The PharmaBrands Podcast

Pavel Goldvasser, National Sales Manager at Celltrion Healthcare, on Delivering Value to Customers, Partnering with Internal Stakeholders and the Role of the Rep in Today’s Market.

• Propeller Events • Season 4 • Episode 2

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Pavel Goldvasser has been a researcher, a marketer, a rep and is currently a National Sales Manager. In this episode Pavel brings all those perspectives to bear on the role of the rep, the impact of Omni, the power of partnerships and so much more. Pavel speaks with passion and purpose in this broad reaching conversation and you can hear his energy come through in the conversation. This is a must listen for anyone whose role is focused on delivering the most value possible to customers.   

This episode was made possible through the support of Changemakers, find out more at: thechangemakers.com. 

The PharmaBrands podcast is hosted by Neil Follett and Produced by Chess Originals.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm Pavel Goldwasser. Originally started my career in science as a breast cancer researcher at Princess Margaret Hospital. Um, and then I moved to the commercial side of things. So started as a sales representative, moved into oncology sales, then got into capability development in order to help sales people get even better at their skills. I then became a marketing manager uh within oncology as well. And now I serve as the national sales manager at Celtrian Healthcare, uh leading a team of key account managers.

SPEAKER_00:

So, Pavel, I'm gonna I'm gonna start our conversation in a way that I've never started one of these podcasts. I usually jump into where do you work and and how did you get there? And let's talk about your career and we'll situate our conversation in your journey. Uh, I'm gonna situate our conversation right now in our share journey of the last 37 minutes, which has been full of technical setbacks in a way uh that is quite unique for for this show. Um, and it got me thinking about how does one recover from a setback? And that got me thinking about you as both you know, someone who's had a long uh career in sales and is now coaching a team. Sales, I think, is a lot about how you manage and recover and pivot and learn from setbacks. So as we get back on our feet here, maybe share with me like how do you personally and how do you coach your team on kind of managing setbacks?

SPEAKER_01:

I love that question, Neil. Honestly, it's such a great question. And I'll tell you more. It's even it even started it when I was a researcher uh doing a lot of science. I mean, we used to say it's almost like you're being a dog, and science is your master. Every every time you try to do an experiment, 10 out of 10 out of 11 experiments will be complete disaster fail. One of them will succeed, and you'll be all happy. Your master is about to give you a hug or something like that. And then the next one, again, you get slapped, and again you're flying away. So it's honestly constantly dealing with failure and dealing with challenges.

SPEAKER_02:

Honestly, what helps me a lot, and that's what I'm trying to breed into my team, into my family. I use a lot of humor, like I try to laugh it off because it is what it is. I mean, it's bound to happen. And persistence. So even with tough customers, uh, first of all, I like to ask why. So I'm curious. So if the customer just doesn't want to, does not want to give you a minute of the day, why? Uh, with a smile on my face, use some sort of humor. Say, like, is it me? Is it my my breath? Like, what's going on? And usually when you're able to get that, I mean, we're all humans, everybody will find a way to smile, find a way to laugh it off, and then it really helps. So persistence, humor, and it's all good. It's a business, it's not personal.

SPEAKER_00:

And it sounds like it the humor is part of a way to kind of make a connection, right? Sort of take it out of the transactional or or these, you know, would feel like high pressure situations sometimes and just kind of take the wind out a little bit.

SPEAKER_02:

100%. I mean, whether it's in interviews, whether it's with customers, whether it's, you know, live situations, if you are able to put inject a little bit of humor into it, it always makes it a little bit easier, makes it more personal, and takes the edge off in my mind.

SPEAKER_00:

When I think about the sort of stereotype of a researcher, and I think about the stereotype of a salesperson, typically I think you might imagine those people have a different level of being an extrovert, a different level of sort of how they engage. Researchers, I always think are you know incredibly focused and very, very patient. And, you know, salespeople have you know lots and lots of energy and are go, go, go. Maybe that's completely wrong. Did you find yourself as a bit of an anomaly amongst your research colleagues? Did you spend some time in research and you were like, I need to kind of get out there a little bit more? What was that experience going from research into sales? Like that's a it feels like a big jump.

SPEAKER_01:

You know what, Neil?

