How to Ace Your Virtual Product Launch

Welcome to How to Sales Enablement, our series of trends, tips, and tactics for sales teams.

The pharmaceutical industry is facing new challenges. Even before the pandemic, demand forecasting, risk management, shifting customer behavior, and fluctuating prices added to the complexity of one of the most competitive global sectors.

In such a fast-changing and disruptive environment, companies must be better equipped than ever to ensure a new product launches with the maximum possible impact. That impact has to be sustainable across different markets and healthcare settings, as well as throughout the product life cycle.

Prior to March 2020, most customer engagement was face-to-face. With travel restrictions and social distancing requirements across the country, many company's representatives have pivoted to virtual selling and training teams have shifted as well. Gone are the days of a two-day on-site and in-person ride alongs. Teams are unable to meet with customers and they’re also not going to the home office yet.

We asked a senior manager of sales effectiveness and training at a global medical technology company how to address these challenges. We learned how life sciences companies can empower their reps with the tools, techniques, and resources they need to hit their numbers and find success in a virtual world.

Here are four best practices for a high-impact virtual product launch.

1. Train on the Message and Message Delivery

Launching a product successfully depends on coordinating a lot of moving parts: message development, formal training, coaching on messaging, practice, certification, and reinforcing that knowledge. Today, all these activities happen in a remote environment that requires new skills.

While many company's internal processes of working with marketing and defining core messaging were relatively stable as teams pivoted to virtual, many externally facing processes changed significantly.

“We really started to feel the difference when training and preparing reps to deliver messaging to customers. Prior to March, those engagements would have been more face to face. Now it's a whole new medium,” said the manager. “Marketing collateral has to look different in a virtual setting.”

“There's a lot of research about brain stimulus, particularly in the virtual world, and engaging in sales conversations. Customers can really only remember about 10% of what you're talking about over time,” he added. “So when we build messaging, it's got to be simplified with a really good core theme. We have to build collateral for virtual engagement.”

The company began to train reps on two things: 1) product messaging and 2) how to deliver that messaging on camera. Pre-call planning is now more important than before the pandemic and, in addition to researching prospects, sellers have a long list of technology considerations.

Sellers need to make sure the camera is working, the background looks good, they look decent on camera, their position is right, and they know where the customer will be on camera. They also need to decide whose video platform they’ll use and if they need to plan a test call to make sure all the IT capabilities are in place.

Takeaway: The virtual world has a different dynamic from what reps are used to. Are you training reps just on product messaging or also on how to deliver that messaging on-screen?

2. Coach and Reinforce

Effective coaching and reinforcement are critical in a virtual world. When sales leaders, trainers, and sellers are geographically dispersed, it’s more important than ever to stay in contact with each other and to leverage tools to support that.?

“Coaching not only promotes conversation but also is career building for the reps. Trainers are like the teachers and the sales leaders are like the parents. Sales leaders are having daily conversations with their reps while sales trainers are not, which is why it’s so important to train sales leaders as coaches,” he said.

Our life sciences manager noted that sharing videos helps not only the coaches, but motivates and inspires all levels of the sales team. “Hearing the story straight from an industry experts’ mouth or hearing how excited and proud someone is about a newly discovered best practice gets the viewer excited as well, keeping them engaged and more enthusiastic about using that new best practice in the future,” he said.

He noted that reinforcement has to be constant now since trainers are no longer able to go into the field with reps. The company has several process in place to ensure reinforcement, including a weekly "flash drill" that helps track progression and whether reps are actually learning the material. Reps that have mastered the messaging have the confidence to go out and have sales conversations.

Takeaway: Confidence and product knowledge are key. How are you reinforcing your reps’ initial training to keep them fresh and on message?

3. Focus on Soft Skills

Because of the pandemic, soft skills have come into play now more than ever. “We're taking on new behaviors and skills and competencies. We weren't flexing those muscles as much before because they just weren't as important," said the manager.

"We have to make sure reps can deliver the core message and—beyond messaging—that it is going to resonate with the customer," he said. "We have to meet the customers where they are."

One of the pitfalls of virtual selling is that it can become a monologue versus a dialogue between seller and buyer. This makes the soft skills of engagement more important.

"You've got to still talk and engage, ask questions, discover, so that you understand the needs so that we can provide the right solution. All of those things that are blocking and tackling. But virtual changes all those dynamics a little bit," he added. "It's not just about the messaging, but all the soft skills around the messaging."

The company's sellers were faced with nuances that they weren't used to. The training team worked on making sure they were comfortable with the curriculum and emphasized being confident when in virtual engagements with customers.

Coaches at the company began recording sellers delivering the key elevator speech. This allowed them to give targeted feedback about their performance and coach to refine and improve it.

Takeaway: Selling virtually requires new skill. Are you equipping sellers with both the hard and soft skills they need to be effective?

4. Share Best Practices

Research shows that 70% of informal learning happens in the field through collaboration between sellers. Peer-to-peer learning is one of the best ways to share and reinforce skills. But in a virtual environment, collecting and sharing of best practices is more difficult.

With new product launches, it's essential to feed competitive intel and buyer objections from early conversations back to the team so that messaging or delivery can be refined.

The manager noted that the most highly rated training sessions were those in which sellers learned from the people that they work with—their experiences and their mistakes.

"In the old days, win stories used to be a long email. Well, someone has to write that email and then at the end of day, someone has to read that email, right?"

Today, the team collects best practice wins on video. On video, the seller explains the resource they used, why it was successful, the discovery process, and how the conversation went.

"It's not about the 'what' it's the 'how I did it and why it was successful'. That's the golden nugget. That's what sellers want to hear because they can learn from it," he said.

He drives successful behavior by sharing best practices across the team so that they can replicate it. Reps are now in the habit of recording two to three minute videos with the high points of big wins. These are celebrated and shared "all the way up to the C suite."

"Our CEO will reply with 'Great job!' There's a lot of kudos and recognition that comes down from our highest levels that reps get to bask in. And that's a really great feeling," he added.

Takeaway: Don't overlook the power of peer-to-peer learning and the value of sharing wins. Are you motivating sellers with 'golden nuggets' that will help them close the next big deal?

Learn More

Check out 5 Steps for a Winning Virtual Product Launch for more practical advice.

***