Hey, guys. Welcome back to the podcast. My guest today is Amy Patel. She is an executive medical scientific liaison with Takeda Pharmaceuticals, and she shares her KOL engagement model, which she calls perceive, probe, and reflect. So interesting take, interesting strategy, and a great conversation. I hope you guys enjoy it. Don't forget to follow me on LinkedIn.
Check us out on YouTube, on our YouTube channel, and visit us on, MSL talk live, which is the 1st Tuesday of every month at 1:30 PM EST, and we are gonna switch the format to LinkedIn live. So be on the lookout for those details. Thanks, guys. Welcome to MSL talk with Tom Caravella, a podcast specifically designed for MSLs and all things field medical. Hey, Amy. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here today. It's really exciting.
And Amy was guys, Amy was referred to me, by a colleague and, actually, a competitor of mine. So, always good always good to to keep your network strong. And, we had a chance to talk about this concept that she developed, which she calls perceive, probe, reflect, which is her k o l engagement model. So I can't wait to get into it. But before we do that, Amy, why don't you do an introduction? Let everybody know who you are and where you're from and all that good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay.
So I'm, my name is Amy Patel, and I'm a Pharm d by training. Originally from Canada, but I've lived in the US ever since I graduated from pharmacy school out on the East Coast in Philadelphia. And I have been in this industry for about, I would say, 15 years now. I actually started off working very briefly as a pharmacist at Target, but quickly realized I wanted to get into medical affairs.
And so my experience sort of ranges from working in managed care, payer, health outcomes to then going into, the CNS and oncology space, which I've sort of split my time evenly in the last 12 years from various companies that I've, worked for. And that's sort of the reason how I ended up from the East Coast to the West Coast, which is where I'm settled now in California. You can probably see the background. I'm not in San Francisco, although I lived there for a year.
I am in Orange County, but, this kind of resembles, you know, where I'm at right now. And I've been working as an executive MSL at my most recent position, and I've been in the CNS space currently. Yeah. And for those of you that can't see, like, that aren't watches on YouTube, that are listening to it in your car or, you know, as you're working out, Amy has a background of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. It's actually pretty cool, so check it out on YouTube.
And before like, I gotta do a quick shout out. Before we go any further, wanna welcome our friends. We have a new market that we just kinda broke into. Welcome to all my friends in Peru. So really high rankings in Peru. Wanna thank everybody for listening. Thank you guys for sharing this podcast. It's the fastest growing podcast, like, on the planet, and I really thank you guys for doing that. So, Amy, let's get into it. How'd you come up with this model? How'd you come up with this concept?
You call it once again, I'll say perceive, probe, and reflect. Yes. Yes. So I guess the way I can first describe it is early on in my career, especially taking my 1st MSL role with with absolute zero training, I really didn't know how to be an effective MSL. I sort of learned the hard way by figuring things out on my own. This medical affairs MSL position, as you know, is really about relationship building. And it's so critical along with active listening.
And I really think it's important to emphasize on really getting to know your audience, which in this case would be your stakeholders, which could be defined as your nurse practitioners, your PAs, your clinicians, whoever you're seeing, whether that's academic or community. And what I sort of discovered is there's a couple of different things that go along with, you know, learning about a KOL and their personality, getting to know their mood, their openness.
It's not just purely scientific along with what's really important for them. What is it that they focus on in their clinic or their practice or their research? And so you really have to relate to someone deeper, often than just, you know, talking about just the clinical level. And I think a lot of that comes from learning in this perceived proproflect model, which is something I can explain shortly and really doing that to open the door of communication.
So that you're understood credible, along with driving the conversation, ultimately in a way that is receptive to the other person on the end of that. And that will change person to person. Awesome. I love it. I think that you're spot on with that. We're as strong as our relationships, and it's especially in the MSO world.
But in our business and in our career, I think it's so important that we develop strong relationships internally as far as and as well as externally, because you just never know where and when you're gonna need those relationships throughout your career. Where I always relate this back to a job search and how important it is to be fully networked, so that if at some point in time, you're looking to get a foot in the door, you have people in place for that. But as it relates to KOLs, spot on.
So can we let's I'd love to get into it and get into the nuts and bolts and see how this strategy works. Yeah. But can you elaborate on that a little bit? Absolutely. So I must emphasize again that the strategy is not really a it's not a one size fits all. It might tweak a little bit as you're meeting with people. But the way I use this is really setting up the foundation.
