Relationship Building for Key Account Management

 

Being a leading Healthcare management consulting firm, at The Brooks Group, we understand that successful account managers do more than simply meeting sales goals. This critical position serves as an intermediary that must balance not only internal growth strategies, but also meet and exceed your clients’ needs. To do this, you need to have an understanding of client needs and a strong relationship with key stakeholders within their firm.

Understanding Client Infrastructure and Organization

Your primary contacts for an account may not be the final decision-makers in that company. Consider that there are three main knowledge levels in an organization:

- Governance

- Formal organizational structure

- Networks within the organization

By knowing who possesses the mission-critical information and who is authorized to give final approval, you can present solutions that are effective for your client and that they would be receptive to. This may require networking with individuals outside of your primary points of contact.

The Importance of Integrating with the Governing Body

Healthcare organizations rely on a governing body to manage oversight as well as key business decisions. This group may be composed of physicians, non-physicians, or a combination of the two. Building relationships with these individuals is critical for ensuring that any recommendations you give to your clients are more likely to be not only considered, but approved.

The Organizational Component

While having a strong network with individuals at the governance level is important, you still need to have alliances with client members who manage the day-to-day tasks. A key account management training program can train you to identify the various organizational levels within your client’s company and leverage those relationships.

In general, most healthcare organizations have three key levels: strategic, operational, and tactical.

Strategic Level

These members are entrusted with making decisions that directly impact not just your account projects, but the profitability and viability of their company. Typically this segment makes up five to 10% of the total workforce.

Operational Level

The operational team members are the individuals that strategize and manage the daily oversight for projects. While they still report to people at the strategic level, these people have a greater understanding of the company’s objectives and current pace at a macro level.

Tactical Level

Members at the tactical level are the people implementing any changes approved by the strategic team that are later organized by operational members. Although not as influential as the other levels, this segment understands the company’s pain points at a granular level.

Identifying Key Targets for Networking

Knowing your client’s organizational flow and governance component are important. Healthcare executive coaching helps you to identify the core roles account members play as this will impact your success. Typically, every client organization will have a decision-maker, information provider, influencer, and gatekeeper.

While the decision-maker may seem like the only important role to befriend, note that this member may rely on the expertise or opinion of others before making a choice — so you can’t neglect the other roles. For example, a gatekeeper is someone who screens information before sharing it with a more influential individual. Building a relationship with this person ensures that your communications are consistently heard by the right people.

Prioritize Relationship Building for Success

Understanding how to effectively build relationships not just with your account team, but external influential members is essential to success. A good account manager is trained to be able to balance internal company sales goals with their client’s needs in a way that not only builds trust but also eliminates the risk of losing an account to a competitor.

This blog was originally posted on https://thebrooksgrouponline.com/2021/04/relationship-building-for-key-account-management/

4 Essential Skills for Pharmaceutical Account Managers

 

Developing key account management skills helps you become a trusted advisor for influential accounts and become a strong candidate for future executive positions.

Here are four key skills that every pharmaceutical account manager should be trained in, to successfully retain the most important accounts.

1. Developing a Value Proposition

How exactly do you convince a potential client to continue to choose your products and services over competitors’? By developing a convincing value proposition.

A value proposition is a statement that shows a potential client exactly how they will benefit from your products and services, and more importantly, why they should choose you.

An excellent value proposition will:

- Generate faster, more profitable sales

- Create a long-standing relationship with key clients

- Outline precisely what your company will do for its customers

- Speed up the client acceptance process

When you put an emphasis on customers’ needs, you’ll be able to create a value proposition that is hard to turn down.

2. Accessing & Integrating at Strategic Levels

In order to become a trusted partner of your account, you must be able to understand their needs and behaviors and leverage this information to boost mutual value creation.

To become an invaluable part of your customer’s team, you must integrate yourself at the strategic level. That means you must create relationships with key players within your account’s organization and position yourself as an integral part of the strategic process, rather than just a replaceable supplier of products and services. This will allow you to grow and profit with that account indefinitely.

3. Gap Analysis

In most organizations there is a gap that separates where they are today and where they want to be. Account managers need to understand this gap and evaluate how they can assist the Key Decision Makers (KDMs) to bridge the gap.