SPEAKER_02:

Your question is the answer to why I graduated with master's degree instead of PhD. As much as I appreciated speaking to my pipats and praying to the gods of science that my breast cancer cells will somehow find a way to grow. And you know, I love science, I love reading science, discussing science, thinking science. I could never properly do science because I have um I have needles all over my body. I constantly need to do something. I love interacting with humans rather than interacting with my pets. And at some point, you know, a good friend of mine basically told me it's either we need to check you into an institute because you're speaking to cell lines, or we really need you need to do something different. And that's where I found my passion. Um, in my community, I was, you know, a breast cancer patient reached out to me. She was not doing well at all. That story, you know, goes with me, I think, throughout my career. And that's one of the reasons I'm pushing so hard, even in my current role in in uh commercial. So anyway, she she reached out and she needed help. And what I realized, I made a connection between her, the clinician that was treating her, and the company that was running a clinical trial that could really help her out. And it was uh two or three months that I was honestly working on it full time while also doing my, you know, conducting my research. And what I realized then when I was interacting with with the pharma company, with you know, people that could enroll her into the study, they told me you have to go into sales because you're honestly selling right now. And I realized that I'm way more passionate about connecting with humans, selling an idea, not necessarily a product, but selling an idea, consulting. I'm way more passionate about that than running doing studies or trying to figure something out on the science end because I realized that what I was, you know, in the lab, solutions might help patients in 20 years, or maybe not, we never know. But we have patients that are living with diseases today. And what can I do today in order to help patients today rather than in 20 years, perhaps, hopefully.

SPEAKER_00:

So, how did that transition happen? So, you know, you're you're in the situation, someone says to you, Hey, have you thought about sales? You are in that instance, I imagine, fairly far from a sales position. How did you make that move?

SPEAKER_02:

You know what? I've been selling all of my life because even throughout my education, I worked as a salesperson for whatever windows and doors, and I was a server and a bartender. I always, always, always sold. Okay. Now, in my mind, when I was in doing my research, I thought that you know, pharma sales is literally one of these annoying car salespeople that you just walk in to take a look at a vehicle and they right away jump on all over you and try to sell you something. I didn't realize that in pharma, a salesperson or a successful salesperson is more of a consultant and a strategic partner with these clinicians. You're not selling. Yeah, and actually, you know, this goes into the whole aspect of pharma sales. I'm I'm even uncomfortable calling pharma salespeople salespeople because it is a very different type of sale per se than any other industry that we can think of.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm gonna pick up on that. I'm not sure that you answered my how did you actually get from being a researcher? Because I'm sort of dying to know, like, let me let me finish that one then.

SPEAKER_02:

So, what actually happened is when I was, as I mentioned, when I was working with this patient and her clinician trying to enroll her into a clinical study that was conducted by a company, by a pharma company, I was interacting with multiple people within this organization. And I'm just a master's student at Princess Margaret Hospital trying to enroll a patient. And one of the clinical research associates working within that pharma company is like, Pav, you really have to look into pharma sales because what you're doing right now is literally the role of a pharma salesperson, not so much enrolling into clinical study, but you know, connecting the dots around a patient. And I'm like, but this I thought that sales is literally just getting somebody to buy something because that's what I've been doing all my life. And she's like, No, look into this, and you will see that you will serve more as a consultant rather than a salesperson. And this is something that is literally tailored for people like you. And thank God for that conversation that that we've had years and years ago, because that's what honestly helped me see the future and tailor my career to that. And I'm I'm grateful to this day to this person.

SPEAKER_00:

An earlier conversation you and I had, you had a great one of your many great quotes that I wrote down.

SPEAKER_01:

I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, you know, you you were saying, you were saying, you know, the role of the the rep is muddied. So I'm gonna go back to that in a sec, but I'm also gonna build on, you know, you were talking about this notion of a consultant. I mean, I've seen, and I think we've all seen data and probably some of it a bit more pre-pandemic, that you know, certain HCPs get the vast majority of their product information and new product information from sales reps, right? Like it is in a super key channel in what is often an incredibly trusted relationship. So when you say the say the role of the rep is muddied, is it that the the role has changed a lot in the last little while? Is it that perception of that role is muddied, like you know, selling somebody a used car versus being a really key consultant to a highly skilled professional? Like, where is it muddied?

