Tag Archives: VOC

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FOCUS is power, when the lens is set at the correct angle

Prelude

In recent weeks, I have had discussions with three potential clients about their shot-gun approach to launching their new technology platforms. My advice was the same for each of them, FOCUS is power.

Pick the right channel, or product, or therapy to go after, and then apply all your assets to entering that market segment. The return question, ‘how do I know which is the ‘right product, channel, or segment?’ 

 

Set-up 

A fourth potential client had it all figured out and was just looking for confirmation and a bit of help in doing it. He wanted to start with segmenting the market for his technology platform. This top-down-market approach is not the only approach, but it is the one that will more often than not, put you on the pathway to successfully developing the first right product and developing a strong go-to-market strategy.

Understanding the market, or sector, or sub-market that you are in is never a luxury, it is essential. 

If you are not sure which way to go or which product to commercialize then immerse yourself into the market. 

This is particularly of value when you have developed a technology platform that eventually could serve every segment of your target market. Before you invest in the first new product take the time to do a full market assessment.

 

How do I know which is the right first product?

Follow this high-level process: (note: there are many sub-steps and significant effort implied within each step).

Step 1: Perform a high-level market scan

Step 2: Establish acceptance criteria for selecting the segment, this will be unique to your company.

Step 3: Map the relevant populations, map the disease(s), map the therapies, map the buying processes, map the projected patient journey, for each possible segment.

Step 4: Review the information from step 3. Retire segments that clearly do not have a chance of meeting the entry criteria.

Step 5: Treat each of the remaining segments as a singular opportunity. Conduct Opportunity Assessments based on the product you have identified for each segment.

Step 6: Compare and contrast the Opportunity Assessments (discussed in an early post or in Lesson 22 in Insight: 33 lessons learned in Medical Device Marketing available on Amazon).

Step 7: Select and commit.

If these steps sound like a ton of work, they are. Is there a way to cheat ahead and get things moving while you finish the work? Of course, you could deploy a Monte Carlo method, however, you still have to collect the information needed for the first three steps before you run a qualitative simulation.

Once you have these pieces in place, then you need to recruit 3-5 true experts in these types of assessments and or in the market segments they seem to have the ability to meet your criteria.

Give them the data and let them apply their intuition to fill in the gaps. During a day-long interactive process, you come to an understanding of all their points of view. If consensus is possible, even better. These types of processes are directionally accurate about 80% of the time.  

With the finding of the group, get started on defining the product concept using appropriate VOC techniques.

But don’t stop the process. In parallel continue to define the alternate possibilities. If any of the assumptions that were used to reach the findings prove to be incorrect, adjust.

The narrower the focus, the deeper you can go into the customer’s true unmet need. The deeper into the unmet need, the higher the probability that you have a commercially viable product.

What if we don’t figure it out and just pick one and go for it?

That certainly is one way of doing it, it has worked for others. But more often than not, it results in costly re-directs, failed launches, a loss in investor confidence, and a host of lesser issues. Time and cash are the critical aspects of any project.

The narrower the focus, the deeper you can go into the customer’s true unmet need. The deeper into the unmet need, the higher the probability that you have a commercially viable product.

It is all about risk and capital. 

Being intentional about the decision you make and the desired outcome you want, is a whole lot better than wandering about looking for something you haven’t even defined. A worthwhile read to get your mind around the process for sorting out the critical few, essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown. While I don’t agree with everything that is advocated in this book; I do agree that focusing on the critical few is far better than trying to do everything and just hoping something works.

Lessons:

  1. Actively studying the market is not a waste of time nor money.
  2. Understanding the market is not an option, it is a must-do.
  3. Take careful aim before pulling the trigger, this way you won’t waste ammunition (cash and time).
“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 consulting firm specializing in providing experience and expertise during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of success.

One-on-One, or, team coaching is available.

www.theexperiagroup.com. Contact, The Experia® Group for a free 30-minute consultation to determine if 30+ years of experience can contribute to your success.  [email protected]

Available on Amazon

© 2021, The Experia Group, LLC

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To ensure a successful new medical device product launch start early with a marketing MINDSET

Set up

I have been approached recently by several start-up companies to assist in launching their New Medical Devices. All of them have worked incredibly hard on developing their technology. Brilliant scientists, physicians, and inventors, they genuinely have done great work, some spending more than five years on getting ready for their launch. More often than not, they are not prepared, for a variety of reasons, but at the core is that they didn’t have anyone with a Marketing Mindset performing the upstream marketing role.

But are they ready for their launch?

Have you put the building blocks in place?

