Continuous Learning Opportunities Provide Edge for Pharmaceutical Sales Professionals
Once a National or Regional Account Manager (AM) has mastered the skills to successfully manage their accounts strategically, the learning shouldn't stop here. They need advanced learning opportunities that will help them maintain a market leadership position.
Objective: A pharmaceutical company identified the core competencies for AMs and provided a curriculum for training during their first year in the position. Beyond this one-year mark, continuous learning opportunities were needed to support the organization's business model and strategy, encourage best practices, and provide up-to-date marketplace information that would prepare AMs to continuously bring value to their accounts.
Solution: Partnering with the managed markets trainers, three eLearning courses were developed to provide continuous learning. Early in the development process, the company recognized that the selected topics – each focusing on a current marketplace trend – would be valuable information for the entire sales force. The resulting courses are now used to provide advanced marketplace training for AMs, sales managers, and sales representatives.
Marketplace trends can be a moving target, providing a challenge to training departments to keep the sales force updated with the most current information. The payoff in providing training on current trends is a cutting-edge sales team that is able to bring increased value to their relationships with providers and accounts.
When Competition Increases, Gaining Access Becomes All that More Crucial
Gaining access is one of today's top challenges facing pharmaceutical sales representatives everywhere. When competitive factors are working against your product, gaining access to prescribers becomes all that more important.
Challenge: A large pharmaceutical company was experiencing new marketplace challenges. With new over-the-counter (OTC) drugs hitting the market, along with a product going off patent, competition was at an all time high. Now, more than ever, sales representatives needed to be talking with their customers about the clinical advantages of their products.
Solution: Informa Training Partners provided a customized version of its Total Office Call Workshop. This workshop provided participants with the opportunity to step into the shoes of staff members at a physician office and experience the administrative and formulary challenges they face on a daily basis. Participants were given the opportunity to role play sales calls with each member of the physician office staff. Role play scenarios were crafted to address the key challenges facing their products: competition with generics and OTC products.
Gaining access to prescribers requires representatives to build relationships with administrative and other staff members within the physician office. This workshop helped participants gain the knowledge and skills they needed to work with the whole office, gain access to prescribers, and get their products written despite competitive challenges.
Building Bridges to Customers
Sales representatives who have good selling skills can adapt their own selling styles to the buying styles of their customers. Thus, we often teach sales representatives how to adapt their selling styles based on the communication styles of their customers. We also focus on diversity training to help our sales representatives gain awareness of cultural differences. In addition to communication styles and cultural diversity, many pharmaceutical companies are also focusing on generational differences.
Need: A large pharmaceutical company wanted to add a program on generational awareness to complement its existing sales representative training programs on cultural and communication style differences.
Solution: Informa customized its Bridging the Generation Gap with Physician Customers Workshop. By attending this workshop, participants gained the knowledge and skills they needed to identify optimal selling strategies for customers from the four generations present in today's workforce (Veterans, Baby Boomers, Generation Xers, and Millennials). Participants also gained the skills required to adapt their own selling styles and to customize their sales messages based on a physician customer's generational profile. To prepare for this workshop, participants read a primer that summarized the four generations and completed a Physician Profile Worksheet on one of their existing customers. During the workshop, they had the opportunity to adapt their approach with this customer based on what they learned. As a follow-up assignment, participants completed a worksheet two weeks after the workshop. On this Follow-up Worksheet they described at least one successful generational-bridging selling strategy they implemented after the workshop. Specifically, they profiled the physician visited, described their previous relationship, identified generational issues, and then discussed the strategy they used to bridge the gap.
Leadership Development Through Emotional Intelligence
The demographics of the workplace are rapidly changing. As a large population of older professionals retires across major industries, including the pharmaceutical industry, the workforce is getting younger and more culturally and generationally diverse, with fewer experienced managers and leaders. Companies tend to promote their top sales people to fill leadership positions, giving them little formal training to help make the transition.
Newly promoted sales professionals too often find that their work styles are no longer effective in their new roles, yet don't know what they need to change in order to be effective leaders. So what can be done to assure that a promotion does not become the path to failure and disappointment?
Here is how the leaders of a medium-sized pharmaceutical company developed their new managers' ability to lead and motivate their team members.
Need: The company was rapidly growing and promoted and hired a large number of new district managers to lead it's expanded sales force. Most of the new managers, having been top regional sales producers, were promoted from within. The company set aggressive sales goals for the expanded territories. The new sales leaders needed to quickly hone their skills to lead their teams to success.
Solution: As part of a customized program, a leadership style tool to determine the degree of Emotional Intelligence (E.I.) exhibited in carrying out their responsibilities was administered to participants. During the Emotional Intelligence: Sandbox Success Workshop, participants explored the five core competencies of E.I. and identified any gaps in the application of E.I. in their own performances as a leaders. With this new self-awareness, they were able to develop action plans for the skill gaps. A follow-up workshop, Apollo 13: A Case Study in Leadership and Teamwork, built upon the E.I. workshop by focusing on additional leadership and team building characteristics, using the movie Apollo 13 as a basis for the discussion.