Typically, key problems that most businesses face fall into one or more of these four categories:

1. Strategic

2. Financial / Operational

3. Products and Services

4. Marketing

Account managers should become a trusted advisor to the KDMs by devoting time, effort and energy in helping them overcome their most pressing business challenges and reach their long-term goals.

4. Executive Level Presence

Executive level presence is the ability to show confidence and competence that earns you the respect of colleagues and clients alike. Learning how to maximize your executive presence, exemplify confidence and project competence will drive your success in any professional environment.

Knowing who to talk to about what in an organization is only half the battle. By developing an executive presence, you are guaranteeing that clients and colleagues alike will stop, listen, and seriously consider what you are offering.

Gain These Skills and More with Excellence in Account Management

With The Brooks Group’s Excellence in Account Management program, you’ll learn how to understand and predict the complex needs of your clients so that you can become an invaluable part of their organization

Become a respected part of your own organization by retaining influential accounts and becoming a key component of value creation. Contact us today.

More:

Read about the signs suggesting your account managers need training here

Interested in created a custom learning experience for your account managers? Learn about our instructional design capabilities here

This blog was originally posted on https://thebrooksgrouponline.com/2021/03/4-essential-skills-for-pharmaceutical-account-managers/

Gamification of Employee Onboarding - Is it Helpful?

 

Traditionally, onboarding process consisted of a classroom like environment with presentations and tons of documents that the new employee would go through to learn the policies and procedures of the new employment. The typical process is tedious and boring, and it didn’t lend itself to full knowledge acquisition, or long term retention. 1 in 4 employees leave within 180 days of onboarding.

Gamification of the onboarding process utilizes interactive gaming techniques to engage with the new hires, by using their competitive nature and desire to win. But is there a benefit to gamification over the traditional methods of onboarding? The Brooks Group’s customized interactive instructional design services offer far more benefits to employers than traditional classroom learning. As stated in the demo video found HERE, a few gamification benefits include:

- Increased long term engagement

- Longer knowledge retention

- Increased business goal success

- Employee enjoyment leading to the desire to learn more

The New Employee

The world is changing, and as younger people enter the workforce, they expect more interaction and a sense of accomplishment from their employer. This is true during the onboarding process as well. Transitioning into a new position, a new role or a new company isn’t always smooth. Understanding the company, the rules, and employment expectations are essential for both the employer and the employee, but the traditional knowledge sharing methods are no longer a viable way of learning new information. Employees retaining the vast amounts of information given to them in the first few weeks of employment is crucial for long term productivity and success. Attention spans have globally been narrowing down in recent years, so it is important to present information in an engaging manner. Having interactive onboarding training for new employees increases their chances of retaining the data by 50% and leads to greater productivity once the workflow begins.

Retaining talented employees who work hard and produce results is arguably the most important driver to success and growth for any company. According to studies, having a structured and interactive training program is a positive experience that results in a 69% increase in new hires staying with their new company past the first six months of employment.

Gamification of the Onboarding Process

The world is changing, and younger employees who grew up with gaming consoles and digital technology readily available are entering the workforce in droves. It’s crucial to keep up with the change in worker attitudes and remain competitive by retaining the best of the best. This means every aspect of the job needs to be engaging, helpful, and give employees a sense of accomplishment, including the onboarding process.

Using games, fun, or sometimes even silly interaction to keep a new employee engaged in the process is smart. When employees feel motivated through personal accomplishment, they will strive to work harder and keep getting better. This, in turn, keeps morale high and productivity moving at a swift pace. If an employee realizes, through a fun and engaging onboarding process, the company they’re about to work for will set challenging but reachable goals, they will stay, and the company will retain top talent in their field.

The Brooks Group

The Brooks Group has done extensive research into interactive onboarding and training programs with proven results. In addition to our onboarding programs, the company offers an array of training programs to set up your new employees for success, including:

- Sales and Account Management Training

- Healthcare Executive Leadership Training

Contact us today to learn how you can create a fun and positive learning experience for your new employees that produces long-term success for your organization.

This blog was originally posted on https://thebrooksgrouponline.com/2021/03/gamification-of-employee-onboarding-is-it-helpful/

Top 10 Trends Shaping the Pharmaceutical Industry in 2021 - Part 2

 

 

In part one of this blog post we discussed emerging trends in the pharmaceutical industry, such as the growing use of AI, increased interest in precision medicine, biologics, cloud technology etc.