Based on my observations of nearly 40 years commercializing medical devices, here is what I have learned. To successfully launch a new product, you have to have applied a Marketing Mindset from the very beginning. Let’s look at the upstream process steps in marketing a great new medical device.

Process notes:
    • Voice of the Customer (VOC) is the only way to validate the problem and the solution.
    • VMO = Vision, Mission, Objectives, well documented.
    • Five core documents are: (there are more, but if you don’t have these five, you are at risk of failure)
        1. Clinical need statement
        2. Product positioning statement
        3. Product value statement
        4. Customer persona
        5. Pricing strategy

Purpose of this post

My objective here is not to scare anyone, run anyone down, and I don’t want to discourage anyone. My goal is to alert you that you should not be surprised when you move to the launch phase. You may have to slow down and let someone put in place the basic building blocks of success.

Doing it right the first time may not be free, but it is the least expensive way to reach success quickly.

Offer

If you want to talk through your state of readiness, I am happy to spend 30 minutes on a call with you. Schedule the call, https://calendly.com/tegllc, and I will send you a copy of INSIGHTS: 33 lessons learned in medical device marketing, absolutely free. Also available on Amazon!

Lessons

  1. Technology is not a product
  2. Build the foundation of market knowledge and document it
  3. Beware of confirmation bias – build independence into the collection process – use a diverse set of customers.
  4. Prepare all five core documents from the perspective of the individual stakeholder.

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

Make it a great day!

Tim Walker

Tim Walker is the Principal Consultant for The Experia® Group, a small consulting firm specializing in providing experience and expertise during critical device commercialization phases to increase the probability of success.

One-on-One, or, team coaching is available.

www.theexperiagroup.com. Contact The Experia® Group for a free 30-minute consultation to determine if 30-years of experience can contribute to your success. https://calendly.com/tegllc.

© 2020, The Experia® Group, LLC

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Beware of bad data in Medical Device marketing decision-making

Set up
I was listening to an MLB game the other evening and the announcers we spouting statistics right and left. They were reporting data. I then waited for the analysis, for the insight, for the reasoning that explained an action taken by a manager or player. We never got there.

I turned off the TV and realized that the announcers for that game were doing what I see prevalent today in inexperienced marketers.

Collecting data without knowing why they are gathering it and then spouting that data as if there was some type of magic in numbers.  The magic comes from deriving (analysis) from the data insight, converting that insight into wisdom by contextualizing it and then applying that new wisdom to form a solution or make a great decision.

Is there a time and place for making observations, collecting subjective data? Absolutely. It is the source for developing the questions or problem statements that you will then apply the “scientific method” against.

An Example

An example of the power of observation: I was in an open-heart case, and the perfusionist and I were talking about how cold they keep the OR rooms. She had three layers of jackets on (observation 1). The conversation continued, and she made the point that they are trying to cool the heart to protect it. One way they do that is by recirculating cold water around the heart and pumping a cardioplegia solution into the heart itself. By having the OR rooms too warm, they are defeating that goal. That made sense to me. Then I noticed that the source of the cold fluid was being pumped through 6 feet of tubing (observation 2). The question that resulted was, is there a way to get the cooling source closer to the heart, so the ambient temperature does not have time to impact the fluid adversely and is there a new product opportunity to be realized?

These observations resulted in two streams of exploration, 1) a technical stream, and 2) a marketing stream.

This blog is not about how to analyze data. However, instead, to caution that unless you are willing to collect the data correctly, then don’t start, garbage in, garbage out.

When do you need to collect data?

Recently, I have been mentoring several individuals who are new to marketing as a role. They struggle with determining when and how to collect voice-of-the-customer (VOC) data, as did I for the first 5-years of my career in marketing. The answers are painfully simple. How to do it well is difficult and takes years of experience.

The answer is to collect VOC data whenever you have an unanswered question.

Does that mean that you need to collect data for every marketing question? Yes, you do. However, how much data, what kind of data, how you gather that data, from how many, of what types of customers, is where you can apply judgment. Save the significant data collection efforts for the huge questions, ones where a wrong answer or misinterpretation could cause severe negative consequences if it leads to a poor critical decision.

Commit to writing could questions

So once you decide that you have a critical unanswered question, you have to frame the question (s). The better the question (s), the more informed the decision.

I typically will rewrite the questions up to a dozen times. With each revision, I work hard to remove any real or implied bias.

Data’s value comes from using it to inform a decision-making process. If you’re lucky, you will convert data to information, information to insight, insight to wisdom, and then apply that wisdom to excellent decision-making.

Lessons

  1.  Most of the time, biased data is worse than no data.
  2. Spend all the time that you require to frame great, unbiased questions.
  3.  Risk adjust your VOC efforts to optimize the value of the undertaking.