Authoring Tool Enables Customization and Updates
Online course development often involves several rounds of edits and changes prior to completion, requiring a carefully orchestrated process for deadlines to be met on time. Then, once a course is implemented, it is almost a sure bet that future changes will need to be implemented to adapt to unforeseen emerging trends and needs.
Let's look at how the use of an eLearning authoring tool helped a company customize a licensed leadership methodology, roll out the methodology on time, and gain the ability to manage updates on its own throughout the life of the license.
Need: The human resources department of a global pharmaceutical company had recently licensed a new leadership methodology. This necessitated change management, including customization of the methodology's content to their organization. A key component was the release of three eLearning modules to their management team. But here's the catch: the methodology content wouldn't be finalized until a few days prior to the launch date, and could possibly undergo additional changes following the eLearning course's initial release.
Solution: All three modules were built using an eLearning simulation authoring tool, Communications Coach Authoring System (CCAS) (see Interactive Insights to learn more about this product). Two of the modules featured learning on core leadership principles, while the third module provided 12 scenarios that simulated actual business situations in which the core principles of leadership were employed. Just prior to initial delivery, the company revised the graphical representation of the methodology. Thanks to the authoring tool's updatability features, images were easily replaced and a new version was released in only a few days, preserving the original delivery date. Following implementation, the company continues to refine the program as additional needs are uncovered.
Coaching the Next Generation
With three generations working together—each embodying its own set of values, attitudes, and work styles—collisions are bound to occur. Nowhere is a “pileup” more likely than when Boomers and Xers coach the next generation—the Millennials.
What can companies do to help trainers capitalize on generational differences and ensure that every team member succeeds in today's fast-paced market? Let's look at how one company learned to break through some generational barriers.
Need: Company ABC asked a group of highly skilled and tenured representatives to mentor their newer next-generation colleagues. Mostly Boomers and Xers, these mentors were often frustrated by the different work style of the younger sales representatives.
ABC asked Informa to help them develop effective strategies for coaching this younger generation, and for promoting teamwork among Boomers and Xers.
Solution: Informa designed a half-day workshop for sales managers and representatives who served as mentors within their districts. Participants were asked to read Generations at Work: Managing the Clash of Veterans, Boomers, Xers, and Nexters in Your Workplace* to better understand the key attributes of each generation.
At the workshop, participants learned more about the values of each generation and how they affect workplace behavior. The entire group focused on the clash between Boomers, Xers, and Millennials, developing customized strategies for each.
Based on the positive feedback from participants, Company ABC rolled out the program to all sales managers and representatives in an effort to pre-empt generational conflict and to coach their next-generation colleagues to success.
*Ron Zemke, Claire Raines, Bob Filipczak. Generations at Work: Managing the Clash of Veterans, Boomers, Xers, and Nexters in Your Workplace. New York: American Management Association, 2000. This book profiles the diverse generations in today's workforce and offers practical solutions for overcoming age-related differences.
Expanding Knowledge and Skills to the Federal Market
There are many ways in which pharmaceutical companies organize their sales forces. Some organize specific sales teams by product, where sales representatives represent one product and call on a variety of customer types, including physician offices, hospitals, and clinics. Others organize specific sales teams by customer type, whereby some sales representatives sell a variety of products to physician offices only, and other sales representatives sell a variety of products to hospitals only. Still others organize specific sales teams to be even more specialized, whereby sales representatives sell one product to one type of customer.
Need: A large pharmaceutical company needed a federal healthcare system training curriculum to prepare their existing hospital sales representatives to sell to a new customer, federal hospitals.
Solution: Informa designed the Selling in the Federal Market eLearning program as a primer to provide need-to-know information about government accounts that fall under the supervision of the Veteran's Health Administration, Department of Defense, Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the Indian Health Service. Informa followed the eLearning program with the Understanding the Federal Healthcare System Workshop. The workshop reinforced the information and provided learners with an opportunity to apply their knowledge and skills in preparation for calling on their federal hospital accounts.
Strategic Thinking: Consistency and Coaching Needed
Large companies with several brands can grow so fast that within a few years each brand team has its own way of doing things, and the company fails to capitalize on its own economies of scale.
What can be done to maximize internal resources and avoid reinventing the wheel? Let's look at what one fast-growing company did and how Informa helped them to achieve their goals.
Need: Company X, having launched 18 products in the past 20 years, was standardizing its business planning process for the entire company. When they approached Informa, division managers—within different brands as well as within the same brands—were using a variety of business planning templates and processes. The company's goal was to pull together the best processes that were being used within the company, link them together in a way that worked for all brands, and standardize an effective business planning process that met the needs of the entire sales force and then train everyone on the process.
