Life Sciences Sales Enablement (Move Fast, Stay Compliant)
The right life sciences sales enablement platform can help you:
- Create engaging virtual experiences to replace demonstrations previously given in-person (e.g., demos of medical devices and tools).
- Better demonstrate products that are difficult or impossible to present in-person (e.g., the effects of new drugs or large machines).
- Ensure reps are able to give fully compliant presentations — from the words they say to the content they present.
- Simplify content management so reps always have the material and training they need — when and where they need it.
- Enable non-technical subject matter experts to quickly create engaging content so necessary training and sales content can be created fast enough to stay ahead of the competition.
In order to achieve each of these capabilities, in our experience, a good life sciences sales enablement solution needs to have the following features:
- Feature #1: Advanced e-detailing capabilities such as 3D modeling, virtual reality, and user engagement analytics
- Feature #2: Video coaching with AI-powered analysis
- Feature #3: User-friendly content authoring
- Feature #4: Advanced search capabilities
In this post, we’ll cover these features in detail using our Bigtincan Learning software (of which Brainshark is a part) as an example. Our experience in life sciences sales enablement comes from having worked with pharmaceutical and medical technology companies such as AstraZeneca, Boston Scientific, and many more.
If you’re part of a life sciences sales team and would like to see how Bigtincan Learning can help your team, you can schedule a live demo today.
Feature #1. Advanced e-detailing capabilities such as 3D modeling, virtual reality, and user engagement analytics for engaging life sciences presentations
Two of the main challenges MedTech and pharma sales teams currently face are:
- How to take the physical presentation of a product (such as artificial knees or pill bottles) and turn it into a virtual presentation without losing value.
- How to present products that are impossible — or nearly impossible — to show physically (such as how a drug works or large medical machines).
The Bigtincan Learning offering solves these problems with advanced e-detailing and analytic features including 3D modeling, augmented and virtual reality, live user interaction tracking, and in-depth automatic reporting. Additionally, every feature has been optimized for use on nearly any device.
3D modeling and interactive graphics
3D modeling gives you the ability to provide a virtual 360° view of any product, so buyers can view it from any angle, just like they would in a physical setting. You can also include interactive graphics in slides, PDFs, or other documents.
For example, if a product demo includes a section of fine print, the viewer could click on the fine print and immediately an enlarged image would be displayed.
Augmented and virtual reality
The augmented and virtual reality feature lets you bring a product to life by taking a 3D image of a product and placing it in a virtual simulation of any room such as a doctor’s office or surgery room. This gives the buyer a good idea of how the product will look in reality and how it will fit in their space.
Secure content sharing and live customer engagement analytics
Many virtual selling platforms are built for live rather than asynchronous presentations. This means the buyer can only view the product virtually during the meeting. Some tools do allow you to share access to a virtual view of the product with your client so they can view it on their own time, however, very few tools track real-time user interactions or allow you to update the product information without sharing a new access link.
Bigtincan — an industry leader in digital content management and sales enablement for over a decade — lets you create a secure digital sales room where content from any source (including the interactive virtual presentations discussed in this section) can be uploaded and shared with potential buyers via a unique URL. This gives buyers the ability to review the content whenever it’s convenient for them while you maintain complete control over the content.
You can add or remove content at any time. Any updates to the original content are automatically synced with the content on this site, so buyers and stakeholders will always have the latest version. You can also control which documents or presentations (if any) can be downloaded.
Finally, the digital sales room tracks user activity in real-time so you can gain valuable insight into how the assets are being used.
For example, you can see when an asset has been viewed, which part of the content was viewed for the longest, which assets are viewed the most frequently, etc. With this information, you’ll be able to follow up at the most opportune moment for closing the deal (such as after they’ve viewed the pricing page and are reviewing the benefits page).
All of this information is arranged in a user-friendly reporting dashboard.
#2. Video Coaching with AI-powered analysis to ensure every rep is ready to provide error-free messaging on any product
In heavily regulated industries like life sciences, saying the wrong thing during a sales pitch could cause legal or financial liability. When products and policies are constantly changing, it can be very difficult to ensure every rep is able to provide error-free messaging.
Additionally, reps often have to make the pitch while standing in front of the physician’s office or over the phone between a healthcare provider’s patient appointments. It can be especially difficult for reps to remember their training in high-pressure situations like this where they only have a few minutes to make the pitch.
Video coaching lets reps practice their pitch in a lower-risk setting so you can ensure they get it right before the sales conversation. Through constant repetition, error-free messaging can almost become second nature for reps. However, this level of repetition requires a lot of time from managers or the more experienced reps responsible for training.
With most video coaching features, the manager would have to stay very attentive and take detailed notes throughout every video pitch they watch in order to be certain the rep included certain phrases and avoided others (which is crucial to staying compliant). This is very tedious and time-consuming.