“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. Contact The Experia® Group for a free 30-minute consultation to determine if 30-years of experience can contribute to your success. [email protected].

© 2019, The Experia Group, LLC

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Voice of the Customer in Medical Device Product Development

The Set Up

Over the past year I have been involved with a number of mentoring, coaching and consulting projects and one question that keeps coming up time and time again is, “When do I need to collect the Voice of the Customer (VOC) for input into my new product development process?”

There is a simple answer, which is, “all the time”. Now the context and design constraints surrounding that answer are significant. In this posting I will elaborate on the simple answer offered above. Hopefully you will gain from this perspective. Suffice it to say that regardless of the magnitude of the effort it is one of the most important ongoing aspect of what the marketer does to ensure successful resolution of the problem in an attractive way.

Context

The way I think about VOC is that it is the first right activity to minimize risk of missing the mark with the utility of a new product. How much time and money you dedicate to the effort really depends on how well you understand the problem statement, how many unknowns there are, how different the solutions might be from technology there are used to using and how much of a change to their clinical practice might occur. In other words, how much design risk is there?

The age old concept of, “if we build it they will come” is not the case in Medical Device Commercialization.

There are too many preferences and nuances to believe that: a marketer, engineer, inventor, single physician could in isolation determine the right design approach for a device that solves a clinical problem and would be attractive to the entire market.

As far as timing goes, the right time to begin collecting VOC is to test your hypothesized problem statement. Remember that you have to determine if the opportunity is real? The, “is it real?” question is one that requires a deep understanding of the customer, their environment and the problem space. You need to collect insights through VOC to know if it is a real problem, how wide spread the problem is, and how accepted is the belief that the problem needs solving.

Once you understand the nature of the risks, I would recommend designing a customer input plan to parallel the design and development activities and make that part of your marketing plan.

For details regarding the VOC process itself see the post, VOC Input for Product Requirements Development. Look to this blog for a future post on developing a Customer Input Plan for the Medical Device Product Development.

The Bigger Question

The bigger question isn’t when, but rather how extensive. The answer to that question is, “it depends.” If the nature of the project is that its success is critical to your business, has a long development cycle or will require a huge amount of resources, then plan to get a significant amount of input throughout the development process.

If the risk is low or the technology is well understood, then maybe a customer input plan that involves fewer touch points or fewer physicians is ok. Just make sure that every stakeholder’s views are represented.

An Example

The project I am currently working on has six different types of clinicians in three different care setting that will be targeted in the first 24 months post-launch. Normally, I would segment these groups out and prioritize their inputs based on the number or participants or by the dollar or unit volume that they represent. This time there is essentially no basis to prioritize the input.

 So for this project I will interview a high volume user in each category before I propose a problem statement. That problem statement will be tested with 10 inputs from each category or 60 physicians before I submit it to the R&D group for their concept generation process. I estimate that I will spend on average $500 per input and take six-weeks to collect the information. For the entire project (through technical design release), I am budgeting $240k- $360k that will be used over a two-year period at different points in the process identified below.

Key Points for VOC

  1. Pre-problem statement development
  2. Problem statement integration
  3. Product requirement generation
  4. Design concept ideation
  5. Design concept selection
  6. Design detail input
  7. Clinical evidence plan input
  8. Prototype utility study
  9. Prototype human factors study
  10. Validation protocol generation input
  11. Design validation
  12. Messaging input

Of course this list is not the only time customer input would be collected, as mentioned in the first paragraph, VOC is collected all the time. The unique aspect of this device is that it is not intended for use internationally, this reduced the complexity and cost substantially.

Key Lessons

  • When in doubt ask a customer, not just one.
  • Watch for bias in your sampling.
  • Never stop listening.
  • Risk-adjust your VOC efforts.
  • Beware of KOLs representing the mainstream users.

Caution

If you are asked to cut corners or reduce your sample size make sure that Management understands the residual risks of doing so.

“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. Contact The Experia Group for a free 30-minute consultation to determine if 30-years of experience can contribute to your success.

© 2017, The Experia Group, LLC

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VOC Input for Product Requirements Development

The Set Up

Regardless of how you package or communicate the Product Requirements for a new product there must be a customer input process that precedes finalizing of those requirements. Collecting the Voice Of Customer (VOC) is critical to the success of new product creation.

The Double Diamond™ Process

Sometimes a picture is worth 10,000 words. The chart shown to the right is the way I explain the approach to building that VOC into a fully validated set of requirements.

Caution

If you want to assure the greatest chance of success don’t skip a step or stop early.

“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. Contact The Experia Group for a free 30-minute consultation to determine if 30-years of experience can contribute to your success.

© 2017, The Experia Group, LLC