SPEAKER_02:

So let's let's go a couple of steps back, and I think that'll help answer that question. In pharma, there are two types of salespeople. You have the primary care sales team, which usually consists of family physicians, salespeople. So essentially sales reps that are calling on family physicians, yeah, and their counterparts that would be calling on specialists, but specialists that work very closely with your family physicians. So we're talking about cardiologists, respirologists, endocrinologists, a lot of times, dermatologists, rheumatologists, perhaps. Yeah, basically, this primary care team can which consists of set of um family physician sales and specialist sales, they're working together, they're organizing events together, they're discussing products together, they're trying to create a holistic approach within that specialty in order to help care for these patients. The second team, it's way, way, way more specialized. And I see it, I see them more of uh key count managers. They're working with conditions that are life-threatening, with very, very specialist group of clinicians that really specialize on treating these particular patients. And a lot of times they are the primary caregivers to these patients. So things like rare disease, oncology, biologics, usually the conditions are a little bit more challenging, and it involves a completely set and completely different group of specialists. So it's drug reimbursement specialists because the medicine is usually very expensive. Like I mentioned, medical oncologists, uh, radiation people, foundation people, pharmacists, whether in or outpatient. So it's really an account approach to sales rather than the way it is usually in primary care.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And so the needs and the challenges of these two distinct groups are very, very different from one another in order to succeed or to fail. But the one thing that unites them is the fact that in most cases, the end user is not the person that the salespeople see. Yeah, so if you think about it, as a as a pharma representative, whether you're a key account manager or a salesperson in the primary care setting, you usually meet with a doctor or a pharmacist. That person is not the end consumer. The end consumer is a patient, which you never see. And so your approach to sales is completely different because the person you're speaking to is not the person that is going to be buying from you or buying in general. You're relying on them to advocate and or help sell an idea to the patient that being on this particular solution is the best thing for them. And so when I mentioned that the role has been muddied, is number one the KPIs that are being introduced to salespeople these days are completely different than they were in the past, and it makes the job a little bit harder. So am I selling, am I trying to sell or am I trying to be get the clinician to take part of a campaign, whatever that means? Also, you know, the way we see salespeople within pharma has changed as well. Because I personally, my team to me, I don't call them sales reps because they're not. To me, they're consultants. But if they're consultants, then the solutions we're asking them to promote need to make sense to them. So they need to appreciate that. They need to appreciate their role instead of us basically telling them almost like that used car salesperson, go and uh try to get the person to come back in six months to buy another vehicle. Let's put them on a campaign, whatever that means. And so to me, this is what's challenging that we're on the one side are not necessarily treating our cams as consultants, but on the other side, we're introducing a bunch of key KPIs that is not allowing them to do what they're signed up for, and that is to sell.

SPEAKER_00:

And so I'm guessing a KPI would be like email opens for rep-driven emails or some like something that feels probably adjacent to the core conversation and relationship. Is that right? Or is there other KPIs? Like, can you give me some examples?

SPEAKER_02:

So you exactly you nailed it. I mean, you know, when we have when we have our key account managers and I'm in conversations with my key account managers, the goal of them being in an office, meeting with a clinician is sort of a behavioral change. What I'm hoping that they can get out of a conversation or out of any conversations that they have with, you know, with HCPs, is get the doctor to see the value in the solution that they're bringing forward. Getting the doctor to rethink their approach to caring for a this or you know, treating a disease by seeing the value that there is in changing things around. So to me, this is a behavioral change. If you've been you doing something for the past 30 years, but I have a better solution for you. To me, what I want to get out of that out of that conversation or for my cams to get out of that conversation is a the doctor's willing to meet with me again next month or whenever they're available to further discuss this. Two, the doctor's willing to rethink their approach and to actually try this new way of doing things in order to benefit their patients. Or, you know, number three, the doctor's willing to see the value that I'm trying to bring to the table and partner up with us. Because if two medications are completely the same, right, then you know, doctors are humans. We always hear that. So I want, I would hope that the doctor would pick if the medications are the same, they would pick this the medication or the solution, which is made by a company that is partnering up with them in order to benefit patient outcomes. Yeah, but now with open rates, it's like, what are we trying the salespeople to do or the camps to do? Is it to change behaviors of clinicians or are we trying to increase open rates because that will somehow tell us that the doctors are engaged? But are they engaged? Maybe they just clicked on an email and that's it, they never never even read anything. So not this is where the mudding is coming because the cams are becoming more and more confused as to what is my job, is it to change the behavior or to get some open rates or click rate higher?

