Finding the best medical sales training solutions for your organization can help control sales training costs, keep training timelines as streamlined as possible, and ensure that sales reps retain and use the knowledge they gain during training. But, which training tools are the best fit for your organization?
If your sales team members are asking about how to get medical sales skills or you need to build their sales skills, it’s important to have a few tools to recommend to employees.
Why Sales Training Is Important
So, why is medical sales training so important? There are a few reasons, such as:
- Keeping Sales Reps Apprised of New Regulations. The medical and pharmaceutical sales industry is subject to a variety of regulations governing how medical sales reps can reach out to leads, the kinds of claims they can make, and what tools they can use. Every so often, new regulations are introduced or old regulations get modified. So, to avoid regulatory compliance problems, sales reps need periodic training in the latest medical sales regulations. This way, medical sales teams can avoid bad press, fines, and other sanctions.
- To Develop Medical Sales Skills. Effective medical sales training helps sales reps develop the skills they need to reach often-elusive decision-makers in the medical and pharmaceutical industry. Training can also help them learn how to identify and leverage a prospect’s pain points and the way that their company’s solutions can address them. This helps make them more effective at closing deals and building sales strategies that lead to long-term success.
- Refreshing Sales Rep Knowledge. In learning, there’s a concept known as “knowledge decay,” where a person loses the information they gained over time. Periodic sales training helps to refresh the knowledge sales reps learn so they don’t fall victim to knowledge decay.
The primary benefit of training in sales is to help keep salespeople sharp and up-to-date with their skills. However, by training for medical sales industry compliance, companies can help prevent fines and other sanctions that could do long-term harm to their business.
Medical Sales Training Program Types to Know
There are numerous sales training programs that companies can use. However, not all of these training programs are suitable for medical sales training needs. When looking at medical sales training programs, it’s important to consider the way your company sells as well as its goals. This may affect the type of sales training your company chooses.
Some broad examples of medical sales training program types include:
- Field Sales Training. Field sales is the traditional sales method used by most organizations in the pharmaceutical and medical sales industry. Field sales training emphasizes the use of conferences, on-premises office meetings, lunch-and-learns, and other face-to-face meeting opportunities to build a rapport with prospects.
- Inside Sales Training. Where field sales take reps out of the office, inside sales has them working from a central location. Inside sales training programs tend to teach sales reps how to effectively use phone, email, or messaging tools to prospect and consult potential customers.
- Sales Management Training. A form of training that focuses on helping sales managers develop (and leverage) the skills and talents of their sales reps more effectively.
- Relational Sales Training. Relational sales emphasize the need to build trust with prospects to earn long-term and repeat business from them, rather than focusing solely on calling the most contacts or engaging in high-pressure sales tactics. This training can complement the lessons from other training programs.
Formal sales training programs are one of the best tools for developing the skills of medical sales teams. Some of the top sales training programs include:
- Sandler Selling System. The Sandler system specializes in using a methodical approach to enhance skill retention amongst trainees. Their medical & pharmaceutical training program is optimized to help salespeople make connections and “start more interesting sales conversations” so they can sell more and get warm referrals.
- Mercuri International. A massive sales training service with a long history of excellence. Mercuri’s sales training program offers several types of learning experiences (off-the-shelf, customized, learner-led, and instructor-led) to fill a variety of training needs. While not specialized to medical sales, the program offers excellent learning opportunities for general sales strategies.
- CustomerCentric Selling®. CustomerCentric Selling® has a training program that puts a major focus on putting the needs of the customer before simply hitting quotas—an excellent fit for the relational sales approach. Some of the key points their instructor-led training program addresses include accessing key decision-makers, establishing processes for repeating sales success, and generating results in a pharmaceutical or medical device sales environment.
