Dan Rizzo, Veeva

The past 18 months and counting, amid a global health emergency, have opened the floodgates to a new mix of digital and in-person interactions across the life sciences. While office visits and live events still provide a critical foundation for relationship building, most healthcare professionals (HCPs), still navigating the Covid-19 pandemic, now say a hybrid blend with personalized, on-demand digital communication is their preferred way to engage with field teams.

This explains why last year’s spike in remote meetings and emails continued into 2021 even as more organizations loosened restrictions.

 (See Figure 1 below). As traditional sales calls reach a new baseline, it’s time to rethink biopharma commercial strategies with a hybrid mindset.

The implications of a company’s hybrid strategy span its field deployment models, educational and promotional content, and engagement channels, as well as the data that provides a backbone for it all. An intentional approach in each of these areas can help go-to-market teams make the right choices about when, how and why to connect with a physician in person, over a virtual meeting, or via email.

To understand how this is playing out in real-world settings, we asked practicing physicians and industry leaders which digital skills and data are key to success in the evolving pharma landscape.

Based on their observations, life sciences is well on its way towards a new standard of personalized, two-way, and data-driven customer experiences.

While biopharma leaders point out that the trend toward digital started well before the pandemic, it is gaining steam as doctors realize they can no longer wait for a sales representative’s next visit. Many HCPs are also raising the bar, asking reps to prioritize only the most pressing information their patients need.

“Our HCP customers still say that their biggest source of information is from field-based pharma reps,” said Corinne Yaouanq-Lyngberg, director of omnichannel strategic enablement at Novo Nordisk. “Yet, as digital accelerated during the pandemic, physicians began expecting actionable information at their fingertips. We can better serve HCPs—and, by extension, their patients—when we embrace other ways to build relationships.”

Companies like Novo Nordisk are employing creative solutions to deepen HCP connections in less time. They’re using new channels that allow them to continue educating and engaging customers (from a distance when necessary) while respecting their individual interests and preferences. This means sharing information through virtual calls, mobile apps, electronic health record (EHR) systems and digital content that doctors can pass along to their patients.

The pandemic has made an indisputable case for online engagement, helping field teams warm up to digital channels. Even sales organizations that have heavily invested in building in-person relationships for years now see the value of an omnichannel customer experience. Field reps know it’s crucial to augment engagement in between visits using resources from their digital toolbox.

“The biggest nut to crack isn’t training people to use a new tool,” noted Yaouanq-Lyngberg. “That part is actually easy since our reps have used digital tools for some time now. It’s more about helping them best orchestrate the entire customer experience leveraging this evolving mix.”

Connecting through on-demand digital channels

With telehealth adoption rising to levels 38x higher than before the pandemic,

 HCPs have grown comfortable using technology. In their personal lives as well, doctors are now accustomed to online communications and self-service access to relevant information when and where it’s most convenient. In fact, 70% now consider themselves digital natives.

John Panozzo, MD, of Primary Health Associates, appreciates how virtual tools help him keep up with important treatment options. “For the last 20 years, we’ve had reps come into the office in person, usually unannounced, and wait in the lobby for an opportunity to talk to us,” he said. “Now, with digital, it’s more efficient because I can request samples online, speak to a scientific liaison in a virtual meeting and go through a new article or study without disrupting my time with patients.”

With fewer interruptions, HCPs are more attentive and engaged during these conversations, which end up becoming more scientific and meaningful. However, Panozzo notes that it’s easier to connect online with a rep he already knows. “The relationships we had in place before Covid were easier to maintain during pandemic restrictions, while interactions with new reps became more difficult,” he said. “We get thousands of emails a day and don’t have time to look at each one.”

Engagement patterns across Veeva’s customer base reflect this. HCPs with established rep relationships open their emails 4x more often, attend 3x more remote meetings and spend 3x longer in those meetings than their peers.