SPEAKER_00:

It's interesting. So when you were talking about you know behavior change and and value, you know, one of the first things that you said was, can I engage in such a way that that physician will see me again? And there is something almost counterintuitive in some ways, unless it is really, really high value communication, which I think is where everybody struggles, every pharma company struggles with omnichannel and making sure that that is very high value communication. Having an interaction with a rep that is then followed by a whole bunch of low to medium uh value uh emails doesn't necessarily make that physician super excited about seeing that rep again. It's almost a disconnect from the personal experience to then the digital experience. On the rep side of things, there's obviously, you know, there's compensation and evaluation that's tied to all of this stuff. And I've been in jobs like years and years ago where it's kind of like I had my job and then I had my KPIs, and they were sort of only loosely connected. And kind of at the end of the year, I would I would spend a couple of days and like knock off all the stuff that was supposed to be in my KPIs, but it seemed very much like a task and not super connected to kind of what I do on a day-to-day. It's tough to reconcile that because that in the clinical setting, talking to a visit physician is so dynamic and so personalized that it's very hard then to turn that into digital interaction.

SPEAKER_02:

I agree with you 100%. Look, I when in conversations with my cams, even when I was a product manager, now as a sales leader, I definitely want them to follow up. So once you had a great meeting with a doctor, it's almost like when you have an interview and it went well, or even if it didn't really go well, following up with an email just to send a message. Hey, thanks for meeting. You can even summarize key points that were discussed for our future for our next meeting. You know what? I would like to dive into this particular area a little bit more. Definitely always asking my team to do that for sure, because that shows sort of a continuation of your call. And yes, like every omni campaign manager will tell you, this creates an additional sound in the you know, head of the clinician. It just serves as a reminder and preps them for the next call. However, if you're asking cams to send something that is not necessarily providing value to the clinician, instead of you know continuing the conversation, this can serve as noise, especially if the clinician is not necessarily going to be interested in it. If you think about clinicians, all of them, what interests them, usually it's one of two things that provides them the most value. A, something that helps their patients, whether it's enrollment forms, whether it's education for their patients, forms, booklets that help their patients understand their condition a little bit better, and provides patients with value. That's number one. Number two, something that can help their practice. So provide some education to their nurses, provide some education to the admin, provide education to them, a reminder as to what the treatment algorithm looks like. That is valuable. A lot of times, the information that the chems are able to send because of different restrictions, whether it's PAB or whatever it is, does not meet one of these two criteria. And if that happens, you just sent noise. To make it even worse, a lot of times, uh, the communication that goes to the clinicians might even come not from the chem themselves, not from the rep, but rather from head office. And now you have an email address that you don't recognize, a piece that you don't need, and it's literally as a salesperson myself, I used to receive phone calls from my top accounts saying, Pav, what the hell? Like, what are what are you sending this to me for? Yeah, why are you even sharing my email address with somebody? I don't want to be any on any campaigns. Personally, me, me, myself, Pavel, when I get these emails from Hugo Boss or Amazon, we have a promotion here. We have a I don't even bother reading it. It's literally right away delete. So I assume the clinicians a lot of time might feel the same. But if it comes from me and it continues the conversation, sure, they might open it. But unfortunately, again, from my experience as a salesperson, as a trainer, and as a marketer, most of the pieces that we were sell sending to the clinicians, I would follow up with an email saying, Can you please do me a favor and open it? Because that would help my click rate. And it sucks. So then, like going back to the conversation, are we asking to for them to open an email for me to look good as a salesperson? Or are we actually asking them to consider a different approach to caring for their patients? Because if you ask every salesperson, honest, I mean, I haven't done it, I haven't asked all salespeople. I don't think I know all salespeople, but if you take a population of sales reps, we honestly all believe in the product that we sell. And a lot of times we can sit in the room, especially for buddies competing against each other. Even though we're buddies, we honestly believe in what we sell because we really believe that there's a place, there's a patient that would benefit from my product, not from yours. So the vast majority of salespeople, when they work for a company, they really do believe in the value that their product brings. But that same group of people might not believe in the journey, in the campaigns that they're forced to launch, because, like you said, there's a lot of mudding going on. And what am I doing? Am I selling or am I asking people to click on some emails?

