Lessons from the “Dark Side”

The Star Wars Rogue One movie comes out this week, so what better time to discuss moving over to the “Dark Side” than today?

(for those not yet in the know, sometimes training professionals within life sciences companies take on new career roles with vendor-providers. This is, tongue-in-cheek, referred to as moving to the Dark Side!)

In the Life Sciences industry, there’s a close collaboration between people in Training and Development departments, and their outside vendors. In fact, many people cross over from one side to another at points in their career – some for a season, and others permanently.

 Life is not the same on both sides of this fence. We discussed what it is like to launch a consultancy in an earlier post, but for this article, I’ve interviewed three industry professionals who have worked on both the client and the vendor side. Here is the question we’re working with: what are the main lessons learned about the nature of work once we leave the training department and join the “Dark Side”?

According to Andrea Pagnozzi (who has done multiple stints in training within pharma and medical device companies, and also worked for a time with a training vendor), one of the biggest realizations was how many people, and moving parts, were involved in developing training on the vendor side. While clients within T&D departments only see a few faces (typically an account manager and a project manager), there is, in fact, a whole host of professionals involved in a tightly-choreographed dance behind the scenes. Most vendors don’t burden their clients with all those details, and rightly so; however, it is important to remember that every change or delay in a project has ripple effects in the workflow behind the scenes.

Having worked on the vendor side for many years, I know about this first hand. To help clients understand, I often show a picture of the inner workings of a clock – you know, the old-fashioned kind with lots of gears – to build awareness that there is just as much complexity and collaboration on a project on one side of the fence as there is on the other. That’s why a detailed project plan is so important – it keeps everyone on track so that the development process does not spin out of control.

David Boyle, who has worn a variety of hats within large life sciences companies as well as with training vendors, stated that he has ended up learning far more about learning development from being on the vendor side. Those who cycle into training roles in pharma/biotech/med device organizations often only receive a bare minimum amount of training in project management and instructional design, and many times are not empowered to take a holistic view of existing training assets compared to the short-term necessities of the project at hand. As an outside supplier, David has found that he can often take a more strategic view of any given project and approach the needs more thoroughly. This underscores how important it can be to allow vendors to serve as strategic partners, and to bring their expertise and outside view to bear. This approach can end up saving enormous amounts of time and effort.

Sue Iannone has occupied many leadership roles in major training organizations over the years, having worked on countless initiatives both small and large. Recently, Sue took on a leadership role with a vendor/partner, and her input to me revolved around how absolutely crucial it is (for both sides!) to arrive at a very clear project definition. Most of the time, we tend to have a basket of problems on our minds, which, when unloaded on a vendor, may lead to a lack of clarity. Sue suggests a strategic definition session when appropriate, perhaps including a whiteboard, to try to narrow down the scope of the project and arrive at the true strategic business imperatives. This approach helps clients to get exactly what they need.

Those who know me well know that I often promote the phrase, “You can’t read the label of the jar you’re in.” One of the most valuable roles a vendor can play is to bring outside perspective and holistic thinking. All of us get too involved in our own forest and trees, and working more closely with smart and collaborative vendors in the definition process will always lead to greater success.

One interesting point that those on the vendor/partner side bring up is that the opportunity set is different when working with provider companies. Vendors tend to be much leaner, and generally value creativity and initiative more than conformity and narrow focus. The pace is faster, the hats you wear are more varied, and the “cocoon” of infrastructure that one often enjoys on the inside of a client company just isn’t there. Moving in one direction or the other can be scary for some, but refreshing and empowering for others. In either case, it’s a great growing experience!

More in the Impactiviti Interview series:

Training Journey – From Major Pharma to Startup

Training for the New World of Specialty Pharma

Becoming a Consultant – Should You?

Two Keys to Successful Product Launches

Clinical Training Innovation at Depomed

Development of Field Leadership at Gilead Sciences – “Touchpoints”

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50 Shades of Follow-up

I had a call recently from one of my preferred training partners, letting me know that a proposed project which had been put on hold some months ago was suddenly resurrected, and is now about to kick off. Awesome – I love that!

Sometimes client needs end up on uncomfortably longer-than-expected timetables, right? So, once a vendor-partner has had a helpful conversation to scope out a potential project, and they’ve submitted a proposal, how should they follow up?

I am asked this regularly by my partner companies, and here is my standard advice:

1. Don’t panic. Initiatives, and even responses to inquiries, just get delayed.
2. Don’t pester. By and large, clients dislike that. The follow-up process shouldn’t be punishment for expressing interest.
3. Gently inquire as to the status on an occasional (and by this I don’t mean twice-weekly!) basis. Make it a very succinct e-mail or VM – not an extended sales pitch.
4. For all prospects with whom you hope to develop a good relationship, occasionally forward interesting and value-adding resources and news items relevant to them or their company. No pitch – just, “thought you might like to see this.” It’s a valuable way to stay top-of-mind.
5. If you’re going to be in the area geographically, offer to meet for coffee or lunch. Not a capabilities presentation. Just talk. And see if you can make connections and introductions for your client within your network.

