Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. My guest today is Andrea Johnson. She's national director of MSLs. And we talk about how to overcome obstacles, challenges, and gain access to difficult KOLs. I think it's a great conversation that you guys are gonna get a lot out of. Don't forget to follow me on LinkedIn and check out all the announcements of stuff that's coming up. Also, check us out on YouTube.
We have all of our videos go up on YouTube, so just type in MSL talk, and you'll get to our channel. And then participate and check us out on MSL talk live, which is the 1st Tuesday typically of every month at 1:30 PM EST, and that's on LinkedIn live. Welcome to MSL talk with Tom Caravella, a podcast specifically designed for MSL's and all things field medical. Hey, Andrea. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me today. Hi, Tom. It's great to be here. I'm excited. I'm really excited.
I'm excited about this topic. I'm excited that you and I get to do this. And I'm really appreciative because I you know, I've known you a long time, and I think that we're going to share some amazing wisdom with everybody. Before we before we drop that on them, let's do an intro if you wanna tell everybody, you know, who you are and where you're from and all that good stuff. Sure. Hi. I've been a field leader for, oh, more time than I've been here to admit.
And and nationals, most recently, a national leader for a very large team. So I've seen a lot on this topic and I'm happy to share it. I'll start at my life as a clinical pharmacist. So I've done it from both sides and I hopefully I have some insight that'll be great for your audience. Well, I know you do. And before we get into that, actually, I do have to announce that we have a sponsor for this episode. It's Momentum Events. You guys have heard me talk about these guys before.
They're awesome. And they are, hosting a conference coming up, and it's called the Medical Affairs Excellence Summit. It's a live event. It's in Philadelphia, October 13th 14th. So for more details, you can find information online. Go to momentum events. Go to my LinkedIn page. You'll see this announcement on there, and there'll be a link. If you enter Tom 20, so it's t o m 20, no space. You'll get 20% off your registration. And keep in mind, the early bird registration expires on August 26th.
So try to get it in as soon as possible. If this actually broadcast after that, I would still try it anyway. Who knows? Maybe they'll give it to you. But, anyway, check it out. I will definitely be there. So if you're there, come say hello to me. Alright. So we're gonna talk about difficult KOLs, some stories, and some ways to get around it. Maybe even some some best practices and some success that you've seen from your MSL. So why don't we just jump right into it?
When we when I bring up this topic, what's the first thing that kind of pops into your mind? That you need to have the opportunity to show your value. The difficult KOLs are difficult because they don't see why they need to see you. They're an expert in their field usually, and they don't see what you're gonna tell them that they don't already know.
And your job is to create the opportunity to get in front of them and then provide that value right out of the gate so that you have the opportunity to get in front of them again. And the hard part sometimes might be that getting in front of them, so you need to make sure you're prepared. And that's where we come into. I know we talked about it when we were talking about this topic, the importance of pre call planning. And now everybody kinda shies away from that. It's like, that's so salesy.
I'm not a salesperson, but everybody needs to be prepared. When I first got into industry, I started off as a sales rep. So I really appreciate the skill set that I learned there that you never walk in cold. You have what you're gonna say and be prepared to say it so that you can get in there again. Because if you walk in and you're fumbling around and you don't quite know what you're gonna say because you didn't expect to get through the door, it's always difficult to get in again.
It's like, hey. You wasted 10 minutes of my life. And depending on which disease state you're representing, I've done neuroscience where the psychiatrist might be a little bit more patient as well as interventional cardiology where they have 0 patients. Yeah. They are very much their career is I need to get in, save a life, move on, save the next one. And so if you you spend 10 minutes, that's a patient they could have been seeing. So you need to make sure that you're ready.
Well, let me ask you this. Let's talk about let's jump into that piece of it because I do think that the prequal planning piece can be a huge help in overcoming the challenges and dealing with difficult KOLs. So could you tell me a little bit about what you have seen effective with your MSLs and how they go about that? So how much time do they spend preparing? How much in advance? What does that whole thing look like? 1, know the person that you're planning on seeing.