SPEAKER_00:

One of your other quotes that I wrote down, and I put like two asterisks beside it is you said to me in our first conversation, uh, omnichannel is like communism. Um maybe, maybe expand on that? Like how how so? Because I can very much feel, and you're senior enough that I can feel the I get it, like I get what we're trying to do as a business, but I also know intimately what the rep is trying to do at like a human-to-human level, and there's a there's a bit of a disconnect there. So, how, Pavel, is omnichannel like communism?

SPEAKER_02:

So, let me start by saying that I respect omnichannel, I do respect the value that it brings if conducted and if executed correctly. Yeah, so I don't mean it in a bad way that it's communism, not at all. Here's what I mean. Um, you know, Churchill said that about democracy that a word that means everything to everyone essentially means nothing to anyone. Communism is if you think about you know the euphoria, technically could be great for humans where you don't really own anything, we're all on the same level. You sort of, you know, the values of communism, you think about it, it yeah, you don't have poor people, everybody has food, everybody's working with each other in order to help one another. The issue is that getting there is really, really tough because we all want to possess and to own. This is our human nature, and so with Omni, the theory of Omni is amazing. I agree with it, I love it. I think it could be really, really great. The problem is the practicality, and that is massive. The practicality is if when we think about pharma, we're very restricted with what we can communicate to clinicians, we're very restricted with the what we can communicate to patients, we can't directly communicate to patients, at least not in Canada. And it takes a long time to develop content that would be valuable and provide clinicians with actual value for them to, you know, for them to be interested in it. And so when you create a lot of these omni campaigns, the problem is by the time you will have a piece that is actually relevant to the clinician, whether it's something new and exciting, well, salespeople can't really talk about it. It's usually MSL because especially if it's clinical and is not approved. If it's something for patients, well, a lot of times when you send it on an email, the clinician will have it in their inbox, but a lot of times they won't send it to their patients necessarily because patients sometimes don't know how to use emails or they're more elderly, or good luck, right? So the clinician would have to take that extra step to print it out in order to provide it to their patients. But that's an extra step. And so the content, it's really tough to create content that would really engage clinicians and get but in every omni campaign that you launch, we in pharma at least we treat it like the banana republics, the Amazons of the world. Clinicians are consumers, they're used to getting emails, they're used to you know getting content in order to somehow impact how they're going to buy in the future. Guess what? In pharma, the clinicians are not the end consumer, they're not planning to buy anything. So the point of getting the content that you're trying to send out through Omni from you to actually benefit the clinician, it's tough because you need to be really up to speed. And so, in campaigns that I used to be involved in as a marketer, as a salesperson, I always try to bring that same omni campaign internally. If we're asking to clinicians to go on this adoption ladder, we should be progressing with the clinician. So, what do I mean? With the omni manager or the digital content manager, why don't we work together? And if three cams are saying, you know what, my clinician says that the biggest issue that they're experiencing right now with you know this particular jug, our drug, is safety. So why don't we, instead of just putting the clinicians on a journey on their Omni while we wait and we're static because we have pieces that we need to send down the road, why don't we develop pieces during that omni campaign? And then hopefully by the time we start progressing two, three, four months from now, instead of us coming together and bringing the doctor to come out to a dinner to see a presentation, we can already have a couple of pieces developed, and then we can bring to the clinician to be like, yeah, earlier two months ago, you mentioned that there's an issue with safety that you're you're worried about. Well, guess what? We just developed this piece that hopefully will help clarify that, whether it's to you, to the nurse, or to the patient.

SPEAKER_00:

You've been on both sides, right? Like you were in a marketing role, so you've been inside and outside. Where are those points of friction that's holding teams back? Because I've never met a marketer who says, you know, I am not at all interested in producing things that are helpful in the field. And I've never met a salesperson who said, I really don't ever want something that's useful. Like there's a shared motivation there, but there's friction that's just kind of not making it click all the time. Sometimes, but not all the time. Where, where, what do you think that is?

