Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. My guest today is Linda Traylor. She is senior principal, medical affairs at IQVIA, and we talk about best practices for objection handling for field medical professionals. And Linda is amazing. She's been on this podcast before. You guys are really gonna love this. I learned a lot.
Don't forget to follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram and TikTok, and check us out for our MSL talk live discussions, which are the 1st Tuesday of every month at 1:30 PM EST, and that's on LinkedIn live. Thank you. Welcome to MSL talk with Tom Caravella, a podcast specifically designed for MSLs and all things field medical. Hey Linda, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you. I am glad to be here. Awesome. I'm excited. The first one was a lot of fun.
But this one's gonna be, you know, I just for the folks listening, I actually, like, stalked Linda for this topic, and this episode. So basically, backstory is, saw Linda at the MSL Society Conference, saw that she was doing a workshop and speaking on how MSLs should be handling objections. I couldn't make the session, unfortunately, because I was in another session. I got tied up with something. And I was like, we this like, we need this. We have to do this.
And as you guys know, Linda's awesome in everything that she does. So I was like, we have to do this. We set up a call. We talked about it. I saw some of her slides, and here we are. We made it. We made it. I'm looking forward to it because it's such a fun workshop. I've given it before in different scenarios under different situations, and every time it's fun, it's always a fun topic. So this is gonna be great.
Yeah. Yeah. And I wanna start with something that you that you and I talked about a little bit, and that's, the objection that MSLs often have to the term objection handling. So I wanna talk about that. Yeah. You know, and it's so funny. It's a mixed review for the most part. I would say most people are comfortable with, with the terminology.
But there's always a group of people that look at it from the perspective of it's a commercial sounding, you know, phraseology and that it implies some level of, you know, perception of sales, persona onto the MSL. Right. And and so I I think, one of the things that I use I discuss around, when it comes to dealing with this is we kinda work through that, like, the the framework that we're gonna discuss today around objection handling.
We just I usually start the workshop off by applying it to this objection to the term objection handling, and we kinda work through the process, and to show how, you know, I have a goal to to, for the workshop to be able to discuss the framework without any thing interfering with, engaging with the audience to to kinda get to the best solution.
And so if the terminology objection handling is causing people to get distracted, then my goal is to alleviate that and has come to even if it means we call it something else else, rarely does that happen. Most of the time, people align at the end when we kind of work the system that it it it's not the term objection handling.
It's the, application, of the skill set and how, you know, how you differentiate between your role versus other roles and what that means and how you contextualize objection handling. Yeah. And maybe and is it safe to say that the term objection handling could also be synonymous with indifference or negativity or just a bad vibe. We just coin it objection handling.
Yeah. I think I think it's actually I think it's everything you just said and probably even broader in the sense that it's, you know, it's I think there are, you have to kinda determine whether it's a real objection or a misconception Yeah. Or if it's skepticism Yep. Or or everything you just said with regards to is it a general sort of negative vibe over something?
They're, you know, interpreting something in a way that is causing them to not feel comfortable with the, with, say, data, for example. Yeah. Well, for the for the sake of this podcast and and to make it simple, we're gonna call it objection handling. And we're gonna call them objections. Now the question I have is you mentioned you mentioned commercial and and, you know, sales interactions. Is is objection handling different for MSLs than it is for folks on the sales side?
Yeah. That's a that's a that's a great that's a great question, and it's a it's a conversation that I I've had, quite a bit, especially when doing this workshop. But because the roles are different, I would say it seemingly there are gonna be differences in, you know, objection handling the way that we approach it.
But if we actually step back and unpack that a little bit, we'll see that I would argue that the framework and the skill set, to deal with objections, navigating hard conversations is very comparable between, say, a salesperson and an MSL. However, it where the differences are is is how each team is incentivized. Right.
For instance, commercial and sales, you know, members are incentivized by more revenue objectives and other business objectives around that are tied to the number of how much the product is used.
And so, they may and and because their KPIs are kind of, focused on that, key performance indicators are are focused on those business objectives, then they may have a greater sense of urgency in the way they handle objection than it needs to be more real time because most of the objection objections that a sales representative would get is very specific to the product. Logistics, how you know, getting access, you know, patient you know, payer access.
