It’s All About Field Action, Or Is It?

By: Kriss Barlow, RN, MBA | [email protected]

A manager recently said to me, “We can’t take sales people out of the field for training.”

In this case, one of their field members was new to the organization but had a strong track record of sales success in other industries. The manager’s assumption was that the rep could hit the ground running and figure out the liaison relationships and sales model on the fly.

This got me thinking about how we onboard talent. Consider our commitment (or lack of) to continuous learning, the need to practice our craft of relationship building and how we sell (or don’t) the value of training inside our organizations. How we address these dimensions can often define our ability to do this right and to retain great talent.

For every dollar a company invests in training, it receives about $4.53 in return – which is equivalent to a 353% ROI. [Accenture]

Healthcare loves training… sort of

Healthcare is all about training and continuous learning – for technology, clinical best practice and procedures, efficiency and effectiveness.

But, somehow, field staff training is often viewed differently. Industries that are growth-driven spend a great deal of time and attention on training. Yet, in healthcare, liaison teams can go years with limited training. Training for me includes clinical immersion, compliance, use of new tools and training on the organization’s strategy and implications. Training is also about honing the skills to do the job. Nobody fields a baseball team without batting practice even though the players may have played baseball before.

Because I am a certified sales trainer I am certainly open to the perception of bias here, but my reference is not just to hiring outside trainers…though that’s not a bad idea! Good training can often be done internally. But, the lack of regular skill training and the push for new, better techniques has implications far beyond new scripts for the field.

Product knowledge from the customer’s view

For most liaisons, product learning is an active, investigative process, often starting with interviews with important stakeholders. Meetings are important, but the liaison must be able to extract message points that will resonate with their audience. Clinical content is often based on “how we do it.” Good field staff need to know “why they need it, how they would access it and when they would refer out for it.” It works much better when the rep has really done their homework using any and all sources to create questions, read background and guide the internal clinical expert to speak about their offering as they would a referring physician. Good training programs guide and reinforce the field learning process.

Is it time?

This is a wonderful time of year for a little personal evaluation – with a critical eye toward your own continuous learning and training. Leaders owe it to their teams to invest in training. New learnings can be energizing. They can also remind us of areas where we need to “tighten up” a bit. Training also gets the team together to focus on positive learning about the clinical capabilities and to set shared goals. As you ponder your 2020, make sure to carve out time for new learning.