SPEAKER_02:

So let me first start by saying that I believe that at least that was my mentality as a marketer. And he's and right now as a as a sales leader, my customer is my salesperson. Let me say it again. As a marketer, your end user is the salesperson. If the salesperson is not sold on a piece that you have developed or an on on a campaign that you have developed, you're asking a person that is not even sold on the messaging to go out there and to get somebody else to buy into the idea. We always say, you know, to this to our salespeople that um if the clinician is not sold on the value of this medication, we can't expect them to communicate the value to the patient, right? I mean, it makes sense. If the doctor doesn't believe that the medicine is good or doesn't believe that the medicine is fairly good in terms of side effects, we can't expect the clinician to advocate for the use of this medication with patients or with other clinicians. Same thing for different marketing pieces or campaigns. If the salesperson is not sold, that it's bringing value to their to their customers. And at the end of the day, we know that salespeople are extremely passionate about patients and about. Their customer. If it's not bringing value, then they won't be able to sell it properly. So to me as a marketer, whenever I was going to develop any pieces, I would always involve my salespeople. Because, like you said, if I'm if I don't think my salesperson is going to open it during the day, just while they're chewing on I don't know, a salad between calls, if they're not going to be interested in opening it and enjoy the graphics, enjoy the value that it brings, actually learn something from it, why are we expecting clinicians who are so specialized in what they do, especially like we going back to the beginning of this conversation? The really, really specialized doctors who know more about this than any other human being on planet Earth. Why would they waste their time? Right? So the sales team has to get involved because they're the ones meeting with these clinicians. I'll tell you more. As a marketer, I was out on the field as well. And I welcome marketers to go to the field, ask the clinicians for their input. Because guess what? If you utilize them as your consultant to the piece you're trying to develop andor to the campaign you want them to get involved in, speaking of Omni, they will provide you with the information you need. But unfortunately, a lot of times, the piece, the people in head office who develop some of these campaigns aren't necessarily going out to meet with the people that we're trying to get involved in these campaigns. And that's the salespeople slash the customer themselves. The other piece, so you know, in terms of where's the friction coming from, the most successful, and believe it or not, even though I called it communism in the past, um, I actually was a part of a really good omni campaign that clinicians really adopted, they loved it, and we received quite an amazing feedback. Why? A, we definitely involved the salespeople, we involved the the clinicians, but also the company and the team that I was a part of. We were willing to go back to global because usually these campaigns come from from global in terms of KPIs. We went back to global, we provided them an echo of all the voices we heard from the field, whether the clinicians, the salespeople, and we're like, guys, this campaign will not work in Canada because A, we can't communicate directly with patients, B, our coverage is completely different than in US or in France. And C, we have an agency that really, really, really controls how and what we're able to demonstrate, even to clinicians. I mean, not everywhere do not in every country in the world do you have an agency like Pab. And I think Pab is doing a lot of great things in terms of containing and controlling, making sure that the message is the message is what it is. But a lot of times it becomes very complicated and it takes a long time to get approvals. And so what I we would go back to global and say, guys, if this campaign would can be launched in a month in England or in Germany, it'll take us six months to get it launched here.

SPEAKER_00:

And and by the time it's launched, it will be so diluted and like it won't even make a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly. Exactly. By then, my competitor will probably rip my campaign apart seven different times, seven different ways, because a they might have strong data, they might have stuff going on. As you know, now there is something that's called in PAB spirit, so they're not even going to PAB anymore. So by the time I get out with my message, it's I'm going to be putting off fires. So we went back to global and we're like, guys, this is not going to work here. Yes, but this is the KPI. Well, make a different KPI. And we recommended our own KPIs in terms of what we're trying to do with this omni campaign. Guess what? They didn't believe us at first, but then they're like, hmm, you know what? Instead of bringing XPs, why don't you bring some real world evidence that is Canadian based? Yeah, that could work. And guess what? Adoption went through the roof. Um, the campaign or so called it, omni campaign, was great. Clinicians were going, you know, as we wanted them, progressing through the adoption ladder from point A to point B, it's the word that every marketer knows. And we actually, instead of my instead of the salespeople or the cams, however you want to call them, instead of them putting off fires and asking for favors, can you please open that email? Because my manager really needs you two. People were opening it up, coming back to us and actually congratulating us. But it takes a lot of effort from the head office and a lot of hand holding, including the salespeople, including the field, rather than just telling them, this is what we created, we spent X amount of dollars on this, go out and execute.