A lot of the the elements that are related specifically to the product, and so they are incentivized to move more quickly to the objection handling process. That makes total sense. Yeah. Right? Makes total sense. The mission is different. Yeah. Yeah. For an MSL, we're incentivized by, you know, furthering a a relationship. Right? We're or improving, you know, the clinician's practice through education or, looking at improved patient outcomes. We have a different, mechanism for measuring impact.
And so the way we look at objections, is really, does it interfere or does it have an impact, on, you know, the goal we have in developing that relationship? Got you. Yep. Makes total sense. So let's talk about the framework because you've mentioned it. I'm excited. I wanna I wanna jump right into that. What is this Absolutely. What is this framework you speak of?
So, yeah, it's it's funny because, I believe heavily in frameworks when it comes to a lot of different skill sets we need to practice, in in order to optimize our time with clinicians and thought leaders and KOLs, because that time is getting more precious and harder to get. And so, the framework that I, I I use for objection handling, I call it the 5 e's. I like alliteration. That's one of my memory tricks, and so that helps me remember it. But the con the the framework itself is not mine.
It's something I've, gotten from a couple of colleagues. Shout out to Richard O'Hare. Thank you for sending me your slides. But, also, it's, you know, from reading a number of books on, you know, dealing with or having crucial conversations, authentic conversations. And so I have converted a lot of the different things I've learned over my career into, you know, these 5 e's, that I've been layered in with some very easy tips and, you know, tricks in terms of navigating them. But they're hard.
They're not straightforward. So I mean, to to accomplish. Easy to say Yeah. A little bit harder to accomplish. So number 1, encourage open communication. Number 2, inquire to clarify the objection, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. K. Enrich your understanding. Engage to categorize, and then endorse a resolution or next step.
So if we kinda go back and look at each one of those five e's, encourage open communication is really about everything, like, Doug Yall got on with on your on your podcast that he talks about, you know, EQ. This is earning trust is one of those things that is is something that you have to employ all of your soft skills for. It's it's really being authentic, you know, doing the work. Right? You show up prepared.
You use this is where you have to sort of understand your skill set to know your audience, and and a lot of the prep work that goes into it. All of that culminates into the physician feeling like they're getting value from this exchange and and, they are, gonna be more open in their conversation. And then that's when you kind of move into and and sometimes this is done you know, 1 and 2 almost go hand in hand, inquire to clarify.
And this is really it's not about trying to, you know, at this point, categorize the objection yet because you really need to validate that you're hearing the right thing. Right? And so some of the things the tools that I, have picked up and one of my favorite authors, is Chris Voss and his book, Never Split the Difference. Great book. But he talks yeah. It's a really great book. But he talks a lot about mirroring and labeling.
And and some of the if you practice those, some of those actually allow the conversation to not get distracted by, you know, any of the nuance and and really focus in on understanding because it requires you to be present and to listen. And so mirroring is simply just, you know, the nonverbal, making sure that, you know, you you have a similar, you know, body language style to to your audience. And that's just, you know, human nature 101. And it works. It it just takes practice.
And then the labeling is just, as it implies, it really is saying, you know, when you inquire about you said, I heard this. Is this what you intended? And you use their words and in your explanation. So mirroring and labeling are are sort of overlap, but they are, you know, really easy tools. If you practice, that can kinda make sure you really understand what's you know, what what their objection is or or what they're stating their objection is. And then you, enrich your understanding.
This is the classic, you know, who, what, when, where, why. All the questions. The open ended questions, that you have to ask to, you know, to get, them talking. And this is where you start to understand not just what their objection is, but why, you know, they have the objection that they have, and then engaging to categorize. This is where you know, as you started the conversation about is an objection this.
Well, objection can be a lot of things, and it can be categorized into some broad, you know, big picture categories and, misconception, skepticism, or real objection. And a real objection means in the MSL perspective lens is that, you know, there's missing data or the quality of the data is, is not what, the thought leader or KOL is expecting.
