The Recipe for Relief: Overcoming Industry Pain Points

Diane Petrone, Founder, Pharma Skills Lab

In the rapidly evolving, intricately complex pharmaceutical industry, today’s leaders are under immense pressure to meet high-performance expectations, navigate employee engagement and retention concerns, and proactively tackle a host of shared pain points crucial to success.

Tackling these industry pain points while retaining and growing essential staff and meeting the demands of one’s “day job” can be overwhelming, even for the most seasoned pharma professionals. However, there is no reason to give up hope. With newly evolved ways to proactively address industry challenges and meet employee expectations, pharma companies find that training is a powerful tool that can significantly impact company—and employee—success.

The following are six key pain points troubling pharma as we approach 2025, and ways training can help alleviate some of the discomfort.

1. THE INFLATION REDUCTION ACT (IRA)

Since its creation, the uncertainty surrounding the IRA has been keeping commercial teams up at night. Even the organizations that aren’t on the early lists for price negotiation struggle to make sense of this new, unpredictable landscape. As leaders work to understand the impact of the IRA themselves, they need their teams poised and ready to develop solutions and risk aversion strategies.

• How training can help: Curated online and in-person courses developed by real-world market access and account management experts can swiftly educate teams on the IRA and walk them through simulations of possible downstream effects. Depending on individual product/company needs, training may include price negotiation strategies, adjusting for price inflation penalties, restructuring of Part D drug design, and characteristics of impacted products.

2. THE EVER-EVOLVING MARKET LANDSCAPE

Monitoring regulatory, scientific, and commercial changes in the pharma industry is more than a full-time job. Yet, commercial teams are expected to be current on trends to keep their approach to the market as strategic as possible. Receiving reliable guidance on headwinds and tailwinds is essential for success for most pharma companies, but it can be challenging to access.

• How training can help: Introductory and refresher courses can educate pharmaceutical teams on the commercial landscape and identify trends worth monitoring. The most qualified trainers can leverage real-world experience to help students view trends through the customized lens of their product, patients, and prescribers.

3.DECLINING PRESCRIBER ACCESS

A harsh reality for many pharma sales reps is significantly reduced—or even completely eliminated—access to the healthcare providers they support. Like so many professionals in healthcare, physicians and other prescribers are trying to do more with less while continuing to provide quality care to their patients. Because they’re making less time for manufacturer sales reps, commercial teams are tasked with finding new ways to reach these essential stakeholders.

• How training can help: High-quality training programs will help pharma sales professionals consider new modalities for targeting prescribers with their message, such as non-personal promotion and reaching prescribers indirectly through the healthcare systems where they work. In this instance, it’s essential for the trainers to intimately understand the difference between independent prescribers and those who work as part of large networks.

4. THE RISING COSTS OF CLINICAL TRIALS AND REAL-WORLD EVIDENCE GENERATION

Due to the rising influence of payers in the US healthcare system, today’s pharma commercial teams have a more significant influence on clinical trial and real-world evidence study design than ever before. To be an effective partner to the clinical and scientific teams tasked with managing these trials and studies, commercial professionals must understand precisely what payers need and how to generate the data that will build a value story that is meaningful to them.

• How training can help: Educating teams on foundational elements of coverage criteria and trial/study design creates a richer understanding of what payers want and how to give it to them. To be comprehensive, training should also include deep dives into fiscal efficiencies, endpoint nuances, and how to maximize the value of a pipeline.

5. EFFECTIVELY LEVERAGING DATA FOR COMMUNICATIONS

The pharma industry is drowning in data, making it difficult to sort the good from the bad or to understand which data to use, when, and for whom. Like so much else in pharma, the direction for effective communication starts with the stakeholder and works backward; once you understand your customer’s incentives, then you can use the correct data to tell a story they want to hear.

• How training can help: Trainers with real-world experience in the pharma industry can help teams build a rich familiarity with their stakeholders’ unique needs and then use that familiarity to identify the data and insights that power the messaging that will be most meaningful to them. Curated workshops can even guide students through stakeholder+need+data+message mapping to prepare students for practical application.

6. RECRUITING AND RETAINING THE BEST TALENT

It’s difficult to find a leader in pharma today who doesn’t have this pain point at the top of their list. In a post-pandemic marketplace, life sciences leaders are trying to adjust to new ways of working, hybrid environments, and teams comprised of individuals from multiple generations. While it’s widely recognized that high employee engagement and retention drive improved team performance and productivity, leaders can struggle to dedicate the time required to prioritize this.

• How training can help: Training is one of the most effective tools in the employee engagement toolbox. Ninety-two percent of employees report feeling more engaged after receiving well-planned training programs, and nearly half of workers say they are more likely to stay in their current positions if offered more training opportunities.¹ Additionally, 59% of employees believe that training enhances their job performance, and organizational productivity is noted to rise by 17% when companies offer comprehensive training programs.¹

Leading pharma companies are realizing a competitive advantage by addressing their pain points through a targeted training approach. Their investment in strategic education of commercial, medical, and even support personnel (such as finance professionals) is helping them differentiate through their most valuable asset—their people. Their ROI is realized through employee-driven strategies that are future-ready and future-proof.

Of course, not all training partners are created equally. Meaningful results can hinge on a few key factors, such as the flexibility of courses (online vs. in-person, frequency, timing, accessibility), industry-relevant and customizable curriculums, and, most importantly, trainers with real-world pharmaceutical experience. Reviewing samples of recorded trainings or auditing courses are recommended as best practices companies can use to ensure they’re hiring the most knowledgeable training partners and setting themselves up to address their most pressing pain points successfully.

Diane Petrone is Founder of Pharma Skills Lab

Reference

1. Peck, D. Employee Training Statistics, Trends, and Data in 2024. Devlin Peck. January 10, 2024. https://www.devlinpeck.com/content/employee-training-statistics