I was on the vendor side for years, and carried plenty of sales responsibilities over the past 3 decades, so I know the pressure. But you have to take the long view. I cultivated a friendship with one individual whom I got to know a long time ago (2 or 3 companies ago for him!), and with whom I stayed in touch even though there was little or no immediate business. And then, a referral door opened up into a very large new business opportunity. Had I been a high-pressure pest, that likely would never had happened.

Add value. Not pressure.

Here was one client’s take recently: “I hate being oversold and told that they can do everything. Trying to hard to get the business. I also don’t want to get 100 calls and emails; my time is precious.”

That’s my take – now, what about yours, training professionals? What do you prefer, or dislike, as far as a follow-up procedure from a vendor? Add your input in the comments so that your vendor-partners can benefit from your advice!

(P.S. From the vendor side of the equation, this input): One helpful piece of feedback from a vendor perspective to clients:  Please respond to the inquiry or follow-up. It is sometimes the case that a vendor puts in a tremendous amount of effort in developing a proposed solution to a stated need. In follow-up the client goes totally silent. The courtesy of a short email, such as “thanks for the follow-up and the proposal it is much appreciated. Priorities have changed slightly I will be back in touch in a few days/weeks/months” would be extremely helpful. Right now we’re seeing a trend toward shorter response cycles for more complex requirements, accompanied by very poor client feedback (or none at all).

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When Vendors Start Avoiding You

You remember how, in the schoolyard, certain people were so difficult to be around that you just began to avoid them?

That still happens. In client-vendor relationships. And sometimes, it’s the client company that is poisoning the relationship.

Why do certain vendors begin to have an allergic reaction to specific clients, and start to back away?

Here are the main issues I’ve seen:

1. Hostile Attitude – “We’re the client, we have the money, and you’re our servant.” This disrespectful and arrogant posture is a formula for future failure. It ensures that only the most desperate yes-vendors do work for a client-with-attitude.
2. Non-Communication – Vendors that don’t get clear instructions and updates during a proposal process – or, that don’t even get a notice or explanation once a bid has been awarded to someone else – often decline the next “opportunity” to be frustrated by the prospective client.
3. Convoluted Process – This usually occurs when Procurement drives the outsourcing bus. Process moves from being a help to being an entangling and confusing hindrance.
4. Feeling Used – When a vendor feels like they’ve gone through a time-consuming and expensive process of bidding on a project that basically goes to an incumbent (maybe with a few “borrowed” ideas from other proposals), that vendor concludes that they don’t have a fair shot at gaining the work. Hence – a hesitancy to invest time in future work where they might actually be the best choice.

Not all of these things can be changed by training professionals seeking outsource suppliers, and there isn’t always a bad motive at the core of each difficult client-vendor relationship. But these are some warning signs.

Just as clients choose vendors, vendors also choose clients.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Why Selecting the Right Vendor can be a Royal Pain in the You-Know-What

I get involved in a growing number of vendor selection processes with my biopharma/med device clients. For many, it can be a potentially painful experience to choose an outsource vendor. Here’s why:

1. There’s an whole lotta vendors out there. More than you can look at (and it seems like they’re all calling, every week)!
2. Many vendors say they do (almost) everything. That really helps narrow things down!
3. Sometimes it’s quite difficult to tell if you’re looking at reality, or getting a dose of smoke-and-mirrors.
4. The players keep changing. Wasn’t that account manager just selling for ______ last week? And, wait; _____ just got bought out by whom??
5. There’s no current, updated, internal list of which vendors are good for what (based on past experience).
6. Go through an extensive evaluation process? – nobody’s got time for that!

Sound familiar?

At Impactiviti, we get it. We built our network of best-in-class vendors AND great clients in order to make the whole process of vetting and selecting vendors much less painful.

Trusted recommendations beat guesswork any day of the week. Call on us (973-947-7429, or stevew [at] impactiviti dot com) when you’re looking for the ideal outsource vendor.

Save yourself some pain you-know-where!

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What are the Top 10 things clients wish vendors understood (or would do better) – and vice-versa?

Here are the answers, in one brief and engaging white paper – download and enjoy! Client-Vendor Success

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Just Say NO to (some) New Business

Are you a vendor/partner servicing the biopharma training and development space? Well, then, I have some counter-intuitive advice for you.