We are back with part two to discuss more emerging trends in the pharmaceutical industry, and how The Brooks Group can help your brand utilize these trends to maximize profits and growth in 2021.

Discounts and Rebates

Overpriced medications have been the focus of much public ire in recent years, especially when the drugs are considered life-saving. For this reason, both lawmakers and governmental agencies have made it a goal to reduce the cost of drugs with discounts and rebates.

With the growing concern over the prices of life-saving drugs like insulin and epinephrine, it is likely that this pattern of drug price scrutiny will continue into 2021 and beyond. Brooks Group’s managed care training seminars help sales and account managers understand the future of the healthcare market and how it will impact drug pricing.

Biologics

Over the past few years, there has been a growing body of research on the role genes play in disease resistance and susceptibility. This has created a rapidly growing interest in the fields of pharmacogenetics, epigenetics, and genomes.

In other words, pharmaceutical researchers are beginning to focus more on unique genetic factors when developing new treatments for cancers, viral infections, and other conditions. It is expected that genetics will be at the forefront of clinical research and development moving forward.

Focus on R&D

One of the key challenges for research-focused pharmaceutical companies is to make R&D a more efficient process. R&D efficiency is measured by the successful approval of New Molecular Entities (NMEs) and therapies versus the monetary investment required.

With the growing need for research, pharmaceutical companies are having to come up with novel ways to create meaningful R&D without hurting their bottom line. The rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccine has been a marvelous achievement of the biotech and pharma industries in 2020.

Note: The Brooks Group can provide pharma companies with market research to help explore how emerging technologies can improve their R&D efficiency.

Consumerization of the Patient

Now more than ever, patients are expecting more out of their pharmaceutical provider. Given the saturation of the pharmaceuticals market, patients have more control over the medications they choose to take. This means that pharmaceutical companies can no longer just provide medication, they have to take a more personalized, customer-centric approach to drug distribution and marketing.

Creating a more empathetic approach to drug marketing will help pharma companies set themselves apart from the competition.

Pharma companies can learn the right insights that will help them understand the needs of patients and personalize treatments with The Brooks Group’s market research offering for patient advocacy in the pharmaceutical industry.

Digital Training

Digital training is a great way to ensure that employees are properly utilizing new technologies. In the pharmaceutical industry, digital training ensures that employees are operating within the strict parameters of regulatory compliance. Additionally, this form of training maximizes employee efficiency.

The Brooks Groups' digital training programs help ensure that employees are properly utilizing new technology to boost efficiency and reduce compliance violations. The Brooks Group can save organizations money by training personnel on-demand from anywhere.

The Brooks Group Can Help You Leverage These Trends

Understanding what the future has in store for the pharmaceutical industry will allow you to effectively manage your marketing and R&D strategies to keep up with emerging trends.

With The Brooks Group, you can count on expert training, market research, consulting, and instructional design services to help your pharmaceutical brand maximize its growth and profits.

Here is a look at our learning demo sheet for a peak at the kind of insights and training we have to offer. Contact us here for more info.

This blog was originally posted on https://thebrooksgrouponline.com/2021/02/top-10-trends-shaping-the-pharmaceutical-industry-in-2021-part-2/

Market Research in Healthcare: A Must for Avoiding the Blind Spot

 

Healthcare is all about helping people and providing the highest level of care. But, if you don’t know what people need, how can you best serve their interests?

Market research is a must for healthcare and biopharma companies. It’s an in-depth dive into the trends in the industry and the needs of the patients to help organizations make educated decisions about where to direct their budgets and the directions they need to take their organization to. Without adequate research, valuable opportunities might be missed and important customer relationships might be lost.

Instead of reacting to market changes and merely surviving, companies need to be proactive in order to thrive. Market research is essential to learn what the market wants, to avoid blind spots, and to create effective strategies to grow your healthcare practice.

What Is the Blind Spot?

A blind spot is an overlooked opportunity. Whether it’s a missed demographic or misplaced funds, a blind spot is essentially an inefficiency in your business strategy.

In a study, managers were asked which stage of the buyer’s journey is most important for driving revenue. Over half replied that attracting new customers was the most important, which is where they spent most of their budgets.

