‘MEGA’ PERFORMANCE WITH ‘MICRO’ LEARNING

The client had a huge portfolio of medicines on which their new sales representatives needed to be trained. Until now, the new hires were being trained through a 6-week instructor-led training (ILT) in the classroom. This training program, though well designed and structured, was not producing the desired results of quickly increasing the sales reps’ proficiency, leading to delays in their readiness to meet potential customers (medical practitioners). The company’s ever-expanding product portfolio also necessitated the induction of more sales reps and increased training requirements. Organizing classroom sessions regularly was found to be a logistic nightmare, and was a drain on instructors’ time and efforts. So, the client was looking to transform their product and sales training with the aim to: 

• Reduce the duration of their training sessions
• Improve how their sales reps market their brands to medical practitioners
• Help their sales personnel handle doctors’ queries and objections better

The main challenge in developing the training was going through the massive amount of information available on each drug and condense it into easily understandable and accessible online learning for the sales reps, most of whom were not from a pharmaceutical background. This meant that most of the learners had no clue about the human body nor about how the drug would produce its action in the treatment of a disease. As they would be interacting with experienced medical practitioners, in addition to information about the drug they also needed to know at least the basics of human anatomy and physiology that was relevant to the drug they were marketing. 

It was also challenging to deal with the subject matter experts (SMEs) who were new to eLearning and did not understand the difference between ‘need to know’ and ‘nice to know’ content. We overcame this challenge by conducting onsite training for the SMEs on eLearning, basic instructional design, and on generating the right kind of content. We also invited SMEs to visit our premises and work with our instructional designers and developers, so they could understand how the courses were designed and developed. Just because the SMEs were with us all the time and were giving us immediate feedback, we could deliver almost 21 modules in just 3 days. This is how we helped the SMEs gain insights into the nitty-gritty of eLearning.

Considering also the very limited time the sales reps had available for training, CommLab India, in consultation with the client, decided on a microlearning approach. We created a curriculum of 5 to 6 (sometimes more) microlearning modules for each drug, each around 10-15 minutes in duration. The modules were developed in Articulate Storyline (it was the best tool for multi-device compatible content at the time) and were accessible on a range of devices.

The modules for each product would include:

• Anatomy and physiology of the organ/system targeted by the drug
• Pathophysiology of the disease
• Drugs used in the management of the disease
• Composition, indications, contraindications, dosage, and limitations of the drug
• Performance of the drug vis-à-vis its competition