Or, you know, a real objection is that they, you know, treat their practice you know, they treat patients in a certain way and, introducing this new product, whatever it is, is going to disrupt that. And the, you know, the objection is that that is not worth the gain, and so you have to navigate. That's a real objection.
So, you really do have to, figure out because your approach to a misconception is completely different than your approach to, say, somebody who's just a skeptic or, some people call late adopters. They just have a tendency to kind of wait and see how it goes, initially in the market. And and sometimes you can navigate that, sometimes you can't. But part of building that relationship is really figuring out how to communicate, and getting past that. Yeah. Yeah. It's so much awesome stuff.
I mean, there's so much to unpack there. And I'm a huge Chris boss fan. I'm actually I read the book. I gotta tell you, and it's and I think it's something everybody should read. It's not about negotiation. It's not about it is, but it's it's really about anybody in life that's in a relationship that wants to navigate through and develop stronger relationships. So for example, we're talking about objections or indifference. And he says negativity.
He just used the term, here's how you handle negativity. And and to your point Yeah. He he's big on mirroring and labeling to be able to show the other to get to get in line with the other person more than anything else. You mentioned Doug and emotional intelligence. He talks about Doug talks about emotional intelligence, EQ, a lot of discussion on empathy because MSLs really need to be empathetic. Chris Fox talks about tactical empathy. Yeah. It's all a part of tactical empathy.
So, yeah, if you're looking for kind of a reference point, I would definitely, or a source of reference, I would definitely either listen to or read that book. So, Linda, when I think of handling objections, I it makes me think that you're you go into the conversation, and then you kinda handle them as they come. But you mentioned prep work. Mhmm. So how much of this really starts in the pre call planning process? Absolutely.
I was listening to some of your, earlier podcasts, Tom, and I I wanted to bring up I I listened to Angela's, the art of storytelling and Andrea's, dealing with difficult KOLs. And I I I think one of the, you know, universal threads and a lot of the the podcast on engaging thought leaders field activity is the pre call planning and the importance of it.
And so as it's required for developing a story, as it's required to developing your plan to navigate a difficult KOL, navigating objection handling requires the same amount of planning. And oftentimes, having that framework, it helps, you know, put, categorize and bucket in, your approach so that you can build a plan to, to really engage that KOL and and come to an understanding and further relationship and develop your goals.
So speaking of goals, part of the pre call planning, regardless of whether it's objection handling, storytelling, or dealing with the difficult KOLs, because I think there's a lot of overlap there, is having a SMART goal, for each thought leader. And, again, this is another framework, and and it's common. It's not mine. SMART goals, specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time bound. It's really, really critical. I mean, it's a good approach, but there are others.
I've heard of fast and a couple other ways you can define and develop goals. But all of them agree that they need to be very specific and measurable. And I would say time bound is is critical too. But for objection handling, you don't necessarily have to say I'm going to set a specific goal for the objection handling. It's you set a specific goal for the KOL.
And if the objection that they are, bringing up, does not interfere with the goal that you have for the KOL, then you may not have to actually address the objection. You may not have to handle it. You may not have to figure out the root cause and overcome it. To me, it kinda then moves over into the category of insight gathering. Right. Important conversation to have. It's important for fur furthering the relationship, and it might be useful information for the company to have, and and record.
But if it doesn't interfere with your, with your goal for that KOL, then don't, get fixated on trying to handle every objection. Yep. Got you know, that's, and I guess that was gonna be one of the next questions I had is, is that is that a good practice is to pick and choose which objections you handle? Or do you have to feel like, oh, well, I need to address every single one.
Yeah. Yeah. And I actually think that's one of the outputs of having a, you know, a goal for your individual KOL is that you'll instinctually know, whether or not you need to address the objection. Again, let me give you an example. Yeah. I when I was, working for, a company, in my past, I had a KOL that had it was a pretty significant objection that he thought, that our product did not belong in guidelines. That's pretty big, big objection.
However, we have multiple product pipelines that, at the company I was working for. And my goal for that KOL had nothing to do with the product line that he was had the objection for. And so I it was easy for me to navigate from, you know, handling this objection to try and, you know, see if we could come up with a resolution that either changed his mind or, you know, helped him sort of get past it to more just understanding it and making an insight. It's a critical insight.
