When a brand keeps missing its plan, the pressure builds quickly. From headquarters, from the leadership team, and from inside your own head.
The easy move is a new strategy. New positioning, new campaign, new segments.
In my experience, that is often the wrong move. The strategy was never really tested, because it never reached the doctor the way it was written.
So before I change anything, I climb four steps.
Find where it stalls. Which segments, regions and customers did not move. I read sell-out here, not sell-in. Sell-in tells you what the distributor bought, not what reached patients.
Go and listen. Double visits with my first-line managers. I am there to hear the call as the doctor hears it, not to judge a rep.
Name the gap. Right doctors, wrong words is a message problem. Right words, too few of the right doctors is an execution problem. They need different fixes.
Fix one thing, then watch. Change both at once and you will never know what worked.
In markets I have worked in, the answer usually came from the field, not from the boardroom.
“Before you change the strategy, check it ever reached the doctor.”
Lesson 14 of 16 in Step 1: Setting strategy, with the full guide and a checklist for this week.