About Medical Sales Training Videos
Aside from formal training programs, sales managers may use online videos on medical sales training to help their reps learn about new sales strategies quickly. One of the advantages of using recorded videos to train sales reps is that they allow reps to take their training at their own pace and convenience—there’s no need to schedule time for a class. So, videos (such as healthcare sales training podcasts) tend to be less disruptive to a learner’s work schedule.
Some examples of medical sales training videos and podcasts that a sales training program might use include:
- The Medical Sales Guru Podcast. A free online podcast and blog that posts about topics affecting pharmaceutical and medical sales. Mace Horoff, a medical sales expert with over 30 years of experience, shares his insights and regularly invites guest contributors who have valuable insights on developments within the medical sales industry.
- The GaryVee Audio Experience. A lot of marketers follow Gary Vaynerchuck’s podcast for a reason. While it isn’t specific to medical sales, Gary Vee’s no-nonsense style of presentation helps to inspire countless sales and marketing professionals in a variety of industries.
- PharmaVoice.com Podcasts. A series of podcasts posted on PharmaVoice.com that feature a variety of thought leaders in the pharmaceutical sales industry. These podcasts cover a wide range of topics that affect the industry beyond just sales strategies—which can help sales reps keep up to date with the new developments in the industry.
- The Advanced Selling Podcast. Touted as “The longest running sales podcast in podcast history.” The Advanced Selling Podcast provides general sales advice for sales reps across hundreds of episodes on topics like prospecting, sales processes, and maintaining the right sales mindset.
Aside from recorded sales training videos, companies may have their teams participate in medical sales training webinars. These webinars give sales reps the chance to be part of a live event where they can learn more about specific medical sales challenges and strategies for overcoming them.
Medical Sales Training Exercises to Use
Sales training exercises are a great tool for engaging medical sales reps and helping them practice the sales skills they pick up during training. They can also help those sales reps who learn better by doing rather than simply reading or watching a healthcare sales video.
Some examples of medical sales training exercises that can help build sales rep skills include:
- Roleplay Sessions. Roleplay sessions are one of the oldest tools in the sales training kit, but they remain in use for a good reason. Roleplay sessions help new sales reps learn the specific phases of the company’s sales process, become more comfortable dealing with a variety of sales situations, and get used to the organization’s communication expectations. A “sell me this pen” (or other office object) exercise would be an example of a roleplay session that emphasizes a sales rep’s ability to improvise when they’re put on the spot.
- Host Success and Failure Panels. In this suggestion from the HubSpot blog, organizations gather a panel of their salespeople to discuss their sales success stories as well as some major failures. Here, reps explain what worked and why, as well as what cost them key deals. This helps sales reps get important insights into the sales process—sometimes, people can learn more from failure than they do from success.
- Call Recording Reviews. In organizations where sales calls with customers are recorded, having sales reps listen in on call recordings can be an invaluable tool for shoring up their strengths while addressing their weaknesses. This is similar to the success and failure panel, but concerning the rep’s own sales interactions with customers. This is typically easier for organizations using inside sales than it is for ones using field sales.
- Pop Quizzes on Training. How well do sales reps remember the training they’ve completed? Pop quizzes on training delivered a few days, weeks, or months after the end of the training program helps gauge the answer to this question—and keep sales reps on their toes. Using the responses to training questions helps establish the effectiveness of the training and reinforce its importance to sales team members.
These are just a few examples of sales training exercises that medical and pharmaceutical sales departments could use to enhance their training programs.
Finding high-quality sales talent that can drive long-term sales success is crucial for any medical or pharmaceutical company. However, recruiting, onboarding, and training that talent to maximize sales ROI can be a long and costly process. This is where contract sales organizations (CSOs) like Axxelus can help!
Axxelus handles the entire recruitment process, vetting potential sales reps and presenting you with only the best candidates to meet your company’s sales needs. We also provide continuous training and development to keep sales team skills sharp and up-to-date with the latest industry rules and regulations.
Are you ready to transform your sales success? Reach out to Axxelus now!
