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Marketing Focus – Issues & Insights
Greetings from Edinburgh, Scotland. Throughout Britain, Brexit remains a much discussed but unresolved issue. The journey to the ultimate conclusion will be long, complex, somewhat convoluted and subject to considerable negotiations. There will be costs incurred as a consequence of the referendum. At this time many of those are difficult to identify, quantify and schedule.…
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A Professional Conundrum
What a fascinating standoff has developed over the role of the pharmacist in advising on the use of complementary medicines. The Blackmore’s Institute is urging us to understand the complete medication profile of our patients, to ensure that we drive optimum health outcomes. Many of our patients fail to mention their complementary medicine use (often…
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Marketing Focus – Miscellaneous Essays on Management & Marketing
BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS – NOW TRANSACTIONAL My, how things have changed. The nature of, and expectations for most business relationships in 2016 are now founded and valued on single transactions, and short-term relationships. Put aside the well crafted vision and philosophy statements about customer-centricity, client-driven and mutually rewarding strategic alliances. Reality is, that for…
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Do You Promote Free Advice?
Frequently there is a lament recycled by pharmacy commentators that the business model for community pharmacy has relied on providing services through the margins received for recommended products. That model is still a valid part of community pharmacy culture, except that it has not been appropriately adjusted to counter market changes that have occurred over…
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A Cautious Introduction of Marijuana into Your Pharmacy
Recently, an Israelis company lodged an application to approve its topical cannabis derived products for sale in the Australian market place. So topical marijuana may be the first entrant in the Australian pharmacy market. Some marijuana products already exist in the retail market place – but they are for external use only. Hemp oil, for…
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Avatars May Take Over Patient Communications – Where to from there?
Global Pharma’s are known to be funding the development of systems to deal directly with patients. These systems will involve the use of Artificial Intelligence and the use of Volumetric 3D immersion technologies. The former will allow delivery of technical information through well modulated voice transmission, while the latter will provide an “avatar” transformed from…
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Marketing Focus – Essays on Management & Marketing
HOLD BACK THE TIDE A measure of just how much some union officials are out of touch is the current mass media advertising campaign being conducted by the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association in Western Australia. In essence, it is a personal attack on the West Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, and his legislative initiatives…
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Selling is not all about the product
Over my decades in business, I’ve noticed a baffling trend: “sales” has become a dirty word. I’m on a life-long campaign to change that. In fact, many companies no longer call sales people sales people. They have account executives or account specialists, business developers, client advisers, relationship consultants, territory managers and numerous other monikers. I…
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What are you Competing on?
The profession is going backwards. Seth Godin has obviously attended APP16…..here’s his latest and it’s so timely as many pharmacists try and emulate the yellow box method. What are you competing on? It’s pretty easy to figure out what you’re competing for—attention, a new gig, a promotion, a sale… But what is your edge? In…
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Trust – It Always Has to be Worked at
Pharmacy always appears in national polls measuring trust, and always in the first three, with results for pharmacists, nurses and doctors all highly ranked and all close together. Trust is an elusive concept to quantify and when evaluating, only a subjective opinion can be formed as a measurement. But in human beings it is something…