Taking a new product to the commercialization stage is an exciting time for any company, whether a small startup or a global giant. But it’s also a time fraught with risk, and a launch that fizzles out can have a severe negative impact on an organization. Interestingly, many of the biggest challenges companies face when launching a new product are not external market factors, but internal ones.
During my past at Zimmer Biomet and Medtronic, I was responsible for managing product launch strategy for the marketing teams, and the biggest risks I would always work to mitigate were:
All of these areas are critical to get right and feed into each other in different ways, but a big gap for me in past launches was creating a formal process around recruiting our KOLs. This was was unfortunate because they create instant trust in your product, develop a built-in market for you and, because surgeons are competitive, if your KOLs have early success with your product, others will want it as well.
What I learned over time is that building out a KOL roster should begin with a very basic question - what do you need from them?
Are you launching a completely new product? Or one that improves on or competes with existing technology? If it’s a new product, you’re going to need product feedback, clinical education, and brand outreach from your KOLs. Start with this high-level focus and then begin drilling down into the fine details.
But in the past, even if you had a great plan for approaching KOLs in place, it was extremely difficult to gather data that would lead you to the best targets. You might be able to find some data indicating which surgeons performed the most procedures, but how would you know if they were early adopters? If they were already KOLs for a competing product? Or if they had a large network of peers that they could influence? Unless you already had a personal relationship with that surgeon, or knew someone who did, you were out of luck.
AcuityMD now makes it incredibly easy to build out a strategic roster of KOLs that can actually be operationalized for a product launch. Let’s say you’re launching a product that is tailored to a particular speciality.
Within our Targeting solution, you can filter healthcare providers by speciality, then create additional filters for the attributes you want your KOL roster to include, such as society memberships, research papers by publication or topic, or educational background.
Once you have your initial wishlist created, AcuityMD then enables you to refine and diversify around facility type and geographic details. A diverse KOL roster is an important, but often overlooked, consideration. You need to make sure you’re accomplishing your launch objectives and putting the right KOLs in place to support the intended growth of the product.
You can then sort your list by product or brand loyalty. If one of your targeted providers already speaks on behalf of a dozen different products, their endorsement might not carry as much impact. This also helps you remove providers who are loyal to a competitor so you don’t waste valuable time trying to win them over.
Then comes the key part - putting your plan into action. Data is like oil; it’s not worth as much until you refine it. This is where AcuityMD can really help you shine.
Wth just a couple of clicks, you can organize your KOL targets into working lists that can be shared, reviewed, and edited across the organization. Geographic lists, academic center lists, lists based on procedure volume. However you want to parse your strategy, AcuityMD makes it easier than ever before.
This combination of data, workflows, and strategy will take all of the subjectivity out of your KOL planning. No more guesses, no more anecdotes, no more hoping you got it right. Now you’re one step closer to a successful product launch.
Lee Smith
VP of Customer Experience
AcuityMD
