Keep HCPs engaged via data insights and the human touch
Personal expertise from field teams should be combined with data insights to successfully personalize engagements with HCPs and build trust.
Actionable Insights:
- Sales and marketing teams need to embed digital tools and data-driven decision making in their everyday tasks: Can be achieved through a company-wide cultural transformation that embraces digitalization
- In-person interactions and an empathetic human touch will remain crucial despite digitalization: Field teams’ expertise is necessary to contextualize data insights
- Changes should be customer-driven and outcome-focused: Establishing clear key performance indicators (KPI) across management and teams is crucial to measure efficacy and improve changes. Compensation schemes can encourage execution of new strategies
HCP engagement and communication preferences are rapidly changing, and sales and marketing teams should adapt their approaches accordingly. Digitalization facilitates data collection and analysis, allowing for data-driven personalization of HCP engagements to meet individual preferences. However, companies should ensure an empathetic human touch is maintained.
Through digitalization, companies can collect data to better understand HCP needs and personalize content. Personalization allows engagements to be more efficient and impactful, decreasing the overall number of interactions. Efficiency is particularly important as providers are increasingly understaffed and overworked, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Digitalization, however, should not replace the human touch. Demonstrating empathy towards HCPs, by taking the time to personally engage, listen, and ask questions, can boost trust. In-person interactions enable direct, real-time feedback between sales and marketing teams and the HCP.
For successful implementation of digital tools, cultural transformation and structural re-organization is necessary. The company culture needs to become more receptive to new technologies. Sales and marketing teams will see change along three axes: skill sets, capabilities and competencies. Upskilling teams allows for the efficient use of virtual engagement tools and the implementation of data-driven decision making into their role. Data silos should be eliminated so field teams can readily access information to assist their day-to-day engagement with HCPs.
Companies should establish clear KPIs when implementing change. KPIs should align cross-functionally to ensure a unified company-wide transformation. After alignment, there should be a clear, top-down definition of success for individual teams. To drive outcomes, metrics should correspond to the customer engagement model and be customer-driven.
Management should create compensation schemes to encourage the adoption and execution of new strategies. To facilitate communication and enable company-wide buy-in, periodic top-down reviews should be established, where teams routinely get together to share information and feedback on new processes. KPIs should also be closely aligned to the overall company vision to gain further buy-in from different teams.
Industry Experts Who Contributed:
- Krista Pinto, President, Deployment Solutions, Eversana
- Dion Warren, VP, Head of US Oncology Business Unit, Takeda Pharmaceutical
- Tatiana Yglesias, Executive Director, Business Transformation, Novartis
- Frank Armenante, Director, Field Systems and Projects, Novo Nordisk
- Moderator: Nithya Srinivsan, Director of Marketing, Rheumatology, Janssen Pharmaceuticals