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Entrepreneurs are hardy stock. But sometimes hardiness can get you into trouble.

Especially when you’re over committed and could use a little help.

All too often, new business owners decide they don’t need to hire any outsid

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

e services. You know how it goes….”I can do this myself. How tough can it be? It’s just a simple direct mail campaign.”

Big mistake! Trying to do it all yourself …unless it’s your area of expertise….usually costs you more in

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

he long run. And most of the time, the work looks pretty unprofessional.

Here’s the scenario…

You’re starting a consulting business. You decide you need business cards, a logo, a handout of some sort and a website. Pretty ba

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

ic. You figure you can hire the right people and manage these projects yourself.

So you do. You brainstorm some names for the company, run them by a few friends and select one for your business. Next you find a designer wh

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

ose work you like and meet with her. You describe the services you’ll offer and what colors you do and don’t like. Maybe you’ll even have some sketches of what you think your logo should look like.

So the designer (working w

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

th minimal direction) starts to work. Unless you’ve given her detailed information on your target market, your niche, how you see your identity developing, this designer is pretty clueless. But she comes up with some design

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

. Once again, you go to some friends and family members for feedback. Based on the general consensus, you select a design (hopefully, it will fit with your company name and what you do). You can now either leave it up to th

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

e designer to get printing quotes for your business cards and stationary. Or you can do it yourself and get some price comparisons. You’ll need to know what type of stock you’d like, paper weight, quantities, etc.

Next you

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

want to start on some sort of handout or brochure. Do you stick with your logo designer? If so, better make sure you’ve seen some samples of brochures she’s done. Often designers specialize in one product or another. I’ve

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

orked with great logo designers who can’t do other collateral.

And what about your web site? Is your logo designer also able to do site design? What about development? Not all designers are developers. In fact, most aren

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

t. The best developers I’ve found started out as web folk, whereas my best designers are sticking to what they do best – graphic design.

You also need to decide how many pages your site will be, what they are (the menu), how

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

you want the site to lay out (site map), whether or not you need a dynamic or static site, what elements need to be included, etc.

Still happy with your decision? Better make sure you nail down the costs on all of this so

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

ou’re not surprised upon completion.

Lastly, don’t forget about the copy. You need some for your brochure. You need different copy for your website. They’re different types of marketing tools and the copy needs to be writte

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

in a different style for each. But everything needs to work together (be integrated) so you don’t look like a fractured company. Your brochure and website should have the same look and feel….but the approach is different.

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

If you’re still managing this yourself -- kudos. Especially if you have time to do any selling or networking or research. Because you’ve taken on full-time work as a marketing person/project manager.

To think…. you could ha

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

e saved yourself a lot of aggravation and time if only you’d called in a marketing specialist at the beginning. Then you’d have one person who could manage all the above projects for you:

• working with the designer (or design

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

rs) and developers to making sure everyone involved understood what you do and who you do it

• reviewing, rejecting, and/or approving designs before you ever see them

• writing copy appropriate for each product

• proofreadin

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

g • overseeing all the various vendors to make sure workflow is on schedule and work is correct

... and only calling you for selection, fact verification or final decisions.

Then again, maybe you like a challenge. Or maybe yo

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

just need to micromanage everything. Because by the time you’re done, you’re likely to end up with a disjointed marketing “program” (for lack of a better word). And when and if you finally do call in a marketing person to

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

revise your marketing material, you’ll probably find that turning everything over to a specialist -- who does this all the time – would actually have cost you less than doing it yourself.

At least you’ll know better next time

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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You can't teach someone persistence. People will become sufficiently persistent to succeed only when their desire for their goal exceeds the pain and discomfort they have to endure in order to reach it.

How much would you pay to find your next manager or future franchisee? Companies routinely spend thousands of dollars to find applicants outside their company. Why not spend a bit of time and money to provide current employees the necessary skills? For many employees, it begins with learning the English language.

Putting words on paper that cause people to take a desired action is the most profitable skill a small business owner or sales professional can learn. I often get asked if there are any secrets to banging out effective copy.

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