By Gary A. Thompson, Ph.D., FAAPS, FCP
After 25+ years of working in clinical pharmacology within the pharmaceutical industry, I decided to begin consulting in 2008. Over the past eight years, many people have asked me to describe the world of consulting. For this article, I define consulting as one person working with companies, providing advice on various aspects of their development program.
For those seeking advice on whether they should consider consulting, I offer the following guidance.
Qualities Leading to Success
- Experience. To be a successful consultant, I believe you need at least 10 years of experience, working within a larger group of similar scientists where you have successfully completed several development programs. The exception may be if you work in a very unique, evolving area in which you specialized during your academic years. I constantly remind scientists I mentor that it is difficult to know what is needed and when it is needed if they have not been through the complete process (e.g., a successful investigational new drug or new drug submission). For a consultant, it is critical to provide advice as to whether a study is currently needed or if development can continue, with the information being obtained later. Everyone wants to minimize development costs until a compound shows it is potentially viable, which typically occurs following a phase 2 study. One question that is often asked is, “Can we conduct a phase 2 study to assess a compound’s viability without information on potential drug interactions?” The ability to have meaningful input on this and similar questions will be the direct result of previous experiences during development of other compounds.
- Externally Well-Connected. Most of your work as a consultant will come through word-of-mouth—either through former coworkers or through colleagues you have interacted with in various professional organizations (e.g., AAPS). As such, external networking is critical; you must be very involved with others working within your discipline outside your current company. For myself, AAPS has played a significant role in my success. It has allowed me to make many external connections that I would have otherwise not made. Although websites are useful for proving additional information about your company, they are usually of minimal value for obtaining new clients.
- Scientific Credibility – Although being externally connected is critical to success, with so many consultants available, anything you can do to separate yourself from others within your discipline will also be vital. In addition to an advanced degree within your discipline (Ph.D.), external peer-based scientific recognition is also valuable. Within AAPS, being selected as a Fellow further communicates your level of technical expertise to potential clients.
- Effective Communication – Although you might be the world’s leading expert, if you cannot effectively communicate the importance of your work, you will become an ineffective contributor and eventually be omitted from meetings where critical decisions are made. When I first entered the pharmaceutical industry, I was asked to give a presentation on the rationale of a renal impairment study to other departments (medical, statistics, etc.). Without any guidance, I presented my thoughts on the study design using models and equations. Eyes eventually glazed over, and ultimately I realized that I had lost my audience. This experience provided an early lesson on the importance of understanding your audience and the need to effectively communicate with them. Many consulting jobs are obtained because no one within the company has your expertise; thus, the ability to effectively communicate with others from vastly different backgrounds becomes all the more critical as a consultant. An excellent reference on this topic is Be a Model Communicator and Sell Your Models to Anyone by Peter Bonate, Ph.D. The bottom line: Understand your audience, understand what they need, and communicate at a level that they will understand.
- Timeliness –In most programs, others need the results from your work so they can proceed with their own. An almost guaranteed way to ruin your reputation is to miss deadlines. If you are going to be late, it is critical to communicate the delay and communicate it prior to the deadline. If others can’t count on your timeliness, the company will most likely find another consultant.
The Experience (no, not Jimi’s band)
- Workload - While working in the pharmaceutical industry, I generally knew what I would be doing over the following months/years. When I started consulting, workload was a rollercoaster ride. One week, I would work many late nights and weekends, and another week, I had no work. This was one of the biggest adjustments I had to make. During weeks of no work, you start to question whether becoming a consultant was a good decision: Is lack of work a sign of things to come? My advice is to initially avoid looking at workload/income on a monthly basis but to look at it on a quarterly or annual basis. It takes time to build a steady flow of work. After a few years, I realized that although there will be periods of time with little work, there will also be times when I will be working evening and weekends. It has always worked out by the end of the year.
- Talk is Cheap (K. Richards) – As you move from your current position to consulting, many industrial colleagues will tell you that once you start consulting, they will definitely need your help. Although this provides some initial confidence on becoming a consultant, never count on work until you have a signed contract and actual work in hand. Although well intended, many times your industrial colleagues are unable to obtain internal approval for funding outside consultants or the program is discontinued.
- How long to wait for success? - During the initial years, my workload varied. There were companies that I worked with for 6 months and then did not hear from again for a year or more. From my experience, it takes 3 to 5 years for the workload to become relatively stable. Over that period of time, you need to build your client base, such that the workload rollercoaster ride starts to smooth out.
Although there are many other topics associated with consulting, this covers some of the most important ones. With the decrease in members working in “Big Pharma” and a corresponding increase in consultants over the past decade, what are your views on forming a Consulting focus group within AAPS? Please email me your thoughts.
Gary A. Thompson, Ph.D., FAAPS, FCP, owns GA Thompson Consulting, LLC, in West Chester, Ohio.