But I was there to talk to him about a completely other product line and doing an IST around that product. And this his opinion on this product didn't interfere with that. So to me, I navigated as an insight gathering, conversation, but quickly then got to the goal of, what I needed from him and redirecting the conversation back to that.
So that's what I mean is you really need to go in with the plan and be able to contextualize these objections into something that needs to be addressed or something that can be just an insight and monitored and understood as a relationship development tool. That makes total sense.
And, again, this is where the emotional intelligence comes in because you really have to be you have to have that self awareness to know how you're gonna shift from insights gathering to objection handling to, okay, now I have to get back on track with whatever my strategic objectives are and not just steamroll into the whole situation. Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Because they can go down a a rabbit hole for sure. Well yeah.
And and I it you know, these aren't the we're not talking about easy KOL conversations. We're talking about Yeah. The this goes right into that category of how to handle difficult KOLs. So what mistakes do you see MSLs making when it comes to objection handling?
Yeah. Yeah. I I think, they're the most common mistake is not practicing, for these types of events and scenarios because I think we spend, as MSL, a lot of time trying to understand the data we're presenting, trying to get prepared for either presentation or a conversation around a specific topic and not, you know, dedicating enough time for the unforeseen, parts of the conversation.
So, you know, whatever else you do, have it whether you use the 5 e's or different framework, have some sort of plan for preparing, for, questions anticipated questions, objections so that you don't have to be concerned about how you're going to approach it, that you'll you'll easily navigate into that that conversation if if it's, a practice thing. People you get less stressed if you know that if this comes up, I'm prepared. And so you get more out of it. The conversation's richer.
The output's richer. You end up probably furthering in the relationship in a significant way. So practicing and practicing out loud and using your team. Good teams help each other out when it comes to some of these hard conversations. So not also not dedicating enough time in the relationship development, process to assess that KOL. Right. I mean, I think you really need to get a read on them before, you know, you you kinda dive into your objection handling process.
You need to know your audience kind of like Andrea and and Angela were talking about. Yeah. So as people are practicing and planning, what objections what examples of objections do you think they should be prepared to plan for or or they should expect and and use to practice? Yeah. That's that's a great and I I would highly encourage teams to make this a team exercise Yeah. Because there a lot of the objections are, not unique or one offs.
They're common For, like, for therapeutics, the most common objections are adverse events, data interpretation, study design, patient profile. We'll hear a lot of times in the field, my patient doesn't look like, you know, that patient. And or for devices, it's hard to use. What I'm doing works. For diagnostics, it's like this how is this information gonna change my practice? This is not gonna change the way I treat my patients.
So whatever the all all of these objections that I just kind of listed, they're common for each of the types of of medical products, are something that you can practice as a team and get ready for if and and trust the framework. Yeah. So I think, you know, AE did a classic one. And so you really to to and there are a number of ways you can address it. It's not just a data play. You can't just say or a REMS.
Let's say you have a, you have a, a REMS program for, you know, these these products that, require a lot of mitigation for the, you know, to to treat and and manage the adverse events. It it's it's also understanding why they feel that way. So, again, trust the process because sometimes if it's just a misconception, you don't have to go down all of the data play. You could actually have an understanding of why they're concerned about it.
And it could be just one patient that came in and gave them a hard time about, you know, specific type of AE. And then you get to have a rich conversation around that patient, the case as opposed to the data play. So don't assume that your, approach to, say, an AE conversation, an adverse event conversation, is gonna be a data play.
You need to go through the work the process even if it's a AE that you have heard I mean, a objection that you've heard before, work the process because sometimes you might under you might uncover nuance, that kind of leads you down a different a different path. Sure. I mean, it makes total sense. There's gotta be standard objections that certain companies and certain teams are hearing all the time.
So if there's a workshop or a training session or part of onboarding, where it's like, hey, be prepared, because these top six things I don't know, are what you should be prepared for. And this again, gets back into that preparation piece, which is always so important. And I always keep coming back to that. Because I don't think as professionals, we take enough time to prepare.
