Recently I was asked to design some programs for a drug-launch meeting. The client wanted the doctors participating to have a clear understanding of the new product’s key messages without resorting to the standard slide review type of training session that they have been subjected to so many times. Oh, and could I make it fun and creative.
The request was actually nothing new; several clients had asked the same thing in the past. But oftentimes, after presenting my ideas, the designs were perceived as too far out of the box to garner support from conservative marketing teams, and so we’d usually retreat back to the team’s comfort zone—standard slide review or speaker training sessions.
The difference this time was that the client was thrilled with the ideas I had presented and wanted to move forward with them for launch.
What I had suggested was to draw out the key messages by making the doctors hunt for them—forcing them to dig deeper into the data. This would be done by taking them through a series of games—yes, games—in which we would challenge their knowledge of the data while at the same time reinforcing their understanding of the key messages covered in the scientific sessions.
What’s of interest to me here is not the games themselves, but the leap of faith that the client took to break out of the box and go with something new. Taking that leap is tough for many clients. We live in the very conservative world of the pharmaceutical universe; most people just want to stay in a safe orbit. The problem is that our times demand innovation—innovation in all phases of the business, from new compound and device development to communication strategies that support the marketing of those new compounds and devices.
I knew when I brought my communications career into the pharma space over 10 years ago that the standard speaker training session had a limited lifespan. Doctors, at some point, would be unwilling to sit in session after session of best practices in presentation skills. I mean how many times do you want to hear that you need to make some solid eye contact and project your voice to get your message across with impact. Don’t get me wrong—these things are still necessary—as long as we’re using our bodies to communicate our message, we’ll need disciplined skills. But these times demand a different approach to communications training, one that’s not so “head on,” so pedantic.
Without motivation being reinforced no amount of behavioral skills training will be carried out to the field. We will forever be stuck in a loop, attempting to train behavior without affecting the root causes for that behavior, which are motivation and belief. But coming at the problem with a new approach, a back door approach if you will, has the potential to increase that motivation and thereby change the outcome in the field.
What I like about the games we are playing in these sessions is that they surreptitiously strengthen the motivation for speaking by drawing the speaker deeper into the key messages. We all know that we communicate much more clearly and, more importantly, are more persuasive when we are motivated and inspired to communicate a particular message. Good training speaks to the root causes of our behavior and modifies it by offering a different motivation or inspiration. By coming through the back door of motivation and inspiration we arrive at our original objective: speakers who are well prepared to communicate our healthcare message. The exciting thing is that this is accomplished without ever once reminding them to make solid eye contact or project their voice.