 (See Figure 2 below). Life sciences companies have a prime opportunity to differentiate themselves by taking these relationships to the next level with more intimate, concierge-like experiences for HCPs across channels.

As the hybrid engagement model evolves, HCPs such as Panozzo are looking for interactive, user-friendly digital tools that can help them build new relationships with reps. They want the ability to proactively request information about medications their patients need, rather than waiting for updates whenever pharma companies think it is the right time to intervene.

Relearning HCP preferences with the help of data

To deliver ideal experiences in the face of these new expectations, reps should look at HCPs from a different vantage point. Eric Solis, director and lead data scientist at Takeda, noted, “Before the pandemic, our approach was centered on face-to-face interaction with other tactics sporadically playing supporting roles. While face-to-face interaction and building personal relationships with HCPs is critical, the risk is that this “door-to-door salesman”-centric approach is becoming outdated and won’t cut it post-Covid. We need to leverage data to aid our teams in relearning our customers one-by-one to help figure out the right mix of engagements to meet each HCP’s individual needs.”

While nine in 10 HCPs say they want either all virtual or a combination of virtual and in-person meetings moving forward,5 companies are noticing huge variation across their customer bases in terms of how doctors want to engage in the hybrid environment. This makes it hard for field reps to know the best ways to deliver information to each individual HCP.

“As we move away from homogeneous HCP interactions and preferences, we need to understand our customers several layers deep,” adds Solis. “Beyond simple operational things, like when reps can get into an HCP’s office, it’s important to know what content is most appropriate for each touchpoint.”

Field reps should keep in mind that even when they can get in the door, that doesn’t mean in-person is the most effective way to share information. Instead, they can focus on meeting each physician where they are, with the specific information they need to make a difference in how they treat patients.

Keeping up with these changing dynamics requires robust data across the entire patient journey. Solis’ team, for example, uses real-time insights to advance Takeda’s goal: connecting education about rare disease treatments with the right physicians and patients to accelerate diagnoses.

“Particularly with rare diseases, timely delivery of relevant informative content is absolutely essential to patient care,” he said. “Pinpointing these opportunities is a fundamental part of any interaction between physicians and reps.”

Data and analytics can also recommend next-best actions for each HCP and help commercial teams measure their impact. This involves boiling down a broad spectrum of data sources into insightful, actionable nuggets of information and getting those to the field in ways that help them adapt to new digital tactics. When commercial organizations help field teams do their jobs more efficiently and deliberately, reps can better focus on delivering key content to HCPs and, in turn, their patients.


The possibilities of hybrid are far-reaching. Companies that transform commercial models to embrace a flexible blend of face-to-face, virtual, and on-demand meetings can deliver the experience that HCPs truly want and expect. This is critical, since pre-Covid face-to-face engagement levels aren’t returning, even as healthcare organizations begin to allow in-person activity again. Needs and expectations have changed too much in the meantime for a return to business-as-usual.

Brands need to reimagine how they connect with customers, deliver great patient support and services and adopt digital channels as permanent and foundational components of engagement. Companies that do this well will drive higher levels of commercial sales, ultimately helping those who have the most to gain: patients.

Dan Rizzo is the global head of commercial business consulting at Veeva.

2. McKinsey & Company, “Telehealth: A quarter-trillion-dollar post-Covid-19 reality?,” July 2021, 

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/telehealth-a-quarter-trillion-dollar-post-covid-19-reality

3. “Intelligent HCP Engagement in Europe” Veeva Whitepaper, 2021, 

https://www.veeva.com/eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/VE172-Across-Health-Remote-Engagement-WP-Redesign.pdf

4. Veeva Pulse data, U.S. Market, May 2021

5. “Is Covid-19 altering how pharma engages with HCPs?” Accenture, August 2020


Articles

Three keys to achieving digital excellence in the next normal, where a hybrid commercial model will be the standard for physician engagement

New Blueprint for HCP Relationships

Every pharmaceutical company rapidly shifted to digital over the past year so their field teams could stay connected with doctors during the pandemic. From virtual meetings to email, digital has dramatically altered the face of engagement and delivered promising results for sales rep productivity and the healthcare professional (HCP) experience. Doctors have more convenient, efficient ways to interact with reps, while the field has new channels to complement face-to-face visits.