And so I really implant this into my brain every time I'm connecting with a stakeholder, whether it's by email to first get an appointment at a congress or even, you know, meeting them 1 on 1 in person. And not everyone is the same as I mentioned before. So the way that this works is this proceed pro reflects. So let's talk a little bit about proceed.
So you have this perception of how a meeting will go or how a KOL may be, you know, your opinion on maybe their background or what they're going to bring to the table when you speak with them. However, you don't really have the facts early on to really validate your thoughts or what you perceive. So it's human nature to have this instinct when engaging with anyone, and this is personal or professional life.
And as you start your conversation with, let's, for example, talk about a key opinion leader, probing, which is the next part of my modeling approach, is really how you validate that initial perception. So asking questions that are not going to be closed ended, but rather boost discussion and asking about what is truly important in their practice and what they find is a driving force.
For example, when they may prescribe or maybe you guidelines or whatever it is that they're going to do to make a final decision on their clinical paradigm. And so when you look at things like that, you're going to actually learn a little bit more about that individual, you know, looking at body cues as well. And you're going to mold yourself to kind of fit that, you know, conversation so that you can be more impactful during your visit with them.
And it goes back to even simple things like, for example, if I may give you an example of like a demographic area, if you're seeing someone who may be the demographics is low income. Okay. Cost compliance driving is the force of that clinician prescribing, for example. You may not necessarily want to start up your conversation talking about the scientific or the efficacy or the safety data right off the bat because it's not gonna really resonate with them.
You know, you're you wanna make sure whatever you're providing is going to resonate with them. And so that probing part is going to drive how you're going to cater that conversation. And then once you complete that probing part, you're going to go back and reflect, which is really what are the key takeaways. How can you, for your next meeting, cater to his or her needs based on what you learned during the actual conversation?
Or at the same time, putting your energy and focusing on what is going to keep that KOL engaged. You'll often find sometimes you lose them during a conversation, but you really wanna bring it down to his or her needs. So in other words, that's also a form of post call planning when you reflect. Well, I was gonna I was actually gonna say, like, this sounds really easy, but I have to imagine that there's a lot of preparation that goes into this in order to really make it effective.
So what do you recommend that people do a fair amount of pre call planning to to be able to make this work? A great question. So pre call planning is so important. It's extremely important because, you know, when you're meeting someone, especially if you don't have any idea who they are, you really need to learn about their background. You need to know what things are important for them.
Because, again, if they're focused on evidence based medicine or guidelines or they're looking more at their demographics, that's really gonna drive your discussion. Going back to that cost example, I mean, you know, you're not gonna go into an office and start talking about cost and compliance if that's not even an issue for the key opinion leader.
You know, if they're really about tolerability or they're talking about, I cannot get my patients to continue taking their medication, you know, if it's a problem with side effects. I work in the area of depression. So tolerability is like my biggest concerns for every single person I speak with, when I'm in the field. And so really making sure you have an agenda with questions that you want to uncover. But also being an MSL, I think everyone is aware.
Be prepared to throw your agenda out the window because you never know what's going to transpire during a meeting and especially if it's the first time you're meeting with them. So my main motto is sometimes pre call planning is important and you can get a lot from just learning about them online. But the other part of pre call planning is right when you're in the call because you haven't discussed anything yet. And really main motto is listening.
You need to be an active listener because a lot of the time they're the ones that want to do the talking. And so if it doesn't fall within what you want to discuss, just let the conversation flow and pick up key points during your conversation. Got you. Okay. So let's go back a second because as you're doing your research, I I would imagine that there's that you have some secrets and techniques.
So how do you advise MSL's research, the audience, the the KOLs, and whoever it is that they're gonna go meet with? Yeah. Absolutely. So one of the old traditional things I did, especially early on in my career when I didn't have a lot of training, is good old Google. You know, I would type in the person into the name, into the search engine. If they're associated with an academic institution, more often they have a CV, they have a background, their research, their clinical interest.
Also looking at PubMed, seeing what kind of things they've done in there. Also, any congresses that they've presented just to get some more information on sort of where they're at and what they're focusing on. But really not to just do that clinically. I feel like another part of this job is, you know, like I mentioned, relationship building. You don't really wanna disregard any personal interests or hobbies or any of their excellent talking points to build personal connection.
And the reason I say that is because often it's that personal connection that will get you in the door. I recall early on in my career, I had a key opinion leader who I was visiting, and I didn't really know them very well, but I wanted the meeting to go well. I had an agenda. I wanted it to be successful. And as soon as I walked into their office, I saw that they were a graduate from University of Toronto and I'm a Canadian as well, so I kind of use that as a talking point.
