Five Ways to Improve Medical Device Product and Sales Training

 1.   Training Managers should understand how adults learn: Most training initiatives for medical device salespeople ignore the science of learning, particularly adult learning. In my experience, most training managers from small to major medical device corporations have little to no training in education. It's obvious when you see programs that are delivered primarily by PowerPoint. Learning rules demonstrate that busy PowerPoint documents have too much information on each PowerPoint that is provided by “experts” from the company. Busy slides with too much information impede the auditory capability of the learner.

There is an essential issue in learning called "automated knowledge and expertise," where the experts overload the learners' cognitive process or present it so quickly the learner's brain can't keep up with the information. Many salespeople who sell suture understand that interns can't learn how to tie knots because the teaching surgeon often says "watch me," then ties a knot so quickly the intern can't follow. That is the reason suture salespeople use large black and white cords to teach how to tie the right knots in the right situation. This is a skill issue, but knowledge is affected by the same principle. An expert has difficulty remembering how they learned and provide expert information to new learners.

2.    Knowledge delivery systems fail when they don’t have rich content: Content rules. Before the internet, the delivery of information happened in workshops. Workshops that are based on gimmicks rather than rich content supported by stories were often forgotten. Many companies invest in delivery systems, not content. Delivering information is not learning. Learning occurs when the learner interacts with the information. Learner interactions are important, and many of the new internet delivery systems are “cool” but may have minimal content or learner interaction through gaming or other forms of delivery, regardless of focusing on learner engagement. Companies need to understand that investing in an expensive delivery system that lacks substance may fail to achieve what they expect. 

A recent article about Jeff Bezos in Inc. magazine illustrates that we are hard-wired to learn through stories. I have never seen an online learning system that tells stories. Stories that relate to a new area of knowledge or skills can only be told by someone who has experienced the information and can relate a story of how it works. New delivery systems claim improved learner engagement. I am just not sure they work in relaying the importance of learning content with a group of talent just hired to sell.

3.   Before onsite training, home-study should provide the foundational information to create pathways for working and long-term memory efficiency: One of the reasons the onsite training programs for the new hires work is because the trainees were provided with sufficient content for home-study which lays the foundation for learning. Understanding how the mind acquires and maintains information over time, it is critical to provide the learners with a foundation of information that will facilitate onsite knowledge and skills move through the sensory and working memory into their long-term memory. The keys to successful basic training relate to the ability of the learner to retain and recall information. For a salesperson, recall is critical, especially in medical devices where a physician may ask a question that is necessary to a patients’ life situation. As a US Surgical salesperson, I was asked questions at critical points in a patients’ surgery that could affect their recovery and outcome. The six-week training and memorization prepared me for those situations. The ability to quickly assess and solve surgical issues was a result of the corporate training program.

Today, other than Intuitive Surgical, most medical device training programs are only two weeks in duration. When comprehensive home-study material is provided in an educational format a week before onsite training, the onsite training is more efficient as the learning pathways are opened, so the classroom experience is more effective. When it costs approximately $20,000 to interview, hire, and train a new salesperson, the company should make every effort to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the initial product and sales training, by providing home-study material that opens that learning pathway.

4.   If product managers provide the technical product training, they need to build PowerPoints for the learner that differ from existing salesforce presentations: Often, during my observations of new hire training, the product managers provide the vital product information to the trainees. Most of the presentations I have observed, the product manager provides that information through their product launch deck. Often, the slide decks have visual information overload that shuts down the auditory channel, necessary for learning. Have you ever been in a program where there were busy or overloaded PowerPoints? When that happens to me, I often miss how the verbal information ties to what I see. I have usually started writing my notes at the end and get halfway through my notes when the PowerPoint moves on. It takes time to process what you see and hear before the light bulb goes on. Few experts allow processing time before they move on. Process time is necessary. If you have watched the movie "Sully," with Tom Hanks, the inspectors didn't include the process time for the pilot to decide to go to two different airports or attempt a water landing.

Time to process information is more important than racing through a presentation. Often, the product managers see the training presentations as an infringement of their time or show little enthusiasm. If someone is proud of their product, perhaps every audience should feel they are essential. The training responsibility should be as important as the original presentation to the entire salesforce and their slides shouldn't overload visually so their verbal presentation isn't shut down by the working memory.

5.   After onsite training, the salespeople return home and have little time for continuous training, which makes it critical to have the post training system be problem/solution based: A recent study showed that in today's busy family, social, work life, people have only one percent of their time to dedicate to their continual training. Just do the math. A full five workdays of 24 hours, results in 120 hours. One percent of 120 hours is 1.2 hours. Combine that with the adult learning principle of adults seek learning when they confront a problem they can't solve without more knowledge or skills. Continuous training today seems to be delivered through webinars. Does it work for every salesperson?

My research demonstrates that only 5% of the at-home learners are engaged in webinars, the other 95% find it an intrusion on family time and mute their phones or computers and do other activities. Generally, adults have families, and most webinar training occurs after the workday. At the same time, they are engaging with their family having dinner or helping the children do their homework or helping put the children to bed; the adult learner is supposed to sit at their computer and engage in a learning topic they think they already know. The learning effectiveness is questionable. All continuous training needs to be at will and provide methods for solving problems. As far as I know, online learning systems have challenges delivering learning. Learner engagement is only one factor of learning effectiveness.