Page 130 - 100 Great Marketing Ideas (100 Great Ideas)

61 INFLUENCE THE
INFLUENCERS

In any market, there will be buyers and sellers. What is often
missed, though, is that the buyers do not operate in a vacuum.
Especially in business-to-business markets, buyers are influenced by
trusted advisers: these may be work colleagues, friends, professional
advisers such as lawyers or consultants, or even family members.

In some cases, influencers might be so powerful in the decision-
making that the sale fails without much warning. A salesperson
might imagine that everything is going fine, until the prospect’s golf
partner or teenage son expresses doubts about the deal or provides
some piece of information that kills the deal.

Finding out who the influencers are may be easy or difficult,
depending on the situation. In some cases, they will be obvious
corporate advisers, in other cases they might be completely
unknown to the marketer. Having the influencers onside is clearly
advantageous, but how to do it?

The idea

Pharmaceutical companies have two basic markets: the over-the-
counter market of drugs and medicines that can legally be sold by
pharmacies and supermarkets, and the so-called “ethical” drugs
that can only be sold on prescription. Ethical drugs cannot be
bought by the general public, but they are, of course, stocked by
pharmacists. Unfortunately, pharmacists cannot sell them without
a doctor’s prescription.

Pharmaceutical companies such as Merck and Pfizer therefore
employ salespeople purely for the purpose of visiting doctors to

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