How ready are you for virtual success?

No one could have predicted a year ago the world we live in now. The sudden and unprecedented challenge we face from Covid-19 means organizations have to adapt wherever they can to stay viable, protect their employees and continue to deliver essential services.

For pharmaceutical companies, one of the main challenges is how to connect to healthcare professionals in markets where face-to-face interactions are no longer possible. While the likes of Zoom and WhatsApp allow us to stay in touch in our personal lives, creating a positive customer experience in a virtual environment is much more complex, demanding careful strategic alignment, tailored content and new-skills training.

Of course, many companies already have some experience of virtual interactions and over the years, we’ve worked with them to help assess their effectiveness. These are projects that have included multiple types of field teams, many different kinds of customers and a vast array of technology platforms. In short, we’ve seen it all.

And from this, we’ve built a benchmark database like no other; one we can now use to help other businesses develop, launch and successfully integrate virtual channels into their own approach.

The road to virtual success is very much a journey – and it’s one that STEM, through in-depth interviews and observations, can provide actionable insights on.

1. Strategic and functional alignment

We begin by looking at your proposed approach to virtual interactions and assess how that fits with your broader strategic direction over the short, mid and long term. Ultimately, we measure how much your teams are aligned with each other and your strategy – and how confident they are to execute this.

2. Scientific and marketing content

Any medium changes the way a message is presented, and what works face-to-face, isn’t necessarily as effective via video call. That’s why we help companies analyze their current scientific and marketing content, looking at what changes they’ve already made and assessing their effectiveness through comparison to our benchmarks. We also explore how sales teams aim to use the content they’re given to engage healthcare professionals through a virtual platform.

3. Training

Do you know how effective your team is when it comes to making virtual interactions? This is something we can measure and quantify, allowing you to spot skills gaps, put training in place before you go live and ensure your managers can coach best-practice execution. Ultimately, we’ll make sure you’re fully aligned and ready to succeed within a virtual environment.

4. Live customer interactions

Once you do go live, how effective are your sales teams? Are they hitting the key messages and maintaining customer interest? Through detailed observations, our experts quantify and benchmark just how well your sales teams are performing, capturing best practice, detailing areas for improvement and identifying any root causes.

If you’re looking to quickly build a successful virtual approach, and want to understand what works and what doesn’t, we can help. Get in touch here.