I saw a whole bunch of things in their office related to the Maple Leafs. I'm a huge hockey fan. We really built a connection to kind of open it up and to have a good foundation for our forthcoming discussion. And so really not forgetting about the personal touches and getting to know your KOLs, not just from a clinical standpoint, but from a personal standpoint. And that really does go a long way at building relationships and really building long lasting friendships as well.
So you're saying you have to try to figure out what type of person Yes. That you're dealing with, what their core behaviors are, their values. So how I mean, I I it sounds like that's a really important piece of it, but how do you go about that? Yeah. So I'm very blessed to say that in my career in the last 12 years working for various pharmaceutical companies that I have actually been gifted these, like, personality tests that they do, internally.
And they're really fun, and you learn a lot about yourself. And I, myself, know I'm a very outgoing, talkative person. Sometimes talk a little fast, sometimes can be hard to keep up with. And I've learned through these testings that I was able to do that because I'm that way, the person on the other end might not necessarily be the same way. And you need to sometimes bring it down to their level to be effective in communication.
If you don't have those resources, these are things that you can sort of note down or hear from friends or family on sort of your personality, your talking points, how you communicate, and really use that as receptive feedback. The reason why it's so important to know is because, you know, you're adjusting to that person, and that's really critical. If you have someone on the opposite end who you're speaking with, who's more hyper and direct, you want to mold yourself to resonate with them.
And that's important, especially if it's the opposite and you have someone who's shy, quiet, maybe super calm and dial it down a notch when speaking with them. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a meeting before I kind of realized this, but I lost my person 5 minutes into the conversation. And so who knows if I was even able to say what I needed to say and that it actually stuck with them and they actually were paying attention.
So this again goes back to the perceived probe reflect because even knowing what is important to a KOL early on allows the MSL to be effective at discussing scientific data, but at the same time, making sure it resonates with them and that's important to the KOL and that you're also gonna be asked to come back. That's important as well. Yeah. And I'll tell you one of the things. So I was a trainer in a prior life when I was working in field sales.
And one of the things that I always used to teach my reps is that you really have to pay attention to the type of personality that you're dealing with. If you're talking to somebody who's a hard driver, that's real fast talker and really fast paced, and you're, like, slumped over in your chair and you're really laid back, you're not gonna match that energy.
So one of the things that I always try to impress on people is that you have to mirror and match what you're seeing as far as behaviors in the person that you're talking to. And that this goes within any walk life, whether you're an MSL, whether on the commercial side, or whether you're meeting somebody for the first time. If you can't match that person or meet them somewhere where it's going to be a comfortable conversation, then it's just gonna seem awkward. You agree? Absolutely. Absolutely.
And and that's the important part because we don't have 5, 6 hours with each of these people that we meet with. You know, if we're lucky, we get 30 minutes, very extremely lucky an hour. And sometimes it's one of those 10 minute types of, you know, interactions, and you really need to make a good impression and you really need to keep them engaged and focused in that short period of time. Yeah. Well, I wanna talk about that in a little more detail. But before I do that, so I'm curious.
How much time do you spend pre call planning? Is it like an hour? Is it several hours? Like, how much time do you actually put into it? Yeah. You know, it varies. I don't want this to feel like it's an extra thing to do because we're already, you know, busy navigating, making appointments, reaching out, involved in other projects and things that MSLs are always doing. It's not just, you know, a one shot field based employee type of position.
But really a simple 15, 20 minutes of just really taking a look at the person you're about to meet. And often I would have to say, if I'm driving somewhere or flying somewhere, these are things I do while I'm on route. So while I'm in the airplane sitting down flying to the actual meeting, while I'm driving, I might think about some of these things. When I'm in the office, I'm always early. I'm always going to be 20, 30 minutes early before a meeting.
I might even discover some of this, you know, while I'm sitting in their office and looking around for things as well, which can help me pre call plan on just how to approach that person I'm gonna meet with. So it could be anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes, but it shouldn't be an extra task. Because if it's an extra task, it's just something you're not gonna wanna do. Yeah. Well and I think, you know, in all fairness, it's so easy now. Like, back in the day when I was a rep, we didn't have Google.
We didn't have an I honestly I don't even think the Internet was the thing. I was a rep, and I was a trainer. And I know I'm dating myself, but in all fairness, now there's LinkedIn. There's Yeah. There's the Internet. There's, even Twitter. I know that I've had some folks on this podcast that talk about how they follow their KOLs on social media. And if they're big Twitter folks, they look to see what it is that they're tweeting out.