Learn to turn down some new work.

Radical? I hope it’s not. Because, according to the input I’ve gotten from many of our colleagues on the client side of the business, one of the fastest ways to lose a valuable new potential business relationship is to sell outside your strike zone.

Clients despise when vendors position themselves as one-stop-shops; “Sure, we can do that!” “Yep, we do that, too!” “Oh, yes, we’ve done those before.” Intuitively, they know that your concern is maximizing revenue for you, not providing maximum value to them.

Vendors that take on work outside their sweet spot almost inevitably end up scrambling, failing, and endangering the client relationship.

I like how one of my clients put it recently – here’s the question he asks prospective vendors to narrow down to their strike zone: “If I have only one project for you to work on so you can lock in your skill set with me, what would it be?”

I always advise my partners in the vendor arena to narrow down their key offerings to one or two – even if you can possibly do a few other things, let that wait until you’ve already established a successful reputation by doing great work in your sweet spot. In fact, I won’t recommend vendors who refuse to be clear on their differentiating offerings and strengths.

This is where there has to be a clear commitment, from the executive level, that strategy will shape sales. If salespeople are given the charge to maximize revenue even it means blurring the boundaries and pursuing high-risk-of-failure work, that’s a recipe for a bad reputation.

Now, there are cases where I think it is OK for vendors to pursue a piece of work that requires some stretch. And that is when they already have a great reputation with the client, AND where it is explained to the client clearly that taking on this work will be a stretch. Some clients so value their vendor partners that they are willing to share that risk because of the mutual confidence level that exists. But, a lack of transparency, accompanied by some glib notion that “we’ll figure it out as we go along,” rarely ends well.

Know how you differentiate. Find your fit in the marketplace. And remember: not all business is good business.

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Create Your Vendor Funnel

During recent Vendor/Project Success workshops for clients, I’ve been describing a process that can help alleviate a constant issue that pops up – not having the right vendors properly categorized and lined up when a specific need arises.

In other words, a project comes up, and the question is raised, “To whom can we send this RFP (request for proposal)?” Then suggestions are hastily sought as to potentially workable vendors.

Unfortunately, that means that some vendors are walking in the door for the first time, in the midst of a high-stakes process, AND they may not already be in your paperwork system as a supplier. This creates headaches getting a project off the ground; or, in some cases, simply disqualifies the best candidate because the time crunch is too short – so the project goes to a sub-optimal incumbent vendor.

Here is how to fix that. I call it the 3P Vendor Funnel.

At one point in time, every department needs to create its pool of potential preferred suppliers (I recommend that this pool be refreshed annually, as new vendors and needs appear, and as current suppliers decline in favor). This can be done through a RFI (Request For Information) process, whereby you seek out possible vendors that you may want to consider for the year ahead, and have them present themselves in a general, non-volatile format (that is, a big project is not on the line). The goal here is to gain familiarity with the vendor, and especially to narrow down to one or two areas of core strength. All vendors in the pool can then be placed in your Vendor Map (see this blog post), according to capability, therapeutic experience, project scope, etc.

Potentially desirable vendors at this point commence the paperwork (Master Services Agreement or equivalent) process so that they are already in the administrative system when it is time to choose vendors and allocate work.

Once the Vendor Map is established/refreshed, and a project needs to be resourced, you have already established a short-list of suitable vendors by core capability, so that the number of RFPs issued can be limited and well-targeted. This saves everyone – especially vendors – a lot of time, trouble, and angst. You really only want proposals from optimal potential providers anyway – it wastes everybody’s time to have a Request for Proposal filled out, to sit through a solution presentation – and then to conclude that the vendor really isn’t even in the ballpark. Or, worse, if time is very short, that a desirable new vendor has to now grind through the entire MSA system.

I recommend that a Decision Grid be used to evaluate vendor presentations (I have a sample – feel free to ask and I’ll forward). This helps make any kind of team evaluation of presentations more systematic and objective.

Finally, the process to Pick a supplier is far more efficiently reached, and the movement to contracting is not delayed because the vendor is already part of the pool.

POOL – PROJECT – PICK.

Make sense? Having been on the vendor side of the fence for many years, and having experienced many….shall we say….sub-optimal RFP processes, I can assure you that an approach like this is better for EVERYone involved. It just takes some proactive planning. I can provide a brief consulting engagement for clients that would like assistance setting up their vendor map and filling their vendor pool with recommended partners. Just call 973-947-7429 and let’s talk….

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Successful Vendor Management – Work for Hire

Three simple words. They can save you a fortune.

Do you own the work others perform for you? Maybe – and maybe not!

