COVERSTORY
By Isabelle Lodati, PharmD, RPh
When colleagues learn I was a pharmacist for two years before becoming a trainer, their first question is almost always the same: What was your experience like with sales representatives?
Their curiosity is understandable. Having worked on the other side of the pharmacist’s counter, I bring a perspective to my training team that’s different from those who came up through sales. Not better, but certainly unique. And experience is an invaluable teacher.
Representative missteps can make a lasting impression. For example, there was the time when, late in my shift, a sales representative rushed up and, without so much as introducing himself, handed me his company’s copay card, urged me to use it with appropriate customers and then, just as quickly, turned on his heel and was gone.
Still, that call was no worse than the one from a representative who, clearly delivering a rehearsed monologue, presented me with a stream of statistics, competitor information and product data. Five minutes. Eight minutes. Ten minutes. He went on and on without pause—and without giving me an opportunity to get a word in edgewise.
Looking back from the perspective of a trainer, I can imagine that both these representatives meant well. The first, who left the copay card and dashed off, may have been so conscious of my time that he failed to deliver his message. The second may have been so focused on educating me about the product’s efficacy that he forgot what the first representative knew: I was extremely busy.
From my perspective, many of the missteps representatives make on a call stem from a lack of understanding of the pharmacist’s role. While they may have mastered their talking points, representatives also need to read the room and respond accordingly. The result can be a call that misses the mark.
To effectively tailor their message, representatives must understand the pressures inherent to the pharmacist’s role, at the crossroads of clinical expertise and customer service.
Representatives may be surprised to learn that the pharmacist they visit could be in the midst of a 12-hour shift. Staffing shortages can add to the pressure, requiring those on duty to take on additional responsibilities.
I found it incredibly rewarding to help patients access and better understand their medications. That said, it wasn’t always easy. In my time behind the pharmacist counter, I experienced instances of verbal aggression and, on occasion, unacceptable conduct from patients. These experiences, unfortunately, are all too common. Patients who are sick, tired or impatient may sometimes direct their frustrations toward the pharmacists trying to help them.
Pharmacists also may face performance expectations, including the number of prescriptions they handle or vaccinations they provide. These expectations can create additional stress and, like many of these pressures, leave pharmacists with little time to speak with a representative.
All day, every day, pharmacists respond to a near-constant stream of customer questions. These range from the routine (“In what aisle is the aspirin?”) to consequential questions about drug interactions and dosages. While answering questions is an essential part of the job, a steady stream of them can lead to question fatigue by the end of a shift. This can make it difficult to answer still more questions from a visiting representative.
So, what should representatives do with this understanding of the pharmacist’s role — and what can trainers reinforce?
Speaking from personal experience, I appreciated representatives who did the following:
Make a personal connection. It may seem obvious, but in my experience many representatives never took the time to introduce themselves or, more often, learn and use my name. Skipping those basic steps of connection shut down a call for me before it started.
Consider the day and hour. At my pharmacy, Mondays and Tuesdays tended to be especially busy, with a post-weekend spike in doctor appointments, prescription refills and deliveries of out-of-stock medications. At my pharmacy, 6 to 9 p.m. on other days was often an ideal window for a call. The customer rush had slowed, and I was usually caught up on my work. Though the best days and hours for a call may be different at other pharmacies, it’s worth the effort to find out what they are.
Focus on the essentials. As a pharmacist, it was critical for me to learn certain key information, such as side effects and drug interactions. Representatives who understood this and focused on the information I needed most to do my job were far more likely to keep my attention.
Find the right balance. As my earlier anecdotes illustrate, presenting too much information can be just as ineffective as presenting too little. Representatives should adapt their message in real time based on the pharmacist’s workflow and level of engagement. In my experience, the most effective calls flexed with the pace of the pharmacy in that moment.
Act with empathy. This may be the most important rule of all. Once representatives understand the unique pressures of a pharmacist’s day, it becomes easier to adapt their approach in the moment—and build a strong working relationship for the long term.
Though I began here with stories of a few representative mishaps, my favorite anecdotes to tell my colleagues are all about the best sales representatives I met while I was a pharmacist. These were the representatives who understood the pressures of my role and found effective times and ways to communicate the benefits of their products. They were often the ones who went the extra mile, providing resources such as blood sugar logs and demo pens that helped me better assist my patients. At their best, these representatives made me more effective in my role. Today, as a trainer, I find myself often looking back to their example as I work to help my trainees reach the bar these sales representatives set.
Isabelle Lodati, PharmD, RPh, is associate manager of commercial training & development for Teva Pharmaceuticals. Connect through Isabelle.Lodati@tevapharm.com or linkedin.com/in/isabelle-litvak/.
