The pharmaceutical business is all about relationships. The relationship that you have with your secondary or backup supplier is one of the most crucial weapons in your arsenal to fight shortages: your secondary supplier is the last line of defense, the people you turn to when your normal suppliers can’t meet your needs.
So why treat this relationship as something disposable? This is what drives us at Broughton Pharma: we want your relationship with us to be treated with the kind of care that it deserves.
We’re a staff that loves to get into the personal relationship side of business. We want to really get to know the people behind the screens and phone calls.
How Your Secondary Supplier Should Work For You
The most important job for us is to really get to know our buyers and their business. If we’re doing our jobs, we have a clear picture of when they might need help in the future before they even realize it.
Since we have such a large network of providers and buyers we can see the bigger picture in the industry. When we give information to a buyer it’s because that information is relevant and reflects the reality we’re seeing. The buyers we speak with are best-equipped to handle their purchasing decisions and have the map they need to weather shortages.
Starting the Conversation
The key to all of this is spending time to build these relationships. At Broughton Pharmaceuticals we feel strongly that any time spent with buyers is time well spent: if it doesn’t contribute to the bottom line but does contribute to the relationship, we’re still succeeding. Our reps are never pushy and never sales-focused, we offer help when it’s needed but know that sometimes the conversation is just about catching up.
This is why we’re regularly engaging our buyers, even when we know that everything is going well. For us, knowing that everything is going well is great information: not only is it obviously positive, but it means that we can start spending time looking ahead for you to see what’s coming down the pike. Sometimes this means we can help cover a shortage or demand increase in advance. This is a perfect situation for us at Broughton Pharma: our buyers are happy, their bosses are happy, and most of all, patients are happy.
How can you start?
If you’re having issues with your existing secondary pharmaceutical supplier being difficult to reach or closed off you can absolutely contact Broughton Pharma today. If you’d like to try and enrich that existing relationship though, here are some tips we usually use
* Be the one to start conversations. This is a business where the stakes are high. Taking the initiative to contact your secondary supplier shows that you value that relationship and are putting it as a priority.
* The more specific, the better. If you do have a need secondary suppliers like Broughton Pharma are in a race against the clock: we’re working our own networks to get supplies for you, and time is the most critical resource. If you go to your backup supplier with a specific list of NDCs and alternates, that puts them and you one step ahead in the purchasing process.
* Don’t be afraid to be personal. If your contact is someone you’ve been speaking with regularly turning the conversation to lives outside of work can be a good way to build relationships. Here at BP it’s actually one of the things we focus on with our staff: knowing who our buyers are in and outside the office is a great way to understand the value we bring to the table.
And, if all else fails, we’re always just an email or a phone call away. If you’d like to build that relationship with a company who knows how valuable it is and who will build it to last, Broughton Pharma is a great fit for you.
The pharmaceutical business is all about relationships. The relationship that you have with your secondary or backup supplier is one of the most crucial weapons in your arsenal to fight shortages: your secondary supplier is the last line of defense, the people you turn to when your normal suppliers can’t meet your needs.