PHARMACEUTICAL
Great Advice From Great Minds:
Sales Innovation from Daiichi Sankyo GM and CEO Daiichi Sankyo’s General Manager & CEO for the Nordic Region, Patrik Grandits, on his experience building up the oncology entity across Europe The interview, by Jill Donahue
Patrik Grandits can’t leave things alone. Which is good. Wherever he has worked, he shakes up, improves and advances the corporate agenda. When he was a General Manager at Allergan, he was accountable for sales and marketing in over 20 countries across Europe and Eastern Europe, managing breast and facial products in both medical devices and pharmaceuticals. He introduced new budget and business planning tools, and achieved 15% growth in 2008 and 25% growth in 2009. At Alpha Future Technologies, as managing director, he had full P&L responsibility for global strategic business development, business planning, financial forecasting, product/project development and investors/business alliance management. In his years as Business Unit Head at Hospira, he was accountable for the oncology, hospital and immunology biosimilars business in over 25 countries. Then, as Global Head Product & Portfolio Strategy for Oncology at Sandoz, he instituted their global oncology business plan, and transferred a mature Novartis oncology product portfolio into the Sandoz business model.
No one can accuse him of a lack of ambition. After having built up the Daiichi Sankyo oncology entity and expanded into the Nordics, Patrik is currently Daiichi Sankyo’s General Manager & CEO for the Nordic Region. “We are continuously building up and expanding in both our European and our Nordic entities. Innovation is paramount in all that we do, from pursuing new medicines and new methods of drug discovery and delivery, to achieving excellence throughout our organization by continuously examining new ideas.“ One of Patrik’s achievements is the development and implementation of a new and innovative key account business model called “The Account Engine Model.” As is true of many of our interviewees, he is a passionate proponent of a focus on the needs of the patient. “We have to make sure we have the greatest talent we can get, and then deliver value to customers,” he says. “We must lift our engagement to patients.”
9 | HS&M SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019
When we interviewed him, he was here to visit their U.S. team to discuss and share their European approach. There is a common understanding between U.S. and Europe that to put the patient in the center of our approach is essential. “How do we transform our thinking around customer centricity?” Patrik says. “There are many paths. Having the right mindset. Changing the way we incentivize staff. Improving how we engage with patients. I learned early that you need to ask the right questions and have a willingness to listen in order to get the right answers.” An example is the restructuring of the sales incentive system to focus on team targets rather than individual sales projections. This relieves each rep of the pressure to focus only on selling, and allows them to focus on the bigger job: listening and educating. It’s a long-term vision for where they want to be. They are in the process of measuring the impact
