Have you ever wondered why the sales and marketing departments walk out of the boardroom with a bag full of money after they made their pitch, but board members only see you and your quality unit presentation as the bearer of bad news?

I have seen it too many times to count. The quality unit has a legitimate business-impacting proposal that is worthy of serious consideration, but the presentation of their proposal takes the listener into an unfamiliar world and is unable to make the business connection.

Perhaps effective communication is a core competency of the sales and marketing departments, while the quality unit relies on the tired arguments of regulatory requirements and the threat of an FDA Form 483.

Don’t get me wrong. Compliance with regulatory requirements is the price of admission into the pharma industry. But that is no reason for putting very little effort into selling your proposal in a way that is compelling—or swamping the boardroom with a 20-page PowerPoint presentation of endless detail and data.

One underlying principle for making a compelling case to management is to make it simple and direct. In fact, the higher the level of management the simpler and more direct it needs to be.

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