Solution: Informa designed and implemented a comprehensive curriculum for regional managers, division managers, and sales representatives. The first step in the training was to read the Strategic Thinking: From Commodity to Contribution primer to gain a foundation on how to think strategically prior to the workshop training . Regional managers were trained first, participating in a full-day interactive strategic thinking workshop. Division managers then participated in the same workshop to learn how to apply the strategic thinking process within their own divisions. Vital to the success of the second workshop was the participation of regional managers as coaches for division managers during the session. The final component of the curriculum was a train-the-trainer session to prepare division managers to facilitate the strategic thinking workshop with their own sales representatives and to gain tips on how to coach representatives on the business planning process following the training.
By implementing the strategic thinking curriculum at the management and representative levels , consistency in business planning was established. Moreover, a coaching chain from regional managers to division managers, and from division managers to sales representatives was created to help ensure success.
Access Issues: A Case Study Where Less Provides More
What is one of the toughest things about being a pharmaceutical sales representative? Ask five reps, and at least four will say, “Gaining access to the doctor.” Physicians are strapped for time, but that doesn't mean they won't make the time to see representatives who have something of value to share.
How can you help your representatives increase their “success” rate when it comes to calling on physicians? Let's go “behind the lines” and look at a pertinent case study.
Need: A large pharmaceutical company utilized Informa's Behind the Lines Workshop to train sales representatives on why and how to call on everyone in a physician office. With the passage of time, the workshop had become outdated. And, participants had to travel to a central location and swap selling time for training time. The company wanted to continue to use the workshop, update it with current information, as well as provide the training in less time and for less money.
Solution: Informa not only shortened and updated the Behind the Lines Workshop, but also took it online in a synchronous workshop. The synchronous version allowed participants to do in a mere two hours what used to take a half day. Moreover, participants were able to avoid the extra time, inconvenience, and expense associated with onsite workshops, but still engage in an interactive and effective training experience.
Product Launch: A Case Study in Sustaining Momentum
Launching a new drug with a new sales force can be a daunting experience. You've got to provide the right clinical knowledge and the right selling skills at the right time to ensure that once the product launch occurs, your sales reps are ready to make the most of “launch momentum.”
Need: A small bio-tech company had a need to train 12 newly hired (but experienced) representatives on a soon-to-be-approved product for a rare genetic disorder. With FDA approval scheduled for just a few months away, their training department had a tight deadline. The 12 new hires already had a high level of clinical knowledge. What they needed was to boost their knowledge of the disease state and product to ensure they were prepared to get into higher level clinical discussions with geneticists and pediatricians who treat the disorder.
Solution: A multi-faceted curriculum design that included:
- Self-study Text-based Modules to provide critical background information on the indicated disease and its management as well as key product information.
- CD Program to bring to life and complement the content in the self-study text-based modules.
- Pivotal Study Quick Reference Guide to provide representatives with concisely summarized key study findings and associated selling messages.
- Physician Specialty Quick Reference Guides to provide tips on the specific types of targeted physicians (geneticists and pediatricians). Information included the scope of each specialty, the types of patients and disorders seen by these specialists, defining characteristics of the specialty, different practice settings, organization and staffing of their offices, other healthcare professionals with whom they interact, prescribing habits and referral patterns, and commonly used medical vernacular, acronyms, and terminology.
- Special Topic Workshop Sessions to be incorporated into the overall launch meeting.
When it comes to launching a product, providing sales representatives with a comprehensive, blended learning program can help ensure that they hit the ground running as soon as the product is approved.
Training Games: A Fitting Case Study
Most sales representatives tend to be action-oriented, competitive, “Type A” people. They like to work and they like to win. Good trainers realize these characteristics and tailor their training programs as such. One of the best ways to do this is to incorporate competitive, content-oriented games into any training session. These games generally reinforce key points that have been provided in prior home-study training programs and/or earlier parts of the workshop. Games also give participants the chance to stop filling their brains with new content, breathe, and process the information in a way that is both fun and motivating. Let's look at a case study to illustrate how games can meet your training needs.
Need: A medium-sized pharmaceutical company needed a 1.5-hour activity to reinforce and strengthen the clinical knowledge of 40 new representatives. Each participant had studied clinical pharmacology, package inserts, and clinical papers during a home-study phase of training. Each had also taken a 50-question knowledge assessment. The company needed an activity to ensure that participants had mastered the content of the home-study materials so they could begin applying that knowledge in the classroom.
Solution: A customized version of the Clinical Pursuit board game. Content areas included clinical pharmacology, clinical papers, and package inserts. In addition, Informa created “Wild Card” questions to reinforce content from a specific package insert associated with the client's product.
To play Clinical Pursuit, teams roll the die to move around the board and answer content-related questions. When teams answer correctly, they win seconds toward making sales calls on physicians. The first team that accumulates 5 minutes of call time and solves a Selling Scenario question wins the game.
Clinical Pursuit was a fitting solution for this company's needs. Trainers not only met their objective of reinforcing the content provided in their home-study program, but also were able to identify topic areas that needed more attention and were thus able to tailor their presentations to provide additional training during the week. Representatives had fun and remained engaged as they prepared themselves to have credible clinical discussions with their customers.