Start Selling in General Hosipital - DC Process

In pharmaceutical sales, general hospital sales is very different from clinic sales. 

Clinic sales is more B2C, while general hospital sales is more B2B. 

While there are many things to consider in B2B sales, the most important thing in hospital sales is getting a drug approved for use by the drug committee (DC), which is often referred to as the DC process. 

No matter how good a drug is, if it's not cleared through the DC process, no healthcare professional in a general hospital can prescribe it, resulting in zero sales. 

The DC process works as below.

You can see that there are many different stakeholders involved in this DC process. What actions does the MR need to take during this process?

First and foremost, MR needs to get a recommendation from the physician who will eager to prescribe the drug. Next, he should get approval from the department head of the physician. It's also important to get all the information and documentation relevant to the process from the pharmacy department. DC members include doctors from the department that uses the target product as well as doctors from unrelated departments, so MR should visit them in advance to let them know that his new product is being prepared to be authorized through the DC process. MR should contact the purchasing department for the soft landing of new product in the hospital, when the product can be used in-house. Once the purchase is complete, finally MR will contact his customers to let them know how things are going. 

It's not easy to know what these processes are, what points to hit in each one, and what to watch out for. As with everything in life, this is especially difficult because the various stakeholders have their own needs. It's a process that usually involves a lot of trial and error, often with a high probability of failure, and it can be very expensive. However, in my experience in many pharmaceutical companies, I have found that there is no systematic documentation, training, and dissemination of this DC process as a company asset.

"Have you ever done it?" is a famous quote from Chairman Chung Ju-young. Many companies still rely on "MRs who have been there and done that" to pass on their knowledge to their successors orally, which is quite effective. However, if a company wants to make a quantum leap beyond normal development, it is essential that the various know-how related to the DC process(customer needs at each stage, core activities that MRs must perform, common obstacles, coaching points from team leaders, etc.).