How to Improve Remote Healthcare Sales Training

The Need for Remote Healthcare Sales Training

The pandemic imposed new challenges for sales teams everywhere, and the healthcare industry is no exception. Managers have identified the need to restructure healthcare sales training sessions so salespeople can be as effective virtually as they are in person.

According to a GlobalData poll, reported by Pharmaceutical Technologies:

• 75% of pharmaceutical industry professionals expect virtual interaction to continue after the Covid-19 crisis passes.
• Only 25% of healthcare professionals think that face-to-face interactions will resume to pre-pandemic levels.
• For virtual interactions between HCPs and sales reps, video calls were the preferred medium (30%), followed by messaging (20%), and phone calls (16%).
• Video calls, which enable direct yet remote interactions, have been perceived as the most effective alternative to traditional in-person conversations.

This landscape puts sales teams and managers in front of a whole new set of responsibilities they need to master in order to continue delivering positive results and, among them, designing comprehensive and remote healthcare sales training.

If your company is just starting to put these developmental programs together or wants to update what you have in place, continue reading for a helpful approach to take your reps’ performance to the next level.

Related: Leveraging Interactive Sales Training Tools

Taking Care of the Basics: Check on Your Team’s Gear First

Thanks to COVID, most people had to shift from working in the office to working from home, forcing employers to equip them with the right tools to remain productive. And it worked.

A recent 2020 study found that nearly every salesperson surveyed worked from home this year, and they say it has led to greater productivity. The majority of salespeople gave the work-from-home experience 4 out of 4 stars, while less than 4% gave it only one star. When asked how they would like to work in the future, 91% of salespeople made it clear that they do not want to go back into the office full time.

These numbers show people are ready to embrace virtual more than ever before. From productivity tools to collaboration to sales training, virtual tools add flexibility and convenience without sacrificing quality.

In conclusion, there are many reasons for virtual sales to stay for the long run, even in the healthcare industry. Nowadays, companies with skilled and digitally-enabled sales reps can help HCPs connect with better treatments for their patients, even in a remote setting. You must adapt your company’s strategy and find new ways to establish genuine connections with practitioners at a distance in order to be successful.

Even before you engage in remote healthcare sales training, an excellent way to start improving your results is checking on your reps’ tech gear first, meaning the equipment they are using to connect with prospects and current clients on virtual sales calls. The most authentic, engaging, and impressive detailing won’t matter if they’re constantly interrupted by technical difficulties or low-quality sound and video.

Aside from reminding your team of simple habits like planning, testing ahead of time, and fixing any problems, you should invest in a few pieces of equipment to improve how your sales reps use video conferencing.

Webcams

It’s challenging to get a decent angle on the salesperson’s face with just the tablet or laptop camera. People tend to look distorted and distracted when viewed from these angles. This is doubly problematic if the speaker refers to documents or slides on a separate monitor rather than looking into the laptop camera.

When you buy webcams for your team, make sure the reps set them up at eye level to appear more attentive and engaged.

USB mics

A computer’s built-in mic may cause people to sound distorted or echoing and, in some cases, create a feedback loop by picking up and transmitting other people’s voices. Provide your team members with good headphones with microphones or, better yet, a USB mic ideal for podcast or video conferencing.

Ring lights

The illumination is typically the most problematic part of a videoconference setup, as natural lighting inside a home is generally too dim or too irregular for a quality call. A person on a video call from home often appears to be seated in a dark place or overcompensates by exposing themselves to natural light sources that may be too bright.

You can give your reps the option to use household lamps or move their desks, so there are windows behind their computers, but a ring light is an ideal solution for getting all the perfect lighting every time without rearranging anything.

Using these lights to illuminate a face will avoid awkward shadows or glares and bring any home office to cinematic heights.

You have a skilled team equipped with the best gear available to offer quality and consistent video conference calls. Now, it’s time to review some tips and ideas to continue their healthcare sales training virtually.

Related: The New Science of Training Sales Reps

Improving Remote Healthcare Sales Training in Virtual Times

You may find your main challenge right now is keeping up with reps’ calls when they are spread over multiple locations. How can you learn who’s communicating well with customers and who isn’t without the in-person ride-along? Furthermore, how do you tie those performance insights to NRx, TRx, unaided customer brand awareness, customer satisfaction and your team’s development?

In order to be successful at healthcare value-based selling, organizations must be able to identify the effective communication characteristics that make top sales reps more effective. After this is completed, you can focus on developing those behaviors and qualities in lower-performing reps.

The Benefits of Technology

The good news is that a number of the same technological breakthroughs designed to support digital transformation more broadly are helping sales leaders like yourself achieve these goals as well.

By using the best technology available, you will no longer need to spend hours on ride alongs. When you partner with a company that applies AI to sales communication in either the training or sales call setting, for instance, you can get objective analysis and insight reports to eliminate the need for you to do manual evaluations and assessments.

The ideal way to enhance remote healthcare sales training is to find a tool capable of evaluating each rep’s communication effectiveness and customer perception, as well as identifying their strengths and development opportunities, individually and as a sales organization.

With this platform, it will be easy for you to combine communication effectiveness with prescriptions, identify the individual skills driving top performers’ success, and provide low performers with the resources to build those skills themselves.

With scientifically-backed insights into the behavior behind the performance of your sales team, they can receive the healthcare sales training they need to lead quality conversations to win customers and close sales.

How you communicate with your audience makes the difference between winning and losing. Quantified’s Conversation Intelligence and Coaching Platform uses the most advanced artificial intelligence technology to empower your sales team’s communication, connection, and performance. The solution uses science and data to provide insights into the effectiveness of individual and collective sales teams.

Your healthcare-oriented staff can receive the tools they need to provide world-class in-person and virtual detailing, boost customer trust, and improve patient care. Quantified is a new approach backed up by behavioral science, big data, and AI to impact human connection significantly. Better conversations. Better outcomes. Request a demo now.