What to Look for in the Best Sales Training in Pharma

The Best Sales Training in Pharma Needs a Refresh

The pandemic brought new challenges for sales teams everywhere, and the healthcare industry is no exception. Training programs for pharmaceutical sales reps were forced to go through redesigns to ensure they can (a) be delivered virtually and (b) help field force reps learn to relate to healthcare providers (HCPs) online just as well as on-site. 

PWC provides a comprehensive set of guidelines on the future of pharma sales detailing from one of their studies. 

• Restrictive access to hospitals and doctors will likely continue post-COVID-19 as part of the trend of tightening regulations. 
• As a result, preparations by different sales forces to engage through digital channels have become increasingly prominent. 
• Some organizations understand the impact of reduced interaction on sales volumes; they utilize their advantage, while others quickly seek innovative solutions.
• Future engagement models will involve sales force teams, specifically for product launches and customer acquisition. 
• It is necessary to consider the role of the sales force in light of the growing inefficiency of the in-person push model. By integrating face-to-face engagements with digital communication, a sales force can make a company’s transformation a success. 
• Engagement models that combine both ways of interacting are expected to lower interaction costs and significantly increase sales growth (close to 15%), in comparison to traditional (approximately 9%) and digital-only models (nearly 3%).

As seen from the above overview, field forces and managers will be faced with brand new responsibilities when it comes to video. To achieve a meaningful video connection with HCPs, the entire team must master new skills. 

With a sales-ready conversation intelligence platform, you can discover that it’s not just what your reps say but how they say it as well. Using AI, you can accurately evaluate and train their credibility, persuasiveness, clarity, and trustworthiness. Read on to learn what to look for in a platform to support and design the best sales training in pharma.

Related: Leveraging Interactive Sales Training Tools

What to Look In a Platform to Support the Best Sales Training in Pharma

Because of the increase in virtual interactions, sales teams worldwide have been forced to implement and refresh their pharma sales training approach. The traditional skill education model isn’t as effective anymore. Sales managers need to pay attention to the subtle communication variables that make virtual interactions generate empathy, closeness, and connection with the HCP.

The following are further evidence from PF Media:

• During the pandemic in the UK, remote interactions have overtaken face-to-face interactions as the primary engagement channel, increasing fourfold over last year. 
• At first, driven by necessity, and now more fundamentally by innovation and progress, it is evident that the engagement landscape and mindset of HCPs are changing. 
• A complete return to the old pre-COVID ways of engaging field forces is unlikely. It’s now up to managers and sales teams to embrace this opportunity and develop go-to-market models fit for the future.
• COVID-19 has accelerated the need for new skills and capabilities, requiring a fundamental shift in perspective, training and development-oriented at all IT levels, and an appetite to do more with digital technology and data to drive engagement. 
• In the new post-COVID-19 world, sales professionals must be able to serve the needs of HCPs with optimized content that reflects new value propositions and positioning which resonate with them.

Is there a platform to help you simplify this transition and do it at scale, based on science and data? The most efficient way to drive revenue is to improve your sales team’s conversational skills. On a typical day, you can only listen to a limited number of live sales calls to get an idea of how your team is doing. 

A top artificial intelligence (AI)-powered conversation intelligence platform can provide automatic insights into customer interactions and identify individual and team skill gaps throughout the workflow. A solution that uses AI for conversation analysis can capture and evaluate sales calls automatically and accurately for you. 

As you use a cutting-edge tool consistently, you will be able to discover high-performing content and behaviors you can use to train your reps on what creates more robust bonds with their HCPs.

Related: The New Science of Training Sales Reps

Here’s What the Ideal Platform Has to Offer

The final goal is for your sales reps to help HCPs connect patients with the best treatments available. This is only possible by establishing meaningful, long-lasting connections with providers. But not every solution in the industry has the robust characteristics to obtain the insight you need to design personalized and scalable development programs based on these variables.

The best training in pharma is individualized, flexible, and AI-supported with a science-based platform.

Design and performance suitable for sales teams

To improve your reps’ communication skills and drive their success, the best solution will be one that excels at identifying and resolving skill gaps through personal analytics, feedback, and development plans.

Individual feedback, guided learning journeys, performance tracking by milestone, as well as tips and best practices are all available to help your talent grow.

Team members can easily engage in, practice, and improve their skills through experiential learning capabilities that differ from online courses. Your team will benefit from a training tool that includes behavioral assessments, role-based scenarios, and video files and transcripts.

Detailed reports for individual and team insight

To help your reps improve their performance, enhance their presence, and create closer HCP connections, ensure your platform offers reporting and new resources. Assess whether the tool you are considering provides metrics, rankings, scores, assessment of strengths, improvement advice, and benchmarking capabilities. 

Integration capabilities

You must support the best sales training in pharma with a platform that seamlessly integrates with other software, including video conferencing tools, calendars, employee and customer relationship management systems, learning management systems, and learning experience solutions.

Automatic conversation scoring capabilities

You can gain insights and intelligence from a leading tool and enhance your team’s performance without accompanying them personally or listening to the recordings all the time. You want to automate as much as possible in order to maximize productivity. Your platform should be able to evaluate, score, and benchmark selling behaviors against existing sales competency models and coaching methodologies. 

Quantified Will Give You an Edge

Your goal as a sales leader is to measure, report, and design the best sales training in pharma based on soft, conversational skills that are important both on camera and off. You can use technological breakthroughs to achieve your organization’s purpose by leveraging advancements that enhance digital transformation across the board. 

Thanks to the latest technology, it will no longer take you hours to complete this task. With a platform that applies AI to pharma sales communication, you will not have to manually evaluate everything but rather receive objective analysis and insight reports.

Reps who cannot summarize the value of a particular treatment to HCPs won’t be able to sell its benefits, regardless of how revolutionary it is. Representatives with excellent communication skills set the stage for the doctor’s practice to succeed. 

Using Quantified’s AI technology, field force reps can establish better human connections. Our exclusive QC Score will provide you with a single, definitive measure of communication effectiveness. By doing so, you will be able to compare skill levels with peers, your industry, and your aspirations. 
In addition to assessing customer interactions, Quantified measures performance based on key behavioral dimensions. It quickly improves HCP engagement results by transforming your team into high-performing salespeople through automated feedback, coaching, and measurement. Request a demo now.