As a training leader in the life sciences industry, you set ambitious goals every year to meet a wide range of business objectives, from readying your sales team for a new launch to supporting your company’s omnichannel marketing efforts. But if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed as you set your training priorities in 2024, you’re in good company.
Many heads of training we recently spoke with are concerned about their ability to confront multiple challenges in the coming year, including reskilling sales teams, overcoming market access issues, and demonstrating value to an array of organized customers. Here, we discuss these challenges and offer cost-effective, actionable solutions for 2024.
The move to omnichannel marketing has elevated the role of your field sales professionals, who must use business acumen and account management skills to optimize your company’s investments in these sophisticated marketing platforms.
For 2024, training leaders across the life sciences industry are taking a critical look at their current curricula to uncover potential gaps that could hinder the effectiveness of their omnichannel marketing strategies (see ).
Some of the key gaps for sales professionals that training leaders have identified include:
To fill gaps in their curricula most cost-effectively, many training leaders are turning to customizable learning resources. Many companies also plan to add more coaching and other leadership and management training resources for their first- and second-line managers to improve pull-through of these concepts.
While training leaders are adding more resources to reskill their sales teams for new commercial models, they are also looking at ways to better serve burned out providers and other organized customers like large physician practices, hospitals, integrated delivery networks (IDNs), and accountable care organizations (ACOs).
Industry trends suggest that sales teams will still face significant barriers to access in 2024. Consider that:
To overcome access barriers and support customers experiencing continued uncertainty, life science companies are adding training to help their sales teams understand industry trends, improve communication skills (including using empathy), and optimize hybrid selling.
In addition to reskilling sales teams and improving access to customers, one of the key focus areas for training leaders in 2024 centers on delivering value. Selling in a value-conscious environment will remain a challenge, even for experienced salespeople. Competition for prime positions on clinical pathways is intensifying across categories, while formulary exclusions continue to jeopardize patient access.
Trainers report that their customer-facing teams could benefit from training to improve:
Combined with a focus on reskilling the field to improve their business acumen, enhancing value-based selling training in 2024 will help training leaders prepare their commercial teams for the challenges ahead.
If you need help developing or operationalizing your training plans for 2024, our experienced team at CMR Institute can help. We’ll work with you to identify potential gaps in your curricula and build a realistic, targeted plan to help you improve market access and meet your strategic business objectives in 2024.
Our searchable learning library includes more than 375 ready-to-use and customizable resources that have been developed with expert faculty who are leaders in their fields. In addition to resources to improve your team’s industry knowledge, selling skills, and business acumen, we also offer a range of disease state training resources so your teams can be confident and effective when meeting with specialists. And if you are looking to fine-tune your training for various customer-facing roles, we can customize learning pathways for each role on your sales team.
Reach out to us at solutions@cmrinstitute.org to learn more about how we can help you stay on target for 2024.
We understand that a real-world education looks different for all learners. That's why we partner with real-world training experts to develop customizable learning pathways that meet your unique needs.
(800) 328-2615