The Power of Key Business Questions

In our biopharma world, we frequently hear the term “Key Business Questions (KBQs).” And while it’s often thrown around as a buzzword (or buzz phrase, in this case), it has quite a bit of practical value when its full depth is explored.

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“The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions.”

— Peter Drucker

We have all been in meetings in which someone opens by saying, “This may be a dumb question, but…” Yet, often, that very question is held by others in the room and serves to shed light on a critical or fundamental insight.

The fact is, while it may not be entirely true that “there are no dumb questions,” in a world so focused on having the right answers, asking the right questions is often just what is needed.

In short, KBQs are those questions that are absolutely vital for a company to be able to answer about its product before going to market. Some of the answers may involve judgment calls, but at the very least, the team should have an aligned hypothesis about the company’s position.

For strategic marketing and launch teams, key business questions help ensure the brand and launch plans address the critical issues and that insight-gathering efforts are directed accordingly. As such, generating a full set of key business questions for the development asset is an extremely valuable and productive exercise, one that the brand team should initiate early in the commercial development process.

Identifying Key Business Questions

All questions are not created equally. The trick is to differentiate between those that are truly “key” and those that are just “nice to know” and will either have low impact or cannot be addressed by the company.

For example, while it may be interesting to know how many left-handed people in Italy are prescribed a particular therapy — unless you are developing a drug specifically targeted to left-handed Italians, this information is not relevant. Getting bogged down with nonessential insights can both slow the development process and serve to distract the team from more important work.

Unfortunately, these kinds of diversions are not as rare as one may think. Biopharma companies spend significant dollars on market research and other insight-gathering efforts each year, much of which does nothing to drive decision-making. Indeed, according to a 2022 survey conducted by the Gartner Group, only 53% of company decisions are influenced by marketing analytics. 

Often, a lot of market research is done as a “tick the box” exercise without any impact on decision-making or strategy. A KBQ approach seeks to ensure that both internal and external insights are collected in a focused, efficient, and ultimately valuable manner.

A Range of Topics

To be most effective, key business questions should span the full spectrum of topics that need to be addressed in the brand or business plan for a product. This should include questions related to the market and customers (e.g., “What is the patient journey in the target disease area, and what are the pain points across the journey?”), as well as internal, strategic questions (e.g., “What is the minimum acceptable profile of the product to make the launch viable from a financial perspective? What would drive a “no-go” decision for commercialization?”).

The answers to these questions can help define the market, inform the value proposition, validate the go-to-market strategy, facilitate access, and optimize the opportunity. (Additional examples of key business questions can be found at the end of this article.)

Don’t Avoid the Tough Questions

Avoiding a question out of fear of being told your baby is ugly is a recipe for disaster. This approach prevents you from developing realistic strategic plans that will enable you to deliver a valuable, differentiated product.

For example, if a product has a challenging, time-consuming administration protocol and there are concerns this could have a negative impact on prescribing and reimbursement, it is critical to understand the customers’ perspectives early so there is an opportunity to institute measures to combat those challenges.

It is always better to ask the necessary questions (no matter how difficult), answer them, and identify mitigation plans as early in development as possible. Waiting will only complicate matters down the line when options are invariably more constrained.

Conclusion

In our highly complex biopharma environment, asking questions — especially Key Business Questions — is a critical but often overlooked part of the strategic planning process and one that yields innumerable dividends.