So if you know you're going to go and see doctor Smith, know a little bit about his work. So maybe if you happen to see him passing in the hallway, you can say, oh, I saw your recent article on x y z, and I thought it was really good. You provided some great insight on whatever it is. That way, you're not just saying, I saw your article. You're showing that you actually read it and that you got some value from it. And that way, they may say, hey.
This person might actually have something to say because they not only just saw it, but they read it, and they have an opinion about what they read. So let maybe they're worth having a discussion with. Always be prepared for who you might meet in the hallway. Most of the time, they don't work in a silo. There is a hallway.
Since COVID, we don't have those same opportunities of just going knocking on doors, but it's still always great if you know that there's a possibility that you're gonna see someone to be prepared to have a meaningful conversation with them. Got you. So do your homework on the, obviously, the folks that you're meeting with, your KOLs, get details together, put that, you know, have nuggets of information that you can talk about and share and bring up. Show a connection.
See if you could find some kind of similarities, connections. Maybe you went to the same school, maybe not. Maybe there's just that connection scientifically that you can draw from. What else? Is is is this because a lot of people say to me, well, I'm so busy and it's hard for me to find time to do prequal planning. Is this the type of thing where does it take hours, or would you say that people are overthinking the amount of time that they need to spend preparing for KOL meetings?
I find newer MSLs tend to overthink it. It's not something that you need to spend all day and read everything that the person has ever written. If you see the most recent article and come up with a way on how it's relevant to the information that you would like to present, and then you're ready. And the other side is don't data dump. Everybody kinda thinks that my job is to go in and say everything that my company wants to have said, and it's really not about that.
The whole the beauty of this job of being a medical science liaison is the liaison part, that you're not only there to represent your company to them, but them to your company. So you wanna make sure that you show value both ways, that you do provide the scientific information for the company and answer the questions, but also that you show a genuine interest in them, who they are as a person, what their career job what their career is, what are they doing, and what do they hope to accomplish.
Because sometimes you may have somebody that's on your list, and they're listed as he's a top CME for this disease state. And when you go to speak to him, you thought, that was about 10 years ago. I was interested in that. I moved on. I no longer care about depression. I'm now really focused on schizophrenia and its causes. What's the root cause of it? And it's like, oh, do I continue this conversation? What do I do with this? Right.
And what you do with that is still have a conversation because they're gonna be at the meetings. They're still gonna you're gonna wind up talking to them. You're going to see them. And while that might not be their primary focus, they still have some vested interest usually. So it's like, hey. I know this might not be your area of focus, but I just wanted to let you know about a new innovation that's coming.
Because sometimes maybe they've drifted away from what they were doing because there was there's been nothing new. There's been nothing new. They've gotten bored, and they moved on to the disease state that has a little bit bet more nuance and something new to discover and offer to their patients. If you say, I've got something new, that might be a moment for them to say, there's a new tool I can offer to my patients.
Or if I'm if it's academia that I'm teaching to my students, I don't wanna be the guy that's behind and didn't know this was happening. So always be prepared to have that quick conversation to grab their interest as well as being of value to them. Right. And the key to all of that to get in front of them is being persistent. You can't just email and expect people to see it half the time. See, it's like, how much spam do you get in your email every day? Do you open everything that you get?
Do you open every sales email that you get? Do you open every offer? No. So you need to find ways that how do you consistently and be persistent about trying to get that time? Go to meetings that you know they're gonna attend or they're likely to attend. Grand rounds when they're open. Make sure that you're there so that you become a familiar face. Eventually, you get to know their peers and you get to know other people, and somebody may go make that introduction. Sometimes it happens quickly.
Sometimes you just have to be patient. I had a KOL that I was trying to as when I was in a missile that I had spent so much time trying to get in front of. And I was like, wow. I'm never gonna get in front of this guy. And after about 6 months of persistently going in, knocking on the door, talking with the secretary, asking, finally, he says, okay. You must really have something to say. Come in. Let's have a chat. And from there, we really developed a great relationship.
