SELLINGSKILLS Patient-Centric Sales Models I By Jeff Kozloff Dialogue is even more effective than other training methods because it provides sales leaders with true customer immersion, a fly-on-the-wall perspective. 38 M any companies in the industry are adjusting sales models to become more patient-centric, a term that has a nice ring to it, but is unfortunately meaningless if sales leaders don’t have access to or an appreciation for how real patients and physicians interact. Limited face-time with busy doctors and federal restrictions on patient privacy have created daunting hurdles that sales leaders must overcome if they want to gain true insights into the patient journey. Gone are the days when pharmaceutical sales reps could participate in preceptorships, shadowing a day in the life of the doctors they called on and gaining a wealth of knowledge in the process. So how can companies in the 21st Century create meaningful opportunities for members of their sales teams to walk in a patient’s shoes or hear directly from physicians about the challenges they face in providing treatment? How can sales training at your company adapt and evolve to equip sales leaders with the most effective tools to better understand your customers and ultimately drive sales growth? Dialogue Brings Sales Leaders on the Patient Journey More and more companies striving to adopt successful patient-centric sales models are finding the solution lies in using real audio dialogue clips that capture conversations between patients and physicians as they naturally occur in the exam room. Marketing departments within pharmaceutical companies have for years relied on the use of dialogue to help create effective branding and messaging in advertising and education materials. These communications resonate with and motivate customers (physicians and patients) by using the same language that patients naturally use when describing their symptoms or side effects, for example. A growing number of sales training teams are now borrowing a page from the same winning playbook their marketing colleagues have used, and quickly seeing for themselves how dialogue can successfully broaden the FOCUS | SPRING 2013 | www.spbt.orghttp://www.spbt.org