Skill sets Pharma needs for the “new normal”
A look at necessary post-pandemic skill sets from 2022 NPC Spring webinar panelists (460 words, 2.5 min)
“Everybody talks about the new ways of managing and nurturing people,” said Jim Shea, General Manager of the Council for Continuing Pharmaceutical Education (CCPE), “but it all comes down to engagement with people.”
During the 2022 NPC Spring Webinar, Shea and fellow panelists Leandra Wells, Danny Goldman, and Peter Brenders (photos below) discussed vital skill sets for success in Pharma in these times.
Shea insisted that basic skills, even if mediated through technology, are the most crucial. “We’ve always had the introduction of new technology, but if you haven’t been able to engage with people, if you never had the understanding of how to train and coach, then you’re not doing any better now,” he said. “It’s about going back to basic principles and actually doing it.”
“Over the last five years,” Shea said, “we’ve seen lot of people maintaining their business skills, the hard skills that you have to know.” He explained that it’s easy to test people on business knowledge such as how to do an expense report or the content of an article.
Conversely, Shea says it’s much more difficult to teach and test soft skills like communication, and going virtual has made it even harder to practice these skills. “An interesting thing that came back to me from a number of physicians was that representatives who are really, really good in person, some of them are failing miserably, virtually.”
Wells, VP Respiratory at GSK, said she’d encountered the same issue, and had found that the most important skill was “the adaptability and agility to be able to flex effectively from in-person into a virtual meeting.”
“We have to consider putting to bed the idea of a [separate] in-person sales force and virtual sales force,” Wells said, “because I think every person has to have the ability and the skill set to do both effectively.”
Goldman, Head of Strategy and Portfolio Operations at Sanofi Canada, agreed that “the biggest skill to have now is adaptability to change and change management in the last two years.”
“To get more specific,” Goldman said, “Covid required us to fast track our digital adoption as an industry.” He said what that meant practically was “having to do a lot of upskill training within the organization on how to use [digital] platforms efficiently and how to tailor your approach in a virtual environment.”
Brenders, General Manager, Canada at BeiGene, agreed that the biggest success factor has been “how we engaged with our customers. What was our facility with the technology? And could we actually work it?”
“The key [for Pharma leaders] is what do we use to keep up to date,” Brenders said. “How are we learning to navigate not just with the tools, but thinking about it for our teams and engaging them as we evolve?”
THIS WEEK 05/03/22
Pfizer Canada announced that it has been recognized with a gold-level gender parity certification by Women in Governance (WiG). The WiG Parity Certification recognizes organizations that have demonstrated success by committing to gender parity in the workplace, integrating gender parity into the organization's ecosystem, and implementing mechanisms to achieve and maintain that commitment over time.
AbbVie announced that Health Canada has approved VRAYLAR (cariprazine) as monotherapy for the treatment of manic, mixed, and depressive episodes associated with Bipolar I Disorder in adult patients, as well as for the treatment of schizophrenia in adults.
The U.S. FDA has approved Vivjoa (oteseconazole capsules), an azole antifungal utilized to reduce the incidence of recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis (RVVC) in females with a history of RVVC who are not of reproductive potential.
Merck announced that the European Commission has approved KEYTRUDA, Merck’s anti-PD-1 therapy, as monotherapy for the treatment of microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) or deficient mismatch repair (dMMR) tumours in adults with: unresectable or metastatic colorectal cancer after previous fluoropyrimidine-based combination therapy; advanced or recurrent endometrial carcinoma, who have disease progression on or following prior treatment with a platinum-containing therapy in any setting and who are not candidates for curative surgery or radiation; unresectable or metastatic gastric, small intestine or biliary cancer, who have disease progression on or following at least one prior therapy.
LISTEN NOW
Season Seven of the NPC Podcast has begun, with Brian Bloom, CEO of Bloom Burton & Co., talking about the digitization of healthcare, drawing venture capital to Canada, and the annual Bloom Burton conference. Hear him in conversation with podcast co-hosts Mitch Shannon, Jim Shea and Mark McElwain.
CANADIAN HEALTHCARE MARKETING HALL OF FAME
The Canadian Healthcare Marketing Hall of Fame awards were established in 2002 to honour healthcare marketers who have contributed to our vocation and inspire others.
More than 100 honourees have been selected during the past 18 years. In the selection committee’s view, they stand for a representative cross-section of the qualities that make our business unique and fulfilling. Each week, NPC Healthbiz Weekly will acknowledge one past Hall of Fame Honouree.
2013 Inductee
Jim Shea
Montreal
Editor’s Note: Mark is currently Chairman of the Board at Quest PharmaTech Inc. and was a Co-Chair for Canada’s Covid-19 Vaccine Task Force. You can catch up with Mark on the NPC Podcast by clicking here.
A career in marine biology and oceanography is what Jim Shea, General Manager, Council for Continuing Pharmaceutical Education (CCPE) in Montreal since 2009, had envisioned for his life’s work, but in the end, he opted to explore science on land rather than underwater. Shea earned a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Science degree from McGill University in Montreal and was doing fieldwork on Baffin Island in 1988. With federal cuts to the Department of Fisheries and oceans on the horizon, Jim did not see a long-term future in oceanography.
The pharmaceutical industry came onto his radar and the Montreal native and resident applied to work as a Toronto-based sales representative for Merck Frosst. After six interviews in less than one week, Shea was hired.
“I was inspired by the idea of talking to doctors about life-changing medications and impacting people’s lives,” says Shea.
He won several awards as a sales representative, boasting top sales for Noroxin, a drug prescribed to treat urinary tract infections. As a sales representative, Shea sought to engage in conversation with physicians rather than list facts about the drug.
“The drug was a time-saver because the duration of treatment was three days,” says Shea. “A woman was able to get back to her normal life routine more quickly.”
After being in the field for nearly four years, he returned to Montreal to work out of Merck’s head office, becoming a sales rep trainer.
“We were talking at physicians rather than having a dialogue with them,” says Shea. “It came down to understanding the needs of the physician and challenging the physician. I wanted the representatives to use their materials and information to make doctors think. no matter what the tools involved in the interaction, and now even using an iPad, it’s about making the customer, in this case the physician, think.”
Shea held other positions at Merck including Group Health Manager, Director of Sales and Strategic Planning, and Director of Field Sales Development. “I saw my role as developing training, necessary to build the [sales] representative of the future,” he says.
Shea’s passion for educating representatives in the field led him to volunteer as a Director on the Board of Directors of the CCPE. “I thought the role of the CCPE was important,” explains Shea, noting currently that the overwhelming majority of Canadian pharma sales representatives are accredited by CCPE. “If we have the ability to enhance the credibility of the pharmaceutical sales representative through education, as an industry, our reputation will be elevated.”
A father of three, hockey coach, and former soccer coach, Shea is enthused about CCPE’s expansion of educational opportunities for sales representatives, who can be “one of the most valuable resources” for physicians.
NEXT WEEK
In the 05/10 edition of the NPC Healthbiz Weekly, Cathy Harley, CEO of NSWOCC shares her take on social determinants of health and diversity in healthcare. It’s easy to get your no-charge subscription and have the issue sent to your phone or inbox each Tuesday at 6:00 a.m. sharp.
Stay safe, stay sure, and stay on your game. We’ll see you again next week.