And then that's obviously a conversation piece that they could bring up. You also get to learn a lot about, you know, what makes people tick as you, you know, follow them on whether whether it's social media, LinkedIn or whatever. So there's almost no excuse. It's so easy now because the information is right at our fingertips. Absolutely. And social media has only really boomed the last, what, 10 years or so. I feel like even early on in my career, we had social media.
I never looked at it, though. It was really just Google and all the things you have on the website. But like you said, you have so many other different platforms that you can utilize to help do all of this as well. Yeah. And I'm old. I'm, like, literally almost a 100 years old. Anyway, that's how I'm so smart because I'm so old. No. Anyway, let's get back to the conversation itself, and I wanna get your take on probing and, and what you can recommend as far as good probing techniques.
Yeah. So probing is really two parts. It's asking the right questions, but also asking them the right way, if that makes sense. And so, you know, you really wanna stay away from any yes or no answers that you're going to basically get when having a conversation with a key opinion leader. You need to position that question so that it seems a little more complex, but it's ultimately giving you that same exact answer that you would have expected where it would have been one worded.
But then now you're forcing that person on the other end to elaborate. So let me give you another example and for this part I'll just I'll use a blood pressure example. You may have a new drug that treats blood pressure and you're in an office and you want to find out a little bit more about whether they're familiar with the drug or if they have used it or, you know, how many patients they have on there. Let's just say that's like the first question you may wanna ask to get a little perspective.
That's gonna be like yes, no, one word answers. If you just ask, do you use it? Are you familiar with our drug? Like, it's not very, complex. But positioning it where you can say, I have this new drug. I have some data I'd like to share with you.
I don't know if you're familiar with it or not, but I'd like to learn a little bit about your practice and learn kind of what things you look for in, a compound when you're prescribing medication for your blood pressure patients, and what challenges you may be facing in your practice with your current patient load. So now when you position it that way, they can't give you a yes or no. They're going to have to give you a story.
They're gonna have to talk to you a little bit more to kind of, you know, answer that question. So it's kinda keeping you engaged, but you're getting your answers, and it's actually gonna flow very well. And you'll uncover some interesting things when having that discussion with them. Yeah. So stick with the open probes like tell me or how or what as opposed to do or if. Yeah. Cool. So now you do your pre call planning. You go in. You're engaging. Everything's going well. You're probing.
What should the MSL be taking away from that conversation? Yeah. So, generally, we look at that as, you know, insights. Right? So we were thinking about what things did you speak about or that you learned from active listening that were really impactful. Because as an MSL, you're meeting with x number of people per week, and then you're multiplying that by 4 4 weeks in a month, and then you've got 10 MSLs on a team, for example.
That's a lot of insights if you're reporting every single thing back. It's almost overload. You almost have to find out and pick and choose which will actually be impactful. And when I think about that, I think about looking at pearls or gaps and, and that's really where majority of the focus should be spent on. Is there a gap or disconnect that you can go back and put together in a puzzle piece?
Or is there something that they said that you may be able to offer, whether that's more education or developing something internally that might actually be something that other people would actually benefit from? And so that's really where your reflection comes in versus just leaving a meeting, putting down a bunch of notes, and just submitting them internally on whatever platform you use. I often don't even submit every single insight. I think about it. Is this something worth mentioning?
Do we already know this? Is there something I can do about this? Like, that's kind of where you decide what's going to be important and what's not. And, the other part of that as well is, you know, setting yourself up for future meetings. While you're in the office, I'd like to just make sure, you know, or while you're talking with them on the phone, you're right in front of them. This is the perfect opportunity to segue and say, you know, I really enjoyed speaking with you today.
Perhaps in a couple of months or whatever it is that you decide the next appropriate time would be. Could we continue our conversation? And perhaps I might be able to talk about some other things that I didn't get around to speaking about today. And that's really how it would set you up for, you know, the next part of of your visit. Awesome. Well, that was gonna be my next question is, obviously so you have the engagement. There's gotta be a next step. Right? There's a follow-up.
Yes. But what does that look like? How do you follow-up? When do you follow-up? Yeah. So that's gonna look different for everyone. I think one of the differences is where you are in your product life cycle. You know, how much involvement is there for the KOL? When you're prelaunch or you just launched, there might be more frequent visits anywhere from 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 times a year. And that would be quarterly, monthly, you know, every 2 months, whatever your company or your self desires.