The most dramatic digital shift has been the use of remote meetings as a primary way to engage HCPs. The number of virtual meetings increased more than sixfold, while rep-sent emails rose nearly fivefold, according to the tens of thousands of field rep activities that were captured in Veeva CRM since January 2020.

The trend toward digital will only accelerate, as companies look at long-term opportunities to rethink commercial operations and find digital ways to better serve doctors. Working with leaders across the life sciences industry, it’s clear that remote selling is here to stay, even when in-person access with physicians and hospitals opens up again, making the role of the rep more important than ever.

Now the question is how do companies navigate this new environment and drive digital excellence in commercial? Success in this new hybrid world will depend on organizations’ rapid move to a modular content approach, leveraging data and insights to optimize digital engagement, and reps having greater flexibility to meet customers on their terms.

Accelerate digital-first engagement with more content, faster

One of the biggest trends we’ve seen in our industrywide Veeva Pulse data has been the increase in average duration of sales calls during Covid-19. Virtual meetings extended the amount of time HCPs were able to meet with reps to 19 minutes, compared to traditional, face-to-face meetings that typically average three minutes.

Rep-sent emails also saw significant engagement, with an average open rate of 36%, in contrast to the 3% average open rate of headquarter-sent emails. These Pulse trends highlight the vital importance of rep relationships opening digital doors with HCPs. They also signal a growing need for more content to share in longer meetings and follow-up emails—not to mention, the ability to quickly tailor that content for different HCP audiences.

Digital engagement requires a more scalable and agile approach to content that allows reps to deliver highly personalized—and compliant—information to HCPs even faster. And for a growing number of companies, modular content has been the answer.

Unlike traditional content strategies that require each new asset to be built from scratch, a modular approach simply reassembles existing, pre-approved content blocks, or modules, to help streamline content creation and customization for different audiences and channels. Brand teams can define pre-approved components, such as text, images, and claims, that reps can then easily mix and match to create a variety of polished assets in minimal time.

“In a virtual world, having this modular content readily available will be key for reps to engage in relevant, useful conversations with HCPs at the right time,” said Mark McLaughlin, sales leader at one of the world’s leading biopharmaceutical companies, developing digital capabilities to operate in a hybrid commercial model. “Selling becomes a much more iterative, storytelling approach with modular content. Reps can build upon each HCP engagement and bring customers along their journey in a much more effective, virtual way.”

A modular content approach can be key in not only filling the content gap so reps can drive valued interactions with HCPs, but also accelerate medical, legal and regulatory (MLR) review cycles. At Novo Nordisk, for example, the marketing team is increasingly leveraging pre-approved, modular content, so reviewers simply ensure the references are the way they should be instead of spending hours reviewing something as if it’s a brand-new asset.

“[Reviewers] only look at the context of how that content is going to be used, and that brings down our review times considerably,” said Morten Kruse Sorensen, global director of multichannel excellence and operations at Novo Nordisk.

For an industry that requires strict adherence to approval workflows across MLR teams, modular content provides significant benefits. One global life sciences company was able to increase their average speed to market by 28%, while reducing the cost of content creation by 19% and the number of review cycles by 22% by implementing a modular approach.

Empower reps with better data and customer insights

Data is another critical component in ensuring effective digital engagement. It provides visibility into the speed at which field teams and HCPs are adopting digital, as well as highlights which strategies are working and how reps can leverage digital in the most effective ways possible.

Now is the perfect time to look back at the frequency of virtual meetings and rep-sent emails over the last six months, with an eye toward gaining greater insight into rep behavior, as well as what might be driving their decisions to engage via one channel over another.