Only after in-depth market research was it discovered that a 5% increase in renewals from existing customers would boost profits by 25%, and acquiring a new customer is between five and 25 times more expensive than keeping an existing one.

What was the blind spot? Their existing customers. These companies were spending a large portion of their budgets on attracting new customers, when retaining existing customers would have earned them much higher returns on their investments.

Blind spots aren’t only about funding the wrong buyer’s stage. Here are some of the most common blind spots companies overlook:

- Not understanding the real reason prospects make decisions.

- Knowing which marketing incentives are most effective.

- Using the wrong strategies.

- Not knowing where your customers come from.

- Chasing the wrong demographic.

- Misunderstanding perceptions of your brand.

While there’s no finite list, it’s easy for healthcare companies to fall victim to any one of these blind spots.

Benefits of Performing Market Research

To avoid blind spots, you need to know what they are. And the only way to do that is with proper market research.

Healthcare market research is the epitome of the phrase “knowledge is power.” With in-depth analytics, healthcare companies can easily see how to maximize efficiency and best serve their patients, leading to numerous benefits:

- Identify the core factors that drive customer decisions.

- Better understand a patient’s experience.

- Bolster marketing strategies.

- Identify gaps in service.

- Stay on top of market trends.

- Optimize R&D investments.

- Learn how customers perceive your brand.

Without market research, healthcare businesses would have to react to changes after they happen instead of being proactive and getting ahead of the changes.

The Brooks Group: Healthcare Market Research Specialists

The Brooks Group is one of the leading healthcare management consulting firms that specializes in market research. We perform in-depth research for healthcare, pharma and biotech companies to help them create effective business strategies. Some of the services we provide to our clients are -

- Survey organizations to identify the voice of the customer.

- Review responses to identify helpful themes, comments, and messages.

- Conduct internal and external gap analyses

- Provide tools to support patient advocacy in the pharmaceutical industry.

- Perform specialized research into case studies, retrospective analysis, and market trends.

- Create marketing or R&D strategies based on response data.

- Concept testing.

Armed with a thorough understanding of how to optimize your operational strategy, companies can avoid blind spots and grow their brand. If you’re ready to take your business strategies to the next level, contact us to get started.

This blog was originally posted on https://thebrooksgrouponline.com/2021/01/market-research-in-healthcare-a-must-for-avoiding-the-blind-spot/

Top 10 Trends Shaping the Pharmaceutical Industry in 2021- Part 1

 

 

The COVID-19 pandemic and the events related to it have sped up the digital transformation of the pharmaceutical industry in an unprecedented manner. As one of the top healthcare consulting firms, at The Brooks Group, we keep a close watch on the innovations, disruptive technologies, global adaptations, evolving political climates, and everything else that affects the pharmaceutical industry in order to provide strategic insights to our clients.

We are bringing to you a two-part blog series that will help our readers understand the landscape and the drivers for change in 2021 and beyond. Here the top 10 trends in the pharmaceutical industry in 2021.

Use of Artificial Intelligence

For the pharmaceutical industry, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is proving to be instrumental in developing new drugs and scientific discovery. Companies that are investing in AI technology are cutting down on production time and user error, improving clinical trials and overall quality in the medical field.

Data Integration & Cloud Technology

From clinical trials to AI simulations to market research, the pharmaceutical industry has a vast repository of data. Storing this data securely and making it readily available is a challenge many companies face, especially since most pharma companies have multiple facilities spanning the globe. This is where data integration and cloud technology play such an important role.

Having all the data stored on cloud servers accessible from any approved device anywhere in the world saves time and increases organizational efficiency. It also eliminates the need to have a team of on-site IT personnel, thus saving costs. With the amount of data used in the pharmaceutical industry, cloud computing continues to be essential to saving time and money, and boosting productivity.

Compliance & Regulatory Environment

Thanks in large part to recent global efforts in creating a vaccine for COVID-19, pharma companies globally are moving towards a collaborative effort. With this change comes the need for compliance with diverse international regulations. Training in these regulations and emerging technologies will be imperative in the coming years to stay competitive in an ever-changing industry.