SPEAKER_00:

I think that barriers are uh rarely desire on all sides. You know, every every role wanna provide value. I think the barriers are often a combination of effort, like it takes a lot of work to do stuff that is different and creative. And we are all in an incredibly constrained environment right now. I don't think that there's anybody who says, Man, you're like, I don't even know how to fill up my time because I've got so much extra time. And I think that there are a whole bunch of competing priorities. The marketers are being uh, you know, in I will say, encouraged. Like the marketers are encouraged to be like using global campaigns that may not even line up to Canada. You know, the omniperson is being encouraged to show data and validate sometimes their role or validate the the very large expenses that a company has paid into uh the marketing stack. The rep has got, you know, sort of these other other priorities. And when you if you got everybody in a room and give them all a whiteboard and said, you know, sort of what are you being evaluated on? What are your priorities? I I think it's rare that all of those things line up. I think philosophically they line up, right? Like what are we trying to achieve? All lines up. I I think the what are your priorities one level down? There's misalignment there. And it takes a lot of work uh between, you know, the marketer, the sales team, the agency partner to line up on what that looks like in what is is truly again, like it's truly such a one-to-one, especially if you're dealing in in something that's in specialty and not like uh PCP. It's like it is how do you create tools that will support through a whole bunch of different human interactions? Like it's it's not an easy thing.

SPEAKER_02:

I agree with you a hundred percent. I mean, you know, this particular aspect of euphoria can go both ways, right? We can say that Omni is communism or euphoria, but also everybody being aligned on what we're trying to achieve with a clinician that could also be seen as euphoria. You know, what I've what I'm trying to do with my teams is always let's sit at the table and let's talk real. Are what are we trying to do here? Are we trying to please somebody or are we trying to get the business moving? Yeah, now don't get me wrong, everybody has KPIs. I have KPIs in every organization you work with, there are different KPIs.

SPEAKER_00:

For sure.

SPEAKER_02:

I feel like when you sit with, you know, cross-functionally, and you're like, guys, me as a marketer, you know, there's a lot of pressure on me. I really need you guys to help me out here because global is pressing me to try this particular piece that might not be 100% applicable to this to our market, but they really want to give it a shot. And other markets have seen quite a bit of an uptake. When you're having these honest conversations, your salespeople, your marketers, your whoever, they'll give it a shot. But let's be honest. And especially when you're developing something, because it always you always have to localize, right? Any piece you get from global, you have to localize it, and they know it. Why not involve because you're involving an agency, you're definitely involving medical. You might a lot of times even involve access people. How come a lot of times salespeople are an afterthought? They're the ones out there with this piece in their hands, sending it to the clinicians. Yeah, have them provide you with their thoughts. Might not be something you want to hear, but at least you're honest so that when they go out to the field, you know, the salespeople will feel comfortable showing it to their customer. They might get the feedback they expected to get. But then because they feel that they were part of this whole creative process, me personally, as a salesperson, I would look at the doctor, doc. I get it, you know all this, it's boring to you. But what about somebody who's not as involved as you are, say in the community, in the in somewhere far away, in I don't know, Thunder Bay, for example, who's not necessarily as involved in all the conferences as you are. How can I make this piece valuable? But I'll go that extra mile because I felt heard, my feedback was heard. So again, in when I work with marketers, I've I've had the privilege of working with amazing marketers. The conversation is, Pav, we need you to do this because it'll help our matrix. And of course, we need to show global, we need to try. I get it, I fully respect that. This is how it's supposed to work. We're all holding hands. And not bad, Pav, what do you also need? Because we can take that feedback just like we're trying their piece, we can feed it back to them to say that this is what we actually need. Because we might not have the Canadian money right now to pay for this particular software or for this particular program, but we can take feedback back to global. And then it's a two-way conversation rather than we need you to use this piece to send it to the doctor. When you're able to create a two-way dialogue, when you're able as a marketer, you work with global people. Why not bring your two or three of your sales people who are engaged, bring them to the conversation with global, let them voice their opinion. Like you said, at the end of the day, everybody wants to make things happen. My issue is when it's a one-way dialogue. So global said, you will do. But if you're able to take your salespeople, your your end user as a marketer or as a sale as a sales leader, bring your salespeople to the conversation, you more often than not, they'll listen and they'll make some changes. I was privileged to work as a salesperson in an organization that actually tried doing that. We created, you know, they brought few of us across the across the globe from multiple countries, multiple continents, to have a conversation in terms of guys, this is what we need in our market, this is what we need in this market. And Global actually listened. And the campaigns looked completely different.