But what I normally see is that every 3 to 4 months on someone that you wanna keep a relationship with and you wanna continue to build. And some might just be what I like to say one time and then proactive engagement or maybe 2 times a year. It really just depends on that person, their clinical interests, what collaborations you may be involving them in. A lot of that will dictate how often you will see them. And then, of course, their interests.
If they don't want to see you again or they have no interest anymore or you've discovered that it's not someone that would be beneficial to have a proactive relationship more than once a year, then that will also dictate how often you'll see them. As far as creating a follow-up, the example I gave right there is also a great example.
And then, of course, if you are following up through an email, what I'd like to say is you've already missed the opportunity to create a follow-up while you're with them. Or let's say it's the first time you're meeting them and you wanna have that initial meeting where you've met them and you wanna follow-up. Going back to that proceed, pro, reflect, go back, research that key opinion leader, see what something new they've done when you're reaching out to them 2, 3 months later.
Let's say they published a new paper, or let's say they just attended a congress and they presented a lecture. Put those things in the email. If you put those things in the email when you're trying to get another appointment or another follow-up, that really shows that you've actually taken the time to really get to know this individual, and you're more likely to hear a response back versus that generic email that you sent to everybody. Right. No. That's great advice.
So you you've obviously developed this system. It's really working well for you. You've been doing this a long time. What what are the common mistakes that you see with MSLs as it relates to, you know, KOL engagement and normal interaction with KOLs? Yeah. I think I speak for everyone that I think if you have no experience and you're coming into this role, we're all guilty for doing a data dump. I think we've all done it at some point.
I would say that I early on did that because I just again, I didn't know how to navigate this job. I was learning this is, like, 10, 12 years ago when I first started. But that's not what we should be doing. We're supposed to be the experts in the field. We're supposed to need to, you know, know the data, but it's translating that and making it conversational because it's a conversation. It's not didactic and making it flow well and more listening.
I think the key part of listening here is uncovering some of those gaps or uncovering some of those insights that you might miss because you're not actually active listening. You're not actually listening to what they're saying. So, the probing questions really help because that kind of brings you back and slowly as you learn to master that, you can get more out of your meetings when you're in the field.
But really just making sure that your conversation is not just scientific, has a bit of a personal touch, and just flows very well. Yep. Awesome. Yeah. You got this down. So any other advice? I mean, any other little tidbits or takeaways that you wanna leave folks with?
Yeah. You know, I think personal wise, the only thing I'm gonna really say is, you know, if you're an MSL, no matter what you're doing or what struggles we've been having in this field, in this position, or what your goals and aspirations are moving forward, whether you wanna be a team lead, continue being an MSL, or cross functionally move around within the company, Just remember, because this job has no 2 days are ever the same. You wake up, you have different days every single day.
It's just a very exciting, career path. You never know what you're gonna face every day. But if you have any challenges that you do in this role, bring you in your career, you know, do not look at those as obstacles, you know, try to look at those as opportunities. And, and that is really all that this is about and being the best in class as a field expert or even in your personal life that you can be if you're an MSL. Yeah. It's great advice. So where what do you what does the future look like?
Where do you what do you see as the MSL of the future in your opinion? Yeah. That's a great question. So I think the pandemic has something to do with this as well. But ultimately, the future of MSLs, I think, are on track to become digital suave scientific experts, and they're gonna partner with minority stakeholders from health care providers to patients to drive better outcomes. Right? Over time, as the pharmaceutical industry has evolved, I think MSLs have engaged in other activities.
You know, whether it's making provisions to relevant disease state or pharmacoeconomic information or even supporting internal company initiatives and training functions, which is really what I've been doing quite a bit in the last 2 years because of the pandemic, training new hires and getting them on board and certifying them and really getting them acclimated to the MSL role.
And so having the opportunity to work and play different hats while you're a traditional field based employee is where I feel like it's going to be going. Because we're also doing the traditional preclinical research and supporting business development efforts. But as you see this role evolving, we're not just doing that anymore. There's so much other internal things that you can get involved in. And I think, you know, this is going to change how we sort of evolve as MSLs. Yeah. For sure.
But I'll tell you, the future's bright. The future's very bright. Absolutely. Well, listen. I really appreciate you coming on. This was awesome information, and, we'll have to do it again sometime. Yeah. Again, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed speaking with you and talking about this model because I really hope it can help other MSLs who are especially new to this, you know, industry. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you, my friend. Thanks for joining me, and thank you, guys, for joining us.
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