I still talk to him to this day where he was like, oh, how's it going? How are you doing? He is like he's retired now. But at the time, he's like, this is what I need you to do. I was like, I'll see you, but I need you to provide value. I wanna see everything ever published on schizophrenia. I just need you to bring me, like, a list. I was like, everything? And he was like, yes. Everything. So when I you know, you go into Veeva, you put that in, and I got lots of red flags.
I was like, what do you mean? He was like, I had to explain because I took the time to get to know him in those conversations. He's like, I'm a speed reader. So when I say I want everything, I want everything. I'm gonna sit there, I'm gonna read it, and I'm gonna process it. And so when I tell you to bring me all the articles, I want all the articles. If and it was, like, weekly, he wanted me to send him a link for all of them, and then we'd meet, like, once a month to talk about it.
So it was just a matter of knowing what he wanted. He said, don't come to me about advisory boards unless they're an x y z. Don't put this in front of me. Don't put that in front of me. These are the things I want. And so by sticking to that and knowing what he wanted and representing him to the company, we were able to get a lot of great things done by respecting his wishes and showing the value of what he we could provide for him. Wow. I love it. There is a lot to unpack there.
Like, we start talking about planning, and you started by saying, you know, know your KOL. And then you ended by showing, basically, how you got there. So it's all about really identifying and understanding what the needs are of each KOL. Really unpacking pretty much whatever it is that they consider valuable because you also said show value. And that's a that's I think we all have an idea of what that looks like, but we're not gonna know for sure what's most valuable to the KOL.
Does that make sense? Yes. That that's part of the how do you get in front of that difficult KOL is figuring out what's valuable to them. And sometimes it's, you just keep throwing things at out there until you catch their attention. And sometimes it's asking their peers because, you know, most likely, there's always that person that they're with or that they know that can give you some insight into what makes him tick. What's gonna capture his attention or her attention?
What's gonna be the thing that's gonna say, oh, that'll be valuable to them versus I'm just gonna keep going. Our latest article that we released may have seen it. It's like I had a manager at once. He said Google will beat you every time. Your job isn't to be Google. Your job is to make sure that you're ready to show something that maybe they hadn't seen or show a different perspective on something that they see. Hey. Did you see this article? What did you think about their conclusion?
I thought it was a far reaching because they, as I read through the scientific information, I don't see how they got from a to z. And that might spark their attention that they say, you know, I agree or you're missing the point. Let me tell you. It's like, don't be afraid to be educated. It's not always your job to do the educating. Oftentimes, you need to be ready to be educated as well. They're the expert. You're here to provide value.
You may be the expert on your compound or on your company, but not on the overall. That I love the point. So I wanna go back to I love the point, you know, we again, we're getting back into how to con try to control the controllables and deal with these difficult KOLs and position yourself properly. And you brought up something that I think is really, really amazing. And that is to maybe just ask other people. You had mentioned that find out what makes them tick.
And sometimes it's it's asking somebody on the staff. Or maybe if you're if you have the ability to create other relationships with, you know, folks that that work within the facility, work on on that KOL staff, or maybe there's somebody internally. Maybe your commercial counterpart has some of the answers to the test and can say, hey, this is what this person really likes. This is of interest to he or she. This is what gets them excited. Talk about this. Don't talk about that.
So I I didn't want that to get lost because there was a lot of good information that you just shared there. I didn't want that to get lost because I really think that that's a way where instead of us trying to figure out what it is that we need to do, what we need to present, and guess, it's sometimes it's better to just ask and ask those that might be in a position where, they may have some experience. Definitely.
Your commercial colleagues usually have been it's more their job to be consistently in front of someone on a weekly basis. So they're usually gonna move a little faster than you get you are on that relationship building and knowing what's important and what's not. So don't be afraid to ask the question, have the conversation.
And then something else I always did, I called it creative stalking, which is when you know you're going to a conference and you have the opportunity to be there face to face, don't shy away from going up to them and introducing yourself. Say, hi. I'm Andrea. I'm from x y z company. I've been trying to get in front of you for a while. Let me leave you my card. And what's the best way to get in contact with you? So that then they're either they're gonna say there isn't a best way.
