosing to develop team members and let them contribute the value they brought to the team I have accepted the responsibility to teach. Fortunately or unfortunately I have a teaching gene.

“Experience is what you get, right after you need it most.”

Make it a great day,

Tim Walker

Tim Walker is the Principal consultant for The Experia Group. A small consulting firm that specializes in providing experience and expertise during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of success. www.theexperiagroup.com.

Annual Product Performance Reviews for Medical Devices

Last night, at 1:34 AM, I was awoken by a chirping smoke alarm, indicating that it needed to have a new battery installed.

After finding the ladder and the new battery, quickly making the change and jumping back into bed, I started thinking about how that experience paralleled my work history.

The Story

In the early 80’s, as a young product manager I received a call from a production supervisor telling me that my biggest selling, most differentiated, oldest, product line was suffering from a 10% manufacturing yield and that I should get ready for significant, sustained back orders. I wasn’t paying attention to my all-star product; I had moved on to more creative work. This is when I instituted the, “Annual Product Performance Review” (APPR).

Discipline vs. Creativity

If I had only replaced all the smoke alarm batteries when I was supposed to, I would not have been shaken from a good night sleep. Discipline often escapes the truly creative person. As a product manager you need both discipline and creativity. One way to manage these sometimes opposing attributes is to schedule the maintenance activities surrounding a downtime in your otherwise busy calendar. Never schedule them during sales meeting prep time, never during trade show season, etc.

Annual Product Performance Reviews, the minimum

I call this maintenance activity an APPR. As a product manager we have to care for our product lines, particularly when they have been on the market for a while and the excitement of the launch has worn off. Spending one day a year, on each of your product lines is a minimal amount of your time invested that could prevent you from being shaken from a good night sleep by an overlooked issue. What kind of an issue? Quality shifts, pricing slip, share slip, new competitive entry, shifting sales force focus, slipping gross margins, resurgence, increasing complaint levels all these potential issues are leading indicators of critical times for your product line.

The APPR can be done anytime of year. At its core, is a year-over-year comparison of key metrics. The more years you have data for, the more likely you are to see a trend. It is good to partner with finance or IT the first time you conduct this type of analysis to make sure your data sources are complete and comparable. For some product lines a monthly review may be more appropriate.

Each APPR took a day and included a review of the following metrics:

  • Units, total
  • Unit, mix
  • Average selling price (ASP)
  • ASP by mix
  • Complaint rate by type or category
  • Manufacturing yields
  • Gross margins (GM)
  • Revenue
  • Revenue distribution my geography
  • Revenue distribution by sales territory
  • Number of active accounts
  • Number of accounts that went inactive over the past 12 months

These metrics are all loaded into a simple excel file, which automatically did the year-over-year trend comparison and some simple charting. The output was the APPR dashboard. Often this dashboard pointed towards areas that needed my attention and a bit of investigative work.

Today, I have created custom dashboards in salesforce.com that provides real time comparisons for new product launches, after one-year the dashboard changes to a periodic based trend analysis that has taken the place of the APPR dashboard. The important thing is to monitor the product lines you are responsible for and take nothing for granted. This is a good application of the, “productive paranoia” concept that Jim Collins discusses in his book, Great by Choice.

A Happy Ending

So what happened with the product that had the yield issue? After managing a yield of 10% and all the logistical and customer service issues that resulted, for over a year, a new manufacturing process was validated and up and running.   The product was re-launched and regained 96% of it former share dominance.  The product was just that good. The customers allowed us a second bite of the apple.

Since instituting the APPR, have I been shaken from a goodnight sleep by unanticipated product issues?   Of course, the key being unanticipatedunpredictable or random issues.

“Experience is what you get, right after you need it most.”

Make it a great day,

 Tim Walker

 Tim Walker is the Principal consultant for The Experia Group. A small consulting firm that specializes in providing experience and expertise during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of success. www.theexperiagroup.com.