There seems to be a movement in pharmaceutical sales towards a more customer-focused sales platform. Gone are the days of being able to walk in and give the doctor a quick marketing message like, “Doctor, you should use my product because it’s fast-acting, long-lasting, and covered in most managed care plans.” What does it mean for a sales platform to be focused on the doctor or Doctor Centric? Based on years of studying the research that is available through surveys and focus groups, as well as conducting own surveys and focus groups, I would offer the following items as evidence of a Doctor Centric sales platform. Please read below to see if your training is Doctor Centric.

The Doctor Centric training curriculum includes the following:

Understanding MD Training
The foundation of a Physician Centered Training Program is knowledge of how physicians are trained. Doctors are different! Doctors face challenges on their first day of medical school, and that challenging process never ends. That’s why doctors challenge what you say. Their teachers will tell them, “I don’t care what you know.” “I only care about what you don’t know.” “It’s what you don’t know that could kill someone and cause you to lose your license!” This is why doctors are skeptical when we present product information to them.

Doctors are also very competitive. They start competing for grades in high school and never stop trying to be better than their peers. I’ve sold surgical implants for years and when you get a group of eye surgeons together, the conversation quickly turns to one of two topics. Eye surgeons compete in two very measurable areas, how quickly they can complete cataract surgery and how small an incision they can place a foldable intraocular lens into. The faster you can complete the surgery and the smaller the incision, the more skilled you will appear. If you have a doctor who doesn’t use the latest drug therapy or surgical procedure and most of their colleagues do, please let them know that 90% of their colleagues use this drug and are very successful. Doctors don’t want to be seen as laggards!

The doctors are also highly educated and trained. They spend four years in medical school and an additional four to five years in a residency program. Most of this training focuses on understanding the science behind the diseases and gaining the clinical skills to diagnose and treat these diseases. Doctors are scientists and must have scientific data to make the decision to use your product.

A knowledge of what doctors do every day
Every time a doctor walks into a patient’s exam room, he usually says something like: “What’s the problem? or What brought you today?” The objective of the doctor is to discover what clinical problem each patient presents and to prescribe a solution. This is accomplished by asking the patient diagnostic questions that prompt the physician to perform tests that lead to a clinical diagnosis of the problem. Once the problem is diagnosed, a treatment plan is established. That treatment plan usually comes in the form of a prescription for drug therapy, a recommendation for a surgical procedure, or some other type of outpatient treatment. This process begins with the identification of a problem after collecting and reviewing scientific data and ends with a product or service to solve the problem. A Doctor Centric training program helps reps present their product as a solution to a clinical problem the doctor is seeing in their practice.

Training on understanding and presenting clinical data
Doctors are scientists! They live and die according to the clinical literature. For years, Pharmaceutical Representative Magazine has published the results of physician surveys. Every year doctors tell us the same thing. They prefer clinical studies when making the decision to prescribe certain products. In 2002, this study reported that 80% of physicians preferred clinical data when making a decision to write about a certain product. A 2008 Sermo physician survey indicated that 87% of physicians who wanted representatives used more clinical data in their presentations. The problem most reps face is that they simply don’t have time to present a clinical paper when they only have a little over a minute with each doctor. You should present clinical information to a physician in the same way that you present each other.

All clinical studies follow the same format; Introduction, Study Design and Methods, Results and Conclusion. This format is called a digest and is consistent with the SOAP communication model. SOAP stands for Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan. All healthcare professionals use this communication format for everything from writing notes on patient charts to presenting clinical information. Organizing your clinical presentations in this format will allow you to present clinical data in a logical and concise manner that the clinician will understand and relate to. I have seen reps submit clinical documents in 30 seconds or less using this format!

A doctor was recently asked in an article about pharmaceutical reps what a rep could do to get his attention when he was extremely busy. The doctor replied, “Pull out a recent study comparing your product to the one I’m using, present it and ask for my signature.” When a doctor is pressed for time, and he isn’t today, he wants clinical data, not marketing. Do you want to impress your doctors at your next visit? Present a recent and relevant clinical study in less than a minute and ask them to share their thoughts on the document.

How Doctor Centric is your Sales Training Program? Do your representatives understand how doctors are trained, the four steps they follow every day to decide what treatment each patient receives, and the importance of clinical data?