Most people will say, oh, yeah. Let me give you my cell phone number. Let me tell here's my secretary's number. This is who you should contact. I had another colleague who had a best practice. He would always exchange cell phone. And he was like, hey. Let me get your number and let you let me give you mine so that he always had his k and me's cell phone numbers. Most people didn't refuse them. They'd say, oh, okay. They didn't think about it.
So it was always a great way to be able to get to that person by meeting them face to face and exchanging that human interaction, not just an email or random voice that's trying to get through on the switchboard, but making sure that you connect with people and show them that I value you as a person. So, therefore, I hope you will do the same for me so that we can build that relationship to the next level.
Absolutely. And, you know, I go to a lot of conferences, and I think that there's a lot of this fear and apprehension about going up to people because you don't wanna bother them or you don't want to be rejected. But there's an understanding. When you go to conferences, there's an understanding that networking is gonna happen.
And you can see the people that kinda are very standoffish, and those people that, like, don't come out into, like, the main room and they stay away from where a lot of people are. And those people might be a little more difficult. But at the same time, people, 90% of the time, people are usually pretty nice. If you go out of your comfort zone and you just go just exactly the way you did it, You know? Hi, I'm Andrea. And, you know, you're I'm from this company and just wanna introduce myself.
No one's gonna look and you'd be like, get away from me. Yeah. I've never had that app. That's not And even the guy who stand off ish, if you make it quick, it's like, hey. I don't wanna bother you, but I just want to give you my card and introduce myself. Yeah. Yep. No. It's great advice. Move on. Leave them alone. And if you'd never hear from them again, you made the effort. And sometimes they may say, oh, yeah. I had a question about something for this company.
Yeah. Sometimes it's just, I'm gonna call you when I need something. Yep. And that's gonna be it. And I do we have talked about how important a text relationship can be with KOLs, and I you what you just hit, like, really almost like the golden ticket of the k o l relationship is if you can get in their phone and and you have that connection. Let's let's be real. I mean, we're in a society right now where every we're all in our phones all the time. So if you're in a k o l's phone, that's huge.
Now we've also talked about the fact you have to be very, very careful in how you use that privilege. You wanna check-in with a k o l and say, hey, is it cool if I text you? What's the best time? What's your preference? I don't wanna bother you. I wanna be respectful. And then you're going into it, and there's boundaries that are set. You're not overstepping those bounds. But now you have the basically, it's like having the permission to use text.
So have you seen that as an effective way to to build and forge deeper relationships? Oh, yeah. And I always encourage it. It's a funny story. I when I was still in a cell and I was going to see one of my top KOAs and, you know, they have all of these systems to limit your access and make sure you're cleared and you have to go to, different vendor mate and the others to sign in on the machine. And I my flu vaccine had just expired the day before.
I didn't know this until I went to the machine, and it gives me the big red x. And it was like and does they would not let me get through at the front desk. And I had an appointment. I'm like, I don't want him to think I'm not showing, but I had his text. So I so I had a cell phone. So I text and say, hey. I'm outside. I can't come to the back because I have to go get my new flu shot for the year. It expired yesterday, and they won't let me back. He was like, what? He said, that's ridiculous.
I was like, alright. I'm coming out. So he came out. We went across the street. We had coffee, and I was able to have my appointment versus even like, oh, wow. She's a no show. There wouldn't have been another way because she would not call him. She was like, I'm not gonna call him. You're not cleared. I'll tell you. That's a great story. I mean, think about it. Without having the ability to text that person, you're now a no it's the opposite.
Instead of it being a really good, you know, you know, great FaceTime, it's a no show. And now you have to explain what happened. So I think that that's a great obviously, that's a great example of how important it is to try to make that connection. What happens when now let's get back into this difficult k well scenario where, you are doing everything that you kinda try, think you need to. You're trying everything, and it's just not working.
Or what happens if something goes south and you're trying to turn a KOL around? Do you have any good best practices that you've seen work in those scenarios? Yeah. I've got a couple of things that I think about, and one is don't be afraid to ask for help. So one, as a national director, I always encourage my MSLs to work with each other. So get a mentor or coach, a peer coach to kinda walk through those scenarios with you and do a little role play. Say, hey. I had a bad interaction.