SPEAKER_00:

Which, which is, which is really powerful.

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

People are going to be more inclined to engage with a piece that they helped create or that they see their needs in, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

And global is getting, you know, there's more, there's more voices uh and signals to inform that the future evolution, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00:

I remember, you know, year years and years ago, you know, we're working with a client uh sort of early days of e-detailing, kind of, you know, put out sort of like V2 of the IVA that had like absolutely zero usage, right? Like it basically was like a paper detail aid on an iPad. So like why, like why literally, why would you use that? And so we were like, why don't we just ask the reps what what conversations are they trying to have with physicians? What are the things that you're trying to get to? So we asked a we actually like sent out a survey to the reps and and they they came back and we sort of distilled it down, and there was a number of themes. It was a DERM product, and so there was about like, you know, whatever, RX versus OTC. Like there was, you know, it's these some and so we basically created a a series of polling questions, right? They there was nothing promotional about them. So we got them through uh regulatory quite easily, but you know, we were able to say to the reps, we heard you. And so what we've done is as a conversation starter, there's a poll in here. And so you can, you know, open up the iPad, you can pull the physicians, you now have their answer, and so you can start to have a conversation based on their answer. But we aggregated all of the data from all of the iPods from I was a US program from all over the country. And so in real time, as these questions were in market, the reps would be able to then say, well, it's really interesting because you know, your view is consistent with 87% of your peers, and then you start to get data collection back. And you know, we went from like 0% usage of the IBA to like 80%. Like there you go. Reps loved it. And one never would have been able to come up with that idea on our own, you know, came up with something that was actually fairly frictionless to get through regulatory because it was really a conversation starter, wasn't making any claims. And the reps loved it because they saw themselves in it, right? Those are I I mention that as though that happens all the time. Like that was a sort of a magical set of circumstances, but it's it's always stuck with me as like a nexus of marketing is trying to produce something that has a high utilization rate. The reps wanted wanted to use something that provides value, and the physicians got something out of it because physicians love data and they love comparing themselves to other physicians and like it was all good.

SPEAKER_02:

So Neil, this is your two-way dialogue. Yeah, this is your two-way dialogue. This is where instead of again, let's go back to where we began this conversation. Instead of mudding the role of the sales rep and getting them to somehow, you know, asking clinicians to click on more rate, click on more emails, you get your salespeople, your cams, however you want to call them, you get a two-way dialogue. They bring it to the clinician, asking them for their opinion because they believe in that piece. They bring the feedback back to you, and together you're developing a campaign that your team believes in, you believe in because it'll bring you value, and most importantly, your customer who is not the end user again, but they're a part of it, and they're sort of helping you shape it into something different, which is very different than when you know, top down, you tell people this is what we need to get done, and at the end of it, there might be a presentation that the doctors will attend. Yeah, okay. I mean, seriously.

SPEAKER_00:

Pablo, I have to say, there's there's always a moment in these conversations where I'm like, well, that feels like a pretty natural way to wrap things up. You literally just went back to the beginning and summarized our entire conversation in a night, nice, neat little package. So I'm gonna say on that note, thank you very much. This has been uh a super engaging conversation. I could have gone on for like another hour. We didn't even get to half my questions, but um, I appreciate your energy, your candor, uh, your patience as we work through some tech issues. Uh, I really enjoyed this. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

The pleasure is all mine.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you so much. And yeah, looking forward to connecting again. And once again, Lip, I want to apologize if it offended anybody. I do believe in Omni. It just needs to get done in a proper way to be effective.

SPEAKER_00:

I think that came through loud and clear.