How a Sales LMS Helps Reps Thrive in a Highly Regulated Environment

A sales LMS helps reps in highly regulated industries stay up-to-date, navigate difficult conversations, and disseminate critical information to clients

Sales reps face great challenges in today’s marketplace. There’s more competition than ever before, clients have less time to talk, and they may view reps as merely high-pressure salespeople.

Sales reps who operate in highly regulated industries, such as pharmaceuticals, face additional obstacles. A sales learning management system (LMS) can help them navigate difficult conversations and provide more value to clients.

Let’s take a look at how a sales LMS helps reps in the pharmaceutical industry.

Pharmaceutical reps face a tough sales landscape today

Sales teams in the pharmaceutical industry face a host of difficulties in today’s environment.

Doctors are less available to meet with sales reps

Doctors have less time to meet with pharma sales reps, although the face-to-face meeting has long been a staple of pharma sales. They have more patients to meet and more paperwork to fill out. And they often don’t see the value of meeting with sales reps in the first place, complaining that pharma sales reps don’t present any new or relevant data, and their questions remain unanswered.

Doctors have less confidence in new drugs

Sales reps must educate doctors and help them become comfortable with new drugs in an environment that is eroding their confidence.

The FDA approves new drugs much faster than just a decade ago. From 1990 to 1999 the FDA brought 34 drugs to market, and by 2010 to 2018 they approved 41 new drugs. Where it used to take three years to review all the studies and clinical trial results, it now takes less than a year.

Along with this faster timeline, blackbox warnings and market withdrawals have also increased. Many doctors are concerned that the FDA’s restrictions are too lax.

Support through a sales LMS can help your reps provide value and navigate the difficult conversations arising from this environment.

A sales LMS lets you set both reps and clients up for success

A sales LMS can be used to train both your reps and your clients. You can use it externally as a sales support tool when you have a product that requires a lot of client education. Share information and training with doctors and other stakeholders outside of your company, as well as across your sales reps internally.

Educate your clients with an LMS

Disseminating information to doctors is an essential part of the job for pharma sales reps.

Doctors agree that staying on top of new information is critical. But they don’t have time to review every study published, as there are an estimated 1.29 new peer reviewed studies published every minute.

Sales reps can add value by helping doctors stay up-to-date on the studies related to their products via their sales LMS. Pharma reps can provide updates on regulations, clinical trial results, side effects, etc.

These updates are available on mobile phones and tablets, which lets the doctor or client access valuable information from your reps when it’s convenient for them.

Train sales reps and let them learn from each other

An LMS can be an excellent vehicle for training your sales force. It lets you make standardized information available to help reps answer difficult questions. And it lets your reps learn from each other when you take advantage of social learning in your LMS.

Thanks to updates and training via mobile phone in real time, pharmaceutical reps can access materials when they need them out in the field with doctors.

The Dokeos LMS also lets managers see learning progress, so companies can evaluate whether or not training is successful. If an employee struggles in one area, training can be modified to address that one weakness, rather than have them retake an entire training module. Making learning into a competition may help reps stay motivated and engaged, too.

You can make learning interactive for both reps and clients, providing immediate feedback in a risk-free environment.

The Dokeos LMS supports pharma sales reps

Working with IPSEN, Dokeos has been challenged to adapt the LMS and make it compliant with GxP and especially FDA 21 CFR PART 11. We are able to help pharma reps by providing a vehicle to share important information, providing ongoing training, and building assessments into pharmaceutical sales rep training. Training sales reps often translates to better performance in any industry, and this may be even more important in a highly regulated industry.

Contact us if you want to access Dokeos LMS and launch you learning platform.

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