I think that we're very on to the next thing on to the next thing, checking boxes, checking boxes, and we don't take enough time to prepare and pre call plan. So I think that that's awesome advice. So what about the concept of MSLs keeping opinions to themselves. How do you feel about that? Yeah. I think that's a pretty important, topic to discuss, especially as it relates to objection handling.
So a lot of times that conversation will navigate down a sharing of experiences or interpretation of data. And I this is a little bit one of my hot topics because I I hear I've heard, you know, medical affairs leaders say things like it's not your job as an MSL to share your opinion. And I think, that's an objection that I work the process.
And a a lot of times, what it comes down to is it's usually compliance or legal that is concerned with, an MSL providing treatment recommend recommendations or putting a it's, you know, navigating a conversation that might put patients at an increased risk. So patient risk is really the core of what some people say, you know, you know, MSL should be fair and balanced and keep their opinions to themselves. I disagree with that.
These are highly educated people that should come in, and the part of the value they bring is that conversation, that value add of being an expert that you can be be have a thought partner, when having a dialogue around whatever the topic. But stay away from the any conversation, that might put, the patient at risk because the physician misunderstands or doesn't understand or or, and it's related specifically to the, label of the product.
There are you you should be be able to easily say this is the area where we don't go because it can impact risk to patient. But everything else here, disease burden, you know, health economics data, you know, real world data, all sorts of, you know, reviews, competitive landscape, all of this is is fair game for having that rich conversation, which includes you you sharing your opinion. And it's critical for navigating, objection handling. It's because a lot of times you have to Yeah.
I totally agree. And I think that there's certain amount of personality and finesse that you need to put into things to really Yeah. Develop a level of trust. You just have to be careful, and you have to be smart about about sticking to what you what the organization is is preparing you for and and the information that you're learning that needs to be communicated and and just be very careful. So, what else is there anything else, any other tips, anything that we missed?
I love this conversation. I think that it's really important. But what is there anything else that that we might have missed? You know, I I would say, other than prepare and practice out loud, I would say get a mentor. If, you know, I think one time a lot of times, we don't everybody has blind spots, and I treasure my coaches and mentors over my career. And they have done a lot to kind of push me into thinking differently and and trying to understand the audience perspective.
So I anytime you can get a mentor, I think that is, something that's a major value add. You always win in that scenario. I think, making sure you know, sticking to that team teamwork theme, you know, objection handling, dealing with difficult conversation is something that teams should be constantly talking about. So it should be part you know, it should be a regular topic at every team meeting that you have. And really, you know, don't be afraid to put yourself out there.
Gotta put yourself out there. I love it. Linda, you're awesome. I mean, we should just do this, you know. Whenever you wanna come on, whenever you have a brainstorm for an idea, let me know. Since I just found out during this conversation that you and I are both Chris Voss fans, I think we should do a book review. Let's go. Let's do it. I would love to do it. So we just gave away a little surprise, but that is something that we're gonna do. We're definitely gonna do that. Absolutely.
I love that book. Awesome. I know, me too. I think it's amazing. And I'm actually listening to it. And I'm not even finished with it yet. So I'm actually literally like, it's crazy you mentioned it now because I'm, like, towards the end of it, but I'm listening to it. And it's just I feel like I need to go back and listen again because he's so amazing. Three times.
I've listened to it three times, and I've actually read it because, I down the first time I read it I mean, first time I listened to it was a couple years ago during the pandemic, when I was just consuming lots of books at that at that time. But I listened to it, and we just thought, you know, you're probably doing the exact same thing right now. Holy cow. This is, you know, a lot of stuff here.
So I listened to it again, then I bought the Kindle version and because they have some worksheets at the back, that I'm that I'm using. But I just find it, it's such an incredible resource. And I follow the Black Swan group too, so it's it's really great. Awesome. Well, we'll leave it there. Thank you again, Linda. You're the best. You're the best. Thank you guys all for listening. We are, we're really appreciative, and thank you for sharing and and, telling your friends about it. Awesome.
Take care, guys. We'll see you soon. 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.