Who could have imagined the changes the COVID-19 pandemic would bring about especially for today’s pharmaceutical sales reps? It’s definitely a new normal. Not only are their roles evolving but so is the environment in which they work. According to the Accenture Healthcare Study, Reinventing Relevance: New Models for Pharma Engagement with Healthcare Providers in a COVID-19 World, virtual engagement with pharma field reps is here to stay. At the same time, the work-from-home trend is also likely to stay at least for the short term. The result is a sales force that is understandably feeling anxious, distracted, and lacking in stimulation and feedback. Instilling a gamification training strategy is a surefire way to keep pharmaceutical reps learning and collaborating with their teams whether they are still working remotely or back in the office.
Healthcare Professionals Now Want More Human Connection and Expert Knowledge
The Accenture study also revealed that HCPs are interacting with sales reps more than before COVID19 and expect sales reps to have a greater understanding of their needs and expectations. Successful sales reps need to be nimble, flexible, and prepared to meet customers where they want to be – in person or via computer. Easier said than done! Chief Creative Officer, Stephen Baer, explains here, “Games and gamification are really nice ways to feel connected and to help them feel like they’re part of a community and engaging with their colleagues which is so different today.”
The Time Is Right To Set Your Team On A Game-based Learning Journey
Instead of thinking about games as something to “add to a course,” what if you shifted your thinking to make the learning experience more of a journey? Sales training gamification can create a powerful emotional connection with learning that results in higher retention of information and skills. It can help you:
- Build a virtual, interactive learning community that your team is craving
- Use mixed media to keep your team engaged
- Nudge and encourage your team to train daily and immerse themselves in the content
- Reward your team with tangible prizes that motivate them to climb the leaderboard
- Measure engagement to understand the effectiveness of your training efforts.
Gamification Takes The Boring Out Of Training
Sales training gamification in the healthcare industry turns the mundane memorization of symptoms, diseases, and prescriptions into a high-energy, engaging, emotional activity. Through customization of storylines, characters, points, levels, badges, achievements, and leaderboards, your team will be motivated to train through solo play or in head-to-head competition. Either way, they’ll be having so much fun it won’t feel like training. Iain Boomer, Head of Learning for AbbVie Canada, has been leveraging gamification for years, especially during the pandemic. Quoted in Fierce Pharma, he explains, “Gamification has become more important and more impactful in the virtual environment,” he said. “The pandemic showed we need this now more than ever. … It’s given an extra push to what has always been core to what we do, which is retention and recall in a fun and engaging manner.”
Here Are A Few Pharmaceutical Gamification Examples
If you think games are too expensive or difficult to build, think again. There are gamified approaches that can fit all budgets and timelines.
- Create simple to complex role-play situations with Scenarios, using animation, video, and voice-over content. You can transport your sales team into a current real-world situation that challenges them to demonstrate the hard and soft skills pharma clients are expecting today. This game is great for training your sales team on handling objections, to illustrate this point, play a demo here.
- Customize a game of Recall to improve sales reps’ ability to retain specific details without the benefit of knowing what to pay attention to beforehand.
- JEOPARDY!® is a great option for assessing knowledge before a training session and ensuring the content sticks post-training. This game can be played in single-player mode or instructor-mode in a live or virtual group setting.
- Design your own training destination with Arcades™, a premium add-on service that offers a robust set of features all of which are designed for easy deployment and extensive insights. Sales reps will:
- Maximize engagement
- Increase frequency of interaction with content
- Improve accuracy and knowledge retention
It’s hard to know what the future holds for pharmaceutical sales reps, but you can bet they will benefit from the support of a sales gamification platform that can bend and flex as much as they have to. Game-based training will keep your team connected, collaborating, and competing while you earn training hero status!
