Dear Colleague:

I don’t have to tell you that it’s never been more difficult to excel at pharmaceutical marketing and sales—or more important. Just look at the way the playing field is changing right now:

• New safety data are becoming available, creating challenges for useful drugs associated with substantial risks —and in many cases posing risk-management decisions that doctors and patients aren’t properly prepared to make.
• Whole new classes of drugs are coming to market. They promise to transform the care of some diseases—but they are unfamiliar, based on new mechanisms of action, and they will require a new level of knowledge on the part of doctors, patients, and payers alike.
• The wider social context is tough and getting tougher, with a hostile Congress, worried patients, OIG on the attack, and FDA in retreat. Pharma needs to rebuild faith in its processes and products—and sales and marketing are its public face.

And you know a truth that never gets published in the papers these days: Without pharmaceutical sales and marketing, the great engine that creates new life-saving medicines would grind to a halt. Your job may not be popular at the moment but it is crucial.

Helping pharmaceutical professionals to do their jobs well is what Pharmaceutical Executive is all about. That’s why we are pleased to invite you to Pharmaceutical Executive’s Marketing and Sales Summit taking place Nov. 4-6, 2007. In the pages that follow, you’ll read about the exciting program we’ve assembled for you, aimed at helping you to stay compliant, serve your doctors and patients, and build your business. Your friends at Pharmaceutical Executive magazine are looking forward to an enlightening, uplifting discussion in Philadelphia. I hope we see you there.

Patrick Clinton, Editor-in-Chief