I didn't have the answer or I didn't have it quite right. This is when I get in next time, I wanna make sure that I correct it. Can you coach me through how would this land with you on talking through it first? So that your practice isn't in front of your KME. Your practice is with a peer so that you then when you go it's like you've dialed it in.
Don't make it too polished because you don't want it to sound like you're acting, but you do wanna make sure that you're getting your point across and that it's clear to them. And you can do that with a mentor. And it's also when you've done everything that you think you can or should do to be able to get in front of them, and you're still not that meant that peer mentor can say, hey. You know, this is something different that I've tried.
Because we don't all have all the answers, so don't be afraid to ask for help. And I always try to build a team culture environment that everyone feels like they are part of a team and not that they're in competition with each other. Because sometimes you can get that I call it a toxic environment where everybody's out for themselves and no one's willing to help each other. And I haven't come across that too many times, but it does exist in some pockets.
So you wanna make sure that if you're a part of a team that's like that, be the change so that you can have that peer to peer relationship and say, how do we talk to this? How do we get to someone that we have been able to how do I do my creative stalking of I need to go to the same meetings. Then I need to find out what meetings they're at so that I can make sure that I go to their talk so that I can get that first time to be face to face.
If you wanna get real creative, take some pages out of the sales book. Where where did they park? I was like, I know you leave for lunch. Let me see. Yeah. Yeah. That's that. What, what did you say? The, stalker, the, the creative stock creative stalker. That's creative stalking right there. Yeah. Be where they're gonna be. If you know, they have lunch in the cafeteria all the time. Be in the cafeteria. Yeah. Show up. You know, and I do I do love the idea of asking for help.
I think that a lot of times people try to figure things out on their own. And especially when you're field based, you just you become independent. You become kind of siloed. And I think by asking for help, a lot of things happen. Number 1, sometimes you're too close to the forest to see the trees. You need to have someone else's eyes looking at your scenario to say, oh, yeah. You know what? That happened to me, and here's what helped me. Or that happened to so and so.
Why don't you give them a call? But the other thing it does is to your point, it really helps build the culture, the team culture, where everyone's helping each other. Everyone's learning from each other, and everybody wins. Instead of everybody just literally, you know, being in a silo, trying to figure out figure out everything on their own. So I think that's tremendous advice. Yeah. It's always better when you work with the team.
And my probably the biggest challenge that I had was a KME that unfortunately and that's just when I was in sales. And, yes, I was a little bit more aggressive as a salesperson. And I I insulted him by saying that he liked the other company better than ours. Yes. Yes. I know bad, bad. So then he was like, he refused to talk to me. He was like, I'm not going to speak to you. I'm not going to see the end, but luckily it was still a very open hospital.
So then I walked in and I was like, are we speaking yet? Are we speaking yet? Are we speaking yet? And he was like, are you going to come by every week and ask me if we're speaking as a guest? He's like, all right, fine. I'll talk to you. And I was like, he's like, why do you want it? I was like, my job is to talk to you. So if I'm not talking to you, I'm not doing my job. And he's like, okay, well, it's not my job to talk to you. I was like, I appreciate that. I understand.
But if you could just let me tell you these three things, he's like, fine. Say your three things. It's like, okay. And we rebuilt to the point where he was like, all right, fine, come on. It became like the running joke of this. Like, oh, yeah. They're they're frenemies right now. Yeah. But he was going by all the time and just kinda say, put my, head in my hands and say, sorry. Are we are we on good terms yet?
It's like, I know that I was a person in the wrong, and let me say that I still see value in speaking to you, and I'm gonna just keep asking until you are willing to speak to me again. You know, it's funny. It's I've I've I've seen in my time in the field and my time, you know, in this seat, what I'm doing now. Sometimes a mistake or starting off on the wrong foot leads to your best customer, your best KOL, KME, whatever we're calling them. It and the consistency and the persistence.
You just hit the nail on the head. Not giving up, trying your best, apologizing, coming in hat in hand. Hey, listen. I you know what? I know I spoke at a turn or, you know, I'm sorry I didn't provide this, or I'm sorry I didn't follow-up, or I'm sorry I missed the meeting. Whatever it might be, whatever situation it is, sometimes that becomes an experience that actually becomes a bond in a way, even though it started off negative. I had a situation and I'll make this a really short story.
