Raising the Bar on Launch Readiness: How Novartis Oncology Prepared Reps for Conversations That Matter

Passing a certification does not automatically mean a rep is ready to execute a commercial strategy with impact.

For its latest oncology launch, Novartis built readiness around what reps needed to do in an actual HCP conversation: amplify the unmet need where a strong standard of care already exists, identify patient risk factors driving suboptimal outcomes, and leverage product and disease state knowledge to connect real-world benefits to patients.

In this session, Keenan Stare, Product & Disease Training Manager at Novartis, shares how his team turned those expectations into a scalable practice and certification process for an experienced field team. He’ll walk through how Novartis defined readiness beyond reciting the label, built realistic practice around clinical data fluency, impactful selling skills, and product strategy rather than script memorization, and reinforced pre-call planning before reps entered the certification scenario.

Keenan will also share how the team preserved that standard when internal timelines accelerated by three months. Novartis shifted its sales call certification from an in-person model to a virtual approach designed to improve consistency, objectivity, benchmarking, and field readiness while meeting the demands of an accelerated launch timeline. The result was strong engagement from the field and a successful certification rollout.

Attendees will learn how to:

• Define readiness around what reps need to demonstrate in an actual HCP conversation, not simply what they need to know
• Build practice scenarios around critical conversation anchors while allowing reps to navigate authentic HCP interactions
• Use repeated practice, objective feedback, and pre-call planning to prepare experienced reps for certification
• Adapt certification to an accelerated launch timeline without lowering the standard for field readiness