When Medical Liaisons in big pharma are launching a drug with a major study published in the New England Journal of Medicine<\/strong>, you’d think their job would be easy.\u00a0 But it’s not.<\/p>\n

One way it’s difficult is in the variety of audiences they have to educate.<\/p>\n

They have to speak to senior executives<\/strong> in their own company, who have limited expertise in the particular therapeutic area, and little room in their busy brains for more technical information<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Sales managers want to know what their representatives will have to learn and how other products in the same area compare.\u00a0\u00a0They may even want a say in how the product is presented to prescribers.\u00a0\u00a0And they are concerned about the quality of their sales meetings–they don’t want their troops bored and confused.<\/p>\n

Sales reps want to hear the good news.\u00a0 How easy will it be to convince physicians that the new product is an improvement over existing therapies?\u00a0 What objections will they encounter?\u00a0 What data can they use to make their case?<\/p>\n

And finally, medical professionals will want a detailed clinical story, and will be likely to cling to older therapies until it feels safe to prescribe the new one.\u00a0\u00a0Better safe than sorry, they say to themselves.<\/p>\n

To do justice to the requirements of each of these audiences demands that a standard deck of slides be tweaked over and over again.\u00a0 It is not enough to take the approved slides and present the facts.\u00a0 Audiences will complain, as they did recently in a client company.<\/p>\n

The sales force will complain loudly if the Medical Liaison takes them down a rabbit hole of research, and they should!\u00a0 What’s the point of talking if your audience doesn’t have the background or the patience to go with you?<\/p>\n

Sales management knows the market and will complain if the clinical story doesn’t fly.\u00a0 Their incentive pay depends on the reps ability to get the message across in less than 30 seconds.<\/p>\n

Senior executives in the company don’t necessarily want all the science.\u00a0 They want reassurance that the product is valuable enough to prescribers, patients, and payers\u00a0so that they can accurately predict performance.\u00a0 Science is a part of it, but positioning and messaging will play a bigger part.<\/p>\n

So Medical Liaisons have their work cut out for them.\u00a0 Who goes into such a career, anticipating the need for such persuasive skill<\/strong>, or the need to translate\u00a0his expertise into so many different languages?<\/p>\n