But years years ago, when I was a rep, I walk into an office. And back then, I worked for a nutritional company, and I was I came in and just dropped off samples like I normally did. Had a great relationship with the staff. Well, I literally was wrong place, wrong time. The doctor came out. He saw my samples there. He started flipping out, yelling at everyone. Me yelling at the staff. Why is this here? It shouldn't be here.
I don't want stuff cluttering up the you know, whatever, and kicked me out of the office. And I'll never forget it. I literally left that office with my table between my legs. I was like, oh my god. I stink at this. This is like really early in my career. So long story short, the office manager comes out to my car, finds me and says, listen, I just wanna let you know I it's not you. Told me that the doctor, his wife, had twins and one of the babies died.
And the other was in intensive care and was struggling. And he just is obviously, you know, totally stressed and was looking to take his frustrations out. So it just so happened that I work for a company that sold baby formula. And the baby formula that his that this infant was on, which was really, really expensive, we made. So I told her, I said, listen. I will I apologize, please. You know, whatever I can do. Long story short, I wound up bringing formula to the office.
And after all was said and done, it wasn't right away, but after all was said and done, she called me and said, the doctor wants to have a meeting with you. And we sat down and he said, I won't apologize. I took, you know, my situation out on you. I really apologize. You're a good guy. Everybody speaks so highly of you. I can't thank you enough for the form and this guy became my best doctor, like ever best relationship ever.
Sometimes we don't realize that people are treating us a certain way just because of something that's going on in their life. We're just a victim of circumstance, has nothing to do with something we may have done. So I know that's kind of a long story. I'm rambling here, but, I think it just shows you that there are difficult KOLs that go into different buckets. Some of it has nothing to do with us or what we might have done. Yeah. And to your point, the key is they're human.
Yeah. Remember the humanity factor is Totally. That you treat people the way that you'd want to be treated if the situation was reversed. It's like I started my career as a clinical pharmacist, and I had people coming in. And the people that I would more likely meet and talk to are the ones that came in and said, hey. How are you doing? What's going on today? Is this a good day to meet? I know you guys may have a lot of meetings going on. They were considerate of my time.
They were considerate of me as a person and what I may have had going on. Didn't assume that I had nothing to do but talk to everybody that came in. And the ones that I ran from literally were the ones that just, hey. I wanna tell you about a, b, c, d, e, f, g. It's like, okay. But did you even stop to see if I care about any of those? Maybe I only care about a and b. Yeah. It's like, ask the question so that what you're telling me is relevant to me.
I literally had people that I'd I work at the VA system, and I'd have the security guard say, if this person comes in, call me on my cell phone. If this person comes in, I'm not here. Wow. Because it's like there were people that provided value and those that didn't. So What? And I think that that's a great way to kind of, like, just kinda summarize this whole conversation, which was amazing by the way.
And and I really appreciate you taking the time, but there's so many good points that you brought up. I love the idea of really getting to know your your KOLs. Value first and foremost. And that was the first thing that you said. Consistency and persistence. You know, being a creative stalker. I think these are all things that I mean, these takeaways, I think apply not just with difficult KOLs. I think it applies really for territory excellence.
Yes. And I think it'll it it's something that that should be a best they are best practices for everyone that's out there just as a reminder of what's what's effective and what works really well. Yeah. It's important to know that what you're providing is what's gonna provide value to them, not just what your sound bites are for the moment. Awesome. Andrea, thank you so much. You're amazing. This was an awesome conversation, and, we'll have to do this again. But I do wanna thank you.
I know everybody is, is probably or has been taking down notes and is gonna use all this stuff. So you're awesome. Thanks, Tom. It was great opportunity. Alright. And thanks, guys. Thanks for listening. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for for all your support, and we'll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to the show, and if you enjoyed it, please subscribe so that you don't miss an episode in the future, and feel free to leave a rating or a review or a comment.
Thanks again, and we look forward to seeing you soon.