Jane Chin
|
Imagine you're a college student cramming on the night before a big biology exam. You've missed some classes and need a tutor.
So you call up the tutoring center and request a student to come help you. A tutor is at your door in an hour, but he's a
history major, not a biology major. He claims his area of expertise doesn't matter since he knows how to teach. But you're
up against a tight deadline, and reluctant to take his word for it.
Now imagine you're a doctor listening to a sales rep talk about a drug he doesn't know much about. A 2005 Verispan poll of
more than 5,000 physicians indicated that their top complaint was that reps don't have enough clinical knowledge. A misconception:
If reps can recite clinical information, it must mean they understood what they're saying. Reps are given sales scripts that
might contain correct information, including answers to common clinical questions, but many times doctors ask questions that
reps cannot answer.
Countdown to Sell
|
Couple this information with a 2004 Pharmaceutical Representative poll (see "Countdown to Sell") that showed reps get on average 90 seconds to communicate complex clinical information to
a physician, which can create many problems. Without the appropriate level of clinical competence, reps can be seen as wasting
doctors' time, or worse—disseminating information that gets the company he's representing in trouble.
Physicians don't want reps to just memorize clinical information—they want them to comprehend it. If reps understand the information,
they can apply that knowledge to answer the physician's questions. The doctors want to trust that reps and medical-science
liaisons (MSL) are giving them the right information. Such is a challenge for the industry: to prove that its representatives offer value beyond free samples. But clinical competence
doesn't just happen. Companies must work to ensure that their clinical training of sales representatives meets the needs of
the physicians being called on. Here are five best practices in clinical training for today's pharmaceutical reps.
1. How Much Do Reps Know?
Sales reps have a limited time to learn a large amount of clinical information. They need to know about the drug, the disease
category, and the competitors in the space. But when sales trainers administer baseline assessments for reps, they often fail
to decipher how much reps know from what they know. That's because pharma companies tend to administer assessments that are broad in scope and scientifically superficial.
Some examples of assessment questions include: What comorbid risk factors often accompany diabetes? Or, what is the mechanism
of action of a platinum-based cancer drug? Instead, companies should ask more in-depth questions—How does diabetes increase
cardiovascular risk? Or, how does the mechanism of action of platinum-based cancer drugs make these good agents to combine
with radiation therapy?—to ensure that reps gather a full scientific understanding of each concept. Answers to these questions
are the difference between reps who are able to give doctors detailed explanations of "how" something works and those who
only can offer one-word answers to the "what" questions.
2. Create Context
Adult learning principles suggest that adults learn and retain information better when they know how it applies to their jobs.
Traditionally, sales training is highly interactive and is often taught through role-playing techniques that mimic real-life
scenarios. On the other hand, clinical training frequently is passive and limited to hours of "data dumping," where reps are
not taught specific situations in which clinical information can be applied. This can result in reps feeling as though clinical
information is far-removed from their day-to-day selling activities.
PharmExec Blog
Follow Us
RSS
Bookstore
