The Blog
Field notes from twenty years.
Healthcare commercial strategy from the field. Product launches, patient marketing, events that generate pipeline, and the access collapse that changed everything. Written by Michael Colling-Tuck.
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What Happens at the Conference Was Set Six Weeks Earlier
Why most healthcare congresses generate disappointing pipeline, and what the companies hitting consistent event ROI actually do differently in the six weeks before the doors open.
7 min read
Making Green Claims in Healthcare: How to Do It Without Getting Burned
Green marketing in healthcare is a compliance minefield. Most companies either say nothing or say too much. Here's how the SAFE framework helps you make credible environmental claims that won't land in front of the ASA.
6 min read
It's Not a Sales Problem
When 80% access drops to 24%, the problem isn't sales. It's demand. A diagnostic for healthcare commercial leaders who keep hiring reps into a broken model.
8 min read
Sales Problem or Demand Problem? The Diagnostic Every Healthcare Leader Needs
After 47 product launches, one mistake keeps repeating: solving a demand problem with a sales fix. Here's how to tell the difference and what to do about it.
5 min read
Marketing Is Not a Support Function
When marketing reports to sales and gets leftover budget, you get support-level results. In healthcare's new reality, that's a commercial strategy problem - not a marketing problem.
6 min read
The 3 E's Framework: A Unified Approach to Healthcare Demand Generation
Most healthcare companies treat sales and marketing as separate problems. The 3 E's Framework - Equip, Evolve, Empower - treats demand generation as a single unified system.
9 min read
Why Your Clinical Champion Win Rarely Guarantees Commercial Success
Winning the clinical champion is just the starting gate. The hard bit is stakeholder management - building interpreted messages for finance, procurement, operations, and C-suite that don't rely on reps improvising in the room.
5 min read
Why Your Healthcare Market Entry Strategy Isn't Working
Healthcare manufacturers keep handing new market entry to distribution partners who were never equipped for it. Here's how to own demand creation directly and hand partners qualified leads to convert.
12 min read
How Marketing Can Prove Its Contribution to Complex Healthcare Sales
The question that never goes away in healthcare: what is marketing actually doing to help win business? Here's how to map the customer journey, track it in a CRM, and give the commercial team a clear answer.
5 min read
Pharma and Tech Demand Generation Needs to Grow Up
While B2B software companies have evolved to sophisticated demand creation ecosystems, healthcare manufacturers remain trapped in primitive lead generation tactics. Cold emails. Product white papers. Generic booth strategies. It's 2005 applied to the most compliance-heavy market in the world.
7 min read
Your Thought Leadership Already Exists (You're Just Hiding It)
Healthcare companies spend years developing genuine clinical insights, then bury them under feature lists and competitive comparisons. Here's how to extract and deploy what's already there.
8 min read
The £65K Reality Check: Why Most Healthcare Events Fail to Create Demand
£65,000 booth. 400 badge scans. 7 qualified prospects. £9,300 per meaningful conversation. A century of combined healthcare experience reveals what's really happening at expensive exhibition booths - and what actually works.
6 min read
Why Premier League Squad Strategy Is Exactly What Your Healthcare Sales Team Needs
Crystal Palace kept their squad together instead of buying their way out of problems. The lesson for healthcare sales teams: it's not about the wrong people. It's about how they're equipped to succeed.
5 min read
Beyond Booth Presence: Why Your Trade Show Strategy Needs Surgery
An event isn't a moment in time - it's a phase. Most healthcare companies are stuck treating three-day conferences like isolated marketing stunts rather than strategic demand creation opportunities.
6 min read
Single-Channel vs Multi-Channel vs Omni-Channel in Healthcare
Omnichannel dominates healthcare conversations but is often misunderstood. Here's a clear breakdown of three levels of demand creation sophistication - and how to choose which one matches your market reality.
8 min readNavigating New Market Entry in Healthcare
Market entry in healthcare isn't about chasing every international opportunity. It's about strategic alignment, thorough assessment, and understanding that what works in your home market might need complete adaptation elsewhere.
5 min read
Why Sales and Marketing Alignment Became Critical After COVID
In 2019, a misaligned marketing claim nearly cost us our most important clinical advocate. Today, with HCPs more sceptical and time-poor than ever, that same misalignment would be catastrophic.
5 min read
What Oasis's Reunion Concert Can Teach Healthcare Sales and Marketing Teams
If two brothers who couldn't be in the same room for 15 years can figure out how to create demand that crashes Ticketmaster, your sales and marketing teams can probably agree on a go-to-market strategy.
4 min read