Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Company Closes New Sales

Process Focus Appeal

In an industry, such as pharmaceutical manufacturing, where processes and procedures are ingrained into the culture, having a partner like Athena that is also process oriented brings a level of confidence in its ability to provide repeatable quality results.

One of the first processes implemented as a team was the kick-off meeting and site tour. Athena’s team, met face-to-face with key individuals at Metrics’ facility to better understand the company and its goals and to explain how the program would benefit them. Getting everyone onboard with clear executable goals is a key factor in the program’s success.

A second key factor to success is having both companies coming together to work as one unified entity. “One of the things that makes this relationship successful is that we look at Athena as part of our sales and marketing team,” said Tom Salus, Director of Sales, Metrics. “It can’t be a transactional relationship; it needs to be a partnership. We have successfully established that with Athena.”

Once the team is unified with clear goals, execution of the plan must be repeatable and consistent. A third key factor in the program’s success, and the reason Metrics chose Athena, is its unique process-driven and systematic approach to increasing market awareness, nurturing prospects, and generating qualified sales leads. Athena presented Metrics with a quantifiable front-end sales process, trained inside sales resources, and the enabling technologies required to execute and measure the impact of the strategy.

Each component of the process, including target market profiling, prospect research, direct mail, outbound phone calls, emails, permission-based e-newsletter, and ongoing follow-up touches, is strategically designed to provide messaging that resonates with the targets and produces qualified leads based on Metrics’ criteria within the pharma market.

The Athena and Metrics team works closely targeting key influencer’s and decision makers and making adjustments to the program when required through the program’s built-in process of ongoing improvements (POOGI).

A Worthy Investment

Metric’s has been working with Athena for 18 months and has been very happy with it’s results. Athena’s process has kept a steady flow of prospects in Metrics’ pipeline, which has led to new account closures. In addition to the increased flow and closures, Metrics has experienced a large boost in market awareness.

“For us, the investment in Athena is not only the pipeline of leads, but also increased brand awareness,” said Salus. “Every time they send out an email that talks about Metrics or a voicemail is left—the repetitive use of Metrics’ name—gets them familiar with who we are. I look at it as a living advertisement. We could place an ad in an industry journal and hope that someone will look at it and maybe act on it, but they could flip through and never see that we are there. It’s harder to ignore a voice email, an email, a direct mail piece or a newsletter without getting some brand recognition.”