In contrast, Brainshark’s video coaching feature eases the burden of continuous video coaching by offering an AI-powered analysis feature (we call it machine learning) that:
- Tracks whether or not certain words were included or avoided during the pitch.
- Counts the number of filler words used (and which ones were used).
- Analyzes the tone of voice, body language, rate of speech.
- And much more.
Here’s how it works.
Sales managers (or whoever is in charge of training) assign video activities for a group of reps or individual reps to complete. Before officially submitting the assignment, reps have the option to ask their peers for feedback.
This gives the rep an opportunity to learn more and improve their skills without putting full responsibility for all training on one manager.
Then, once it’s submitted, the video automatically gets scored by machine analysis.
Managers in charge of training can use this AI-powered score to prioritize feedback and save time reviewing the video. This makes it much more manageable to ensure every rep is ready to sell despite constantly changing products and policies.
Finally, Brainshark’s readiness scorecards give you visibility into the overall online learning progress and performance of individual reps, the team as a whole, or specific curriculums.
If a new product was recently rolled out, you can see who has yet to complete the training and who may need more training because of a low score.
Brainshark lets you pull in data from Salesforce and Veeva to view sales KPIs alongside scores from learning activities. This helps you find correlations between how reps are performing in the field and how they performed in training.
If a sales rep is good at initially closing a deal but struggles with maintaining an ongoing relationship with the healthcare provider (HCP) that results in more sales, you would be able to see if they scored low — or didn’t complete training — on how to maintain profitable relationships.
#3. User-friendly content authoring for quickly creating compliant content
Most content authoring software requires highly technical skills to use, which means all training needs to be created by a specialized team. In the life sciences industry, sales training content then needs to be verified by a subject matter expert and a compliance officer (or whoever is in charge of ensuring regulatory compliance). If the SME or compliance officer finds an issue with the training, it goes back to the content creation team and the process starts over.
Waiting for the content creation team to create the training and then running it past various levels of authority for approval is often a very slow process.
Brainshark lets you speed up content creation by letting non-technical persons create engaging, professional content in less than ten minutes. This means any subject matter expert (SME) can quickly and easily create new content and send it off to the compliance officer for approval. If any changes do need to be made, the content can be updated in a matter of minutes by the SME themselves, without having to go to a separate content creation team.
Not only does this make creating the content a much faster process, but it also cuts out one step of the process by combining content creation with SME approval.
To create training content in Brainshark, you upload any content you already have (PDF, PowerPoints, Excel sheets, etc.) or create fresh material from right within the platform. Then, you can add interactive elements (such as quizzes or embedded hyperlinks) or voice overs and videos to make it more engaging.
Additionally, Brainshark can be integrated with Veeva. This means if you’re using the Veeva approval management, content created in Brainshark can seamlessly enter the approval flow you already have in place.
Finally, all training is automatically available offline and on any device (via Brainshark’s mobile app) without any additional effort.
You can learn more about Brainshark sales training software in this article.
#4. Advanced search feature to find any content incredibly fast
As mentioned earlier, life sciences sales reps often only have a few minutes to make their pitch, which means they need to be able to access the exact content they need right away. Most content management software utilizes a ‘folder-within-folder’ structure for organizing content. This type of structure relies heavily on using metadata such as titles, author, date created, etc.
If reps need a specific piece of content, they have to remember where it was stored or the exact metadata assigned to it. If they can’t remember the exact location or metadata, it could take them hours to find the right content. Even if they do remember the location or metadata, they’ll only be able to find the content if it was stored and labeled properly — which very often isn’t the case.
All of this means reps will likely have to spend hours before the meeting finding any content they may need, or they have to risk losing the prospect’s attention if they take time to find content during the meeting.
With Bigtincan, you won’t have to worry about where the content is stored or how it was labeled.
Our advanced search feature will scan through all text — not just the title and metadata — to find a match. It can even search the text of a PDF. With built-in integrations, you’ll be able to search for content across multiple locations and repositories simultaneously (such as Google Drive and Veeva) using one search bar.
Our advanced search feature will also recommend the most updated version of any given content and make recommendations for additional content based on the searcher’s position in the company, selling territory, etc.
This saves sales people tons of time searching for content which leaves more time for selling.
Don’t let regulations slow you down — move faster with Bigtincan
As part of Bigtincan, Brainshark helps life sciences companies ensure every rep is ready with fully compliant messaging to stay ahead of the competition. With advanced e-detailing features, you’ll be able to convey the physical reality of products in a virtual setting to reach more HCPs.
Ready to see how Brainshark can help you stay compliant while keeping up with modern selling techniques? Schedule a demo today.