Lynch: There are opportunities for consultants to be involved in the RFP process in different ways. But first, you need to understand your product, your patient journey, and your reimbursement strategy, in order to align around what you need. If you go to a consultant too early, you may end up with a partner that may not be the right fit for your product.

Nonetheless, consultants can provide value in two key scenarios. Their unique value is their vast understanding of different product launches. Their expertise can get you thinking about the bigger picture for your product launch. Are you choosing the right channel strategy? Are you choosing the right partners?

If you are an emerging pharma company, I would also use consultants to help with the administrative burden. There's a lot of lift associated with launching new products. If your company does not have channel partners already and you're not adding on, the consultants can give you some extra hands.

Lynch: Probably 30 days. Distributors are going to push back a little bit, but you need to give a specific timeline. We expect certain questions at certain times, we expect certain responses at certain times, and then we’re going to go back and forth during the question and response period. Give them enough time to do it properly.

Kodrich: Having at least 30 days would be extremely beneficial to us as the respondents, but also equally as important if not more, for you, so that we can provide the best, most thoughtful responses. A well-thought-out RFP response involves engagement from key stakeholders across a channel partner’s organization. That takes time and collaboration, so lead time is key if you want to get the best response possible to support your launch.

Lynch: You need to have fundamental conversations to make sure there's a good understanding so the distributor can respond accordingly. I'm in market access. I'm not just trade. I'm thinking about everything: reimbursement, patient experience, hub support, payer strategy, CMS, and how everything interacts. These are my problems. How can you help me solve them? 

The people who work the hardest to help me solve my challenges are the ones I tend to have relationships with. You must have those interactions early and often to best assess who can help the most.

Lynch: I think sometimes we get a little caught up in back-and-forth emails. You should allow yourself the opportunity to have open dialogue with all your potential partners about what you are concerned about with your patient journey and your end-user experience. I like to have that dialogue to build a relationship with channel partners. They are going to have access to products and patients, so they better be good partners along the way to help build the best distribution strategy.

Kodrich: You have respondents each submitting their own clarifying questions. So maybe something that can be considered is sharing all the questions and answers with all the respondents who submitted questions. This may lead to better RFP responses. 

Lynch: I'll leave it open. Questions come up throughout the whole process, so I don’t necessarily see a reason to close it down.

Kodrich: Often, channel partners may bring in other internal key stakeholders within their organization. One stakeholder might interpret a question one way, where another may interpret it differently. That presents the opportunity to then go back to the manufacturer or the consultant to ask follow-up questions. Having an open Q&A period allows for the opportunity to get the best information.

Lynch: I take that seriously. I’ve been in this industry a long time and I respect everyone's capabilities. People might have missed out on an opportunity because of something fixable. It’s important to give that feedback. I’ve given feedback in email surveys and also in formal consultant conversations.  As an industry, we can't get better if we're not constantly looking to solve problems.

Kodrich: I think feedback just elevates all of us in the distribution business. Understanding why you were or were not chosen makes us want to do better and improve. At the end of the day, we're here to help patients. Good, bad, or indifferent, we want to hear it.

Lynch: You should probably focus the RFP on you're looking for. Once you start putting other pieces into the RFP, it gets challenging.  

This is kind of a hard question because some of the partners have other capabilities, like hub partnerships, copay assistance, or international commercialization expertise, which sometimes is important for us. Partners, if they're bringing these other capabilities to the table, they get a leg up. Because when you're ready for an RFP for hub services, for example, if you've already partnered with them on distribution, there can be synergies across those solutions. 

Sometimes, you get better service when you're leveraging all the different pieces a partner can offer. But you have to make sure these pieces align with your goals. Going back to the patient journey, choosing a partner who is giving you all of their out-of-the-box services sometimes can take you down a path you don’t want to go.

Kodrich: From a specialty distribution perspective, it’s good to understand what you may be evaluating for hub or GPOs. To Dina’s point, we don’t want to overwhelm the process with presenting too many services, but we want to make sure we can fundamentally support all the different components holistically.