How LiveSpo improved their business results by setting their priority as training pharmacists

Author: Mr. Dang Quoc Hung – CEO of LiveSpo

April 23rd, 2024

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LiveSpo, a product line of spore probiotics, with the mission of bringing health to every household, especially pregnant women and children, aims for a future without the need for antibiotics. However, the journey of bringing LiveSpo products to the market has encountered many difficulties and long trials.

When first approaching pharmacies, they all said that this product was too expensive, even more expensive than imported drugs from abroad. At the same time, for such a new product, customers were not confident enough to buy. Or when LiveSpo team talked to doctors and pharmacists about the product, they were also not open to accepting this new line of products.

LiveSpo products

Therefore, LiveSpo developed a sales channel on Facebook to exploit the market. After receiving investment from Mekong Capital, LiveSpo experimented with a new approach to the market. With the desire for the product to become widely popular, increase revenue, and become famous, they applied a Mass Marketing strategy with integrated 360-degree communication. However, after 3 months, this strategy completely failed.

Thanks to this, Hung, the CEO of LiveSpo, realized that when selling a new product, especially in the supplement pharmaceutical industry with a high level of technology, customers need to be provided with knowledge and clear information about the product. Therefore, LiveSpo cannot approach customers like selling a box of milk, or using traditional marketing methods such as TV advertising or appearing in many pharmacies. This product is special and requires a different and fresh marketing strategy to impact consumer awareness.

Mr. Dang Quoc Hung, CEO of LiveSpo

From there, LiveSpo developed a tailor-made method (custom-design for each target group), focusing on professional education, product information dissemination, building and nurturing trust and affection for the product. This is not only an effort for product education, but also a mission of caring and valuing human health of the LiveSpo collective, not just looking at the product from a commercial perspective.

This is the key goal that LiveSpo needs to do. It is not a task or burden of an individual, but a common ultimate goal that needs to be evenly shared in a collective.

From this, Hung focused on changing the mindset of the LiveSpo team from considering it a personal responsibility to working together towards a common result to be achieved. This goal is more about results than actions. However, changing a whole mindset is not easy. The biggest challenge here is not how to persuade and approach pharmacists, but the difficulty comes from the old mindset of the working team. Because people often look for simple and comfortable ways to do things for themselves. Many people suggest broadcasting strong TVC advertisements during the golden hour to reach more people and sell faster.

When identifying training as the key goal, LiveSpo set a training goal as one of the top KPIs: to get 2,000 pharmacists from large chained pharmacies to participate in training about LiveSpo products in 2023. LiveSpo team determined to achieve 100% of this goal by planning a specific plan to build a training team with a deep understanding of the product.

In the past, LiveSpo had been training in a traditional way, so the spread is not high. The plan to build a training team aiming at the following goals:

Create a comprehensive and unique training set of the company.
By the new organization method spread knowledge to more pharmacists, the team organized training activities that were practical and effective, leading to business results for the company.

The advantage of the team: having a research center on spore probiotics with many modern machines and equipment, maintaining high standards of scientific research. Clinical trials adhere to stringent international guidelines and protocols, ensuring that research is conducted ethically, transparently, and wholeheartedly. R&D Director had many award achievements, deep understanding of products and constantly having in-depth and practical training sessions for managers.

After completing the training program within 6 months, the business results in 2023 reached 126% compared to the plan.

Therefore, LiveSpo’s product training strategy for pharmacists and customers is the key goal that affects business based on the product characteristics of LiveSpo. The difference LiveSpo has made is to grow forces from the inside out, not from the outside in.

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Mekong Capital makes investments in consumer-driven businesses and adds substantial value to those companies based on its proven framework called Vision Driven Investing. Our investee companies are typically among the fastest-growing companies in Vietnam’s consumer sectors.

In January 2022, Mekong Capital founder Chris Freund published Crab Hotpot, a story about a bunch of crabs who found themselves stuck in a boiling pot. The colorful cover of “Crab Hot Pot,” complete with expressive cartoon crustaceans, looks like a children’s tale at first glance. But as one continues reading, it becomes clear that the work has an important message about organizational transformation, leadership and focusing on a clear vision for the future.

The book is available on Tiki (Hard copy): bit.ly/38baF8a (Vietnamese) and Amazon: amzn.to/3yWunzG (English)