Some reps may feel remote meetings aren’t as effective as face-to-face interaction, while others may have preconceived notions that HCPs are unwilling to engage virtually. For those who are shying away from digital channels, industrywide benchmark data can be a powerful tool for shifting mindsets and driving greater adoption by shining a light on what’s truly happening through digital engagement.

For example, with some companies we partner with, their reps reported difficulty in getting HCPs to commit to meeting virtually. However, our benchmark data revealed that there were roughly 80% of HCPs who were engaging with reps at other companies through those same digital channels. By highlighting these insights with the team, field leaders were able to make it clear to reps that perhaps the problem isn’t the channel itself, but the way in which they’re approaching it.

Digital adoption can also be encouraged by measuring rep productivity in new ways. A metric like time on content places greater value in the amount of time HCPs are spending consuming content over the number of visits reps are making, thereby sending the message that virtual meetings are worth the extra prep and pre-call planning.

Through frequent, ongoing analysis and level-setting with data, field leaders can show their teams that there is, in fact, an opportunity in digital; it’s just a matter of finding the right way in which to engage customers through those channels.

Meet customers where they are with hybrid selling

Even for reps who are enthusiastic about digital engagement, the question remains: what is the right blend of virtual and in-person channels? Between remote meetings, email and face-to-face visits, when, and how often, should each be leveraged?

Unfortunately, there is no one-size fits all solution. Not all customers are the same, and each will have different preferences for digital. Even within the large (70%) subset of HCPs who are now digital natives

, there may be individuals who still prefer face-to-face engagement on certain occasions.

“In the age of social-distance selling, biopharma companies and their reps need flexibility to meet customers where they are—both in terms of access policies and an HCP’s preferred method of engagement,” said McLaughlin. “Digital gives reps more flexibility than ever before to meet doctors on their terms. Establishing relationships with customers in a virtual way will be key to ensuring patients receive the medicines they need, regardless what the future holds after Covid-19.”

Asking a rep to figure out what hundreds of different HCP preferences look like is near impossible. That’s were channel preference archetypes can help. This method of categorizing customers based on common traits and preferences leverages industrywide data to recognize patterns in HCP behavior.

For example, on one end of the spectrum you may have a group of “digital engagers” that frequently use virtual meetings and email. On the opposite end you may have “traditionalists” who rarely engage through digital and prefer face-to-face interaction.

In working with companies to measure channel preference, we have found a relatively even distribution of channel preference segments across their most important customer deciles. By evaluating these preferences across all customer touchpoints, reps gain a much clearer understanding of the best channels to use when engaging a particular HCP.

This kind of customer-centric approach toward measurement and engagement is critical to effective hybrid engagement; it will better serve doctors and strengthen the salesforce even further.

Digital will take hold thanks to the reps

Looking ahead, digital will become more than just a way to communicate, but also enable key services from drug sampling and HCP consent to medical inquiry management. Companies will better meet HCPs on their terms with the information and services they need through any channel, any device, at any time, in every therapeutic area.

The digital opportunity for reps is to stay engaged and maintain deeper, sustained relationships with customers. And it’s clear that for digital to stick, rep relationships will be key to advancing the adoption of new digital approaches and driving a greater mix of face-to-face and digital interactions with HCPs.

The real digital transformation in the life sciences is just beginning. The companies that achieve digital excellence this year will successfully navigate this new hybrid environment and adopt new content and engagement strategies that better meet the needs of their customers. The past year of living through the pandemic has shown us the way to maximize HCP engagement, even in a post-Covid world.

1. Veeva Pulse Trends, Global Market, November 2020. 

How to Launch a Global Modular Content Strategy

Dan Rizzo is the global head of commercial business consulting at Veeva. He and his team are responsible for shaping Veeva’s consulting offerings, which focus on addressing customers’ business challenges across R&D and commercial operations. He can be reached at 

Covid-19 reveals how important field reps will be to driving digital adoption