Precision Medicine

Drugs exclusively created for a patient based on a particular diagnosis (precision medicine) increase the overall effectiveness of the treatment. Unfortunately, the obvious consequence of having small-scale, tailor-made medication is a higher price tag. Most manufacturers cannot handle a smaller quantity of drugs, and specialized facilities that can produce precision drugs are rare. Thankfully a surprising number of investors have taken an interest to guarantee this trend continues to grow.

Virtual & Self Monitoring in Patient Care

Before the invention of IoT devices, patients would have to rely on visits to a medical facility for monitoring. Now, there are numerous devices that patients can bring home for a fraction of the cost that can do the same as if they were at a doctor's office, and the data can be shared in real-time with the medical personnel for review as needed. As patients and caregivers continue to embrace the idea of self-monitoring, the need for medical IoT devices will continue to grow and the technologies will continue to evolve. COVID-19 forced social distancing and isolation has also forced patients and providers to quickly adopt telehealth technologies and practices. This trend is predicted to continue even after the pandemic-related guidelines are no longer enforced.

Pharma companies are usually big behemoths that have to deal with tremendous security and compliance issues. So adapting quickly to change is always a challenge. It helps to make strategic decisions quickly if the leadership team, as well as other executives, stay ahead of the trends and are aware of the innovations and disruptions in the field.

Stay tuned for part two!

This blog was originally posted on https://thebrooksgrouponline.com/2021/02/top-10-trends-shaping-the-pharmaceutical-industry-in-2021-part-1/

Common Market Research Methodologies in Healthcare

Although healthcare is a unique entity in the consumer market, it relies on market research as much as any other industry. Market research helps connect caregivers to patients and provides crucial insights into each patient’s needs. There are several ways to go about this research, each with its own advantages.

The Most Common Healthcare Research Methodologies

Researchers employ several market research methodologies, depending on their goals and available participant pool.

Quantitative Surveys

Quantitative surveys are a simple way to connect with large numbers of participants. Users are asked to fill out information surveys about their preferences and experiences, generally intended to capture the ‘voice’ of the customer and gain broad insights into issues.

Focus Groups

Conducted in-person or online, this methodology brings small groups of participants together to answer questions in a moderator-led discussion. These responses tend to be more in-depth than survey answers and provide important contextual information on specific user segments.

Online Bulletin Boards

Bulletin board research allows participants to log into a web portal and answer questions in a public forum, usually conducted over a several day period. This strategy is flexible in nature, ideal for reaching participants who can’t attend in-person meetings due to physical restrictions or scheduling conflicts.

Ethnographic Research

Ethnographic studies leverage observational research alongside direct interviews to learn more about how participants use products, services, or technologies. Researchers monitor activities and combine their insights with user-provided data to formulate insights into trends and patterns.

One-on-One Interviews

Ideal for high-value participants who may not participate in group sessions (such as surgeons, C-level executives, or other time-restrained professionals), one-on-one interviews provide the most in-depth information of any methodology. They allow interviewers to probe deeper on issues while protecting each participant’s privacy in a confidential setting.

Data Reviews and Content Analyses

The above methodologies describe different ways to collect user data, but the collection is only the first step. Researchers must be able to review data and determine how to derive meaningful insights from the content.

Brooks Group’s approach to analyzing qualitative data differentiates us in the research market. We apply content analysis techniques and procedures that compress long-form data (as might be taken from a one-on-one interview or detailed survey) and break it up into smaller message categories. By doing so, we’re able to sift through large volumes of interview data quickly and efficiently.

In our experience, this is the best way to understand nuances among user responses, identify trends, and gain an empirical basis for monitoring changes over time.

Tools to Support Your Healthcare Research

The Brooks Group offers three products to help facilitate healthcare market research:

1. Voice of the Customer – Customer-driven feedback process that evaluates account managers on custom metrics relative to their competitors.

2. Equity Scan – Assessment tool designed to benchmark attributes and capabilities in key customer segments.

3. Level III Analysis – Detailed assessment process consisting of account manager skill assessments, gap analyses, and long-term strategies for skill development.

The Brooks Group is a leader in providing training, market research, consulting, and instructional design services to healthcare organizations. Visit our site to learn more about the value of implementing a structured methodology to your healthcare enterprise.

This blog was originally posted on https://thebrooksgrouponline.com/2021/01/common-market-research-methodologies-in-healthcare/