If you contract out work to vendors and don’t know the meaning and import of these three words – Work For Hire – please do yourself and your company a favor and invest one minute (ish) with the following video:

Bottom line – there is a huge difference between licensed content/program/systems, and that which is custom-created for you. One, you have the right to use. The other, be sure you own.

Want to learn more about work for hire? Wikipedia can help. And, did you know that if you are an employee of a company, the default setting is that your employer has the (authorship) rights to whatever you produce? Yep – work for hire.

Other one-minute videos:

Successful Vendor Management – Be Realistic

Successful Vendor Management – Communications

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Impactiviti is the Pharmaceutical Connection Agency. As the eHarmony of sales/training/marketing, we help our pharma/biotech clients find optimal outsource vendors through our unique trusted referral network. Need something? Ask Steve.

Learn more about us here.

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Vendor or Partner?

When you put the Sales Training and Development Dept. side-by-side with Brand Marketing in most pharmaceutical companies, there is a curious divergence in approach that has always made me scratch my head.

Brands have an agency of record. Training groups have vendors. Lots of them.

Each model has its strengths and weaknesses, but based on the inefficiencies and inconsistencies I’ve seen throughout the years working with training departments, I have to wonder if more of them are now going to experiment with outsourcing larger chunks of training work to a much smaller circle of partners.

Here’s why I think this approach has a lot to commend it:

1. Across the industry, there have been major cutbacks in sales forces and training groups. Smaller headcount = fewer internal resources to manage projects, leading to a need to have vendor/partners that can (like marketing agencies) take the ball and run with it, or take over entire functional areas.
2. Much training development work is now becoming commoditized. The next frontier is scalable process and efficiency – a business discipline woven into a learning approach.
3. Procurement processes are playing a more prominent role. Fragmented vendor selection methods will give way to more efficient, bottom-line-driven long-term partnerships.
4. Technology keeps moving at a rapid pace. It makes sense to outsource all technical development to a single source that can bring consistency, integration, and big-picture strategy.
5. Relatively rapid turnover of training personnel (it is usually a developmental position) will, as with brand marketing, make it sensible to ensure continuity by having an agency of record.

I see a day coming when more companies will have one or two primary Training Agencies of Record (TAOR) – perhaps one focused more on content, the other on technology – accompanied by a more limited suite of specialized providers (Managed Market expertise, Coaching programs, etc.). Outsourced training departments (not just sales forces) are already emerging for companies just entering the commercial realm with their first product. We’ll see more of these creative outsource models emerging.

I’m already talking to my Impactiviti clients – and partners – about this evolution toward a consolidated partnering approach. Not only do I recommend vendor/partners for specific needs and solutions, I’m also recommending that Training Directors take a hard look at the TAOR approach (and, yes, I have partners who can serve in this capacity). Let me know your thoughts about both the current and this (potential) future model – what does your crystal ball say?

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Impactiviti is the Pharmaceutical Connection Agency. As the eHarmony of sales/training/marketing, we help our pharma/biotech clients find optimal outsource vendors for training, eMarketing, social media, and more.

Learn more about us here.

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Sign up for the Impactiviti Connection semi-weekly e-newsletter (see sample), chock full of news and resources for pharmaceutical professionals

(Image credit: Richard Schwier on Flickr)

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Recent Recommendations

What happened to the August “lull”? I’ve never seen so many incoming calls for vendor recommendations – not that I’m complaining, mind you!

In the last few weeks, a lot of concentration on Account Manager (and other personnel) training for Managed Markets. Finding some great resources, with the help of my “inner circle” of clients and suppliers. Also in recent days, requests for specialty field force training, sales-meeting-in-a-box providers, marketing agencies, and training audios.

It is my goal to continue gradually expanding my network of providers, finding the best vendors who focus on specific needs and niches. And those of you on the client side are a big help, providing your recommendations of those that have served you best. When you help me identify your best-in-class providers, you not only strengthen their business so that they can grow and better serve you, you help your pharma training colleagues and make the entire marketplace healthier. I call it “accelerated natural selection”!

(by the way, if you’re working with software development vendors, please be nice to them. This amusing little video clip explains why!)

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Vendor Relations: Are you Ravin’? or Ragin’?

I started out a lunch-and-learn workshop last week (Topic: Vendor Selection) with this question. I think it pretty well sums up the two primary reactions I get from pharma training professionals about vendor relationships.

What gets you ragin‘?

1. Trying to winnow through the barrage of phone calls and e-mails from vendors, both known and unknown.

2. Lies.

3. Pricing models that are obscure, inflated, or incomplete.

4. Vendor reps who really don’t know your business needs (and just want to make a sale).

5. Bad project management.

What gets you ravin‘?

1. Vendor/partners who actually listen.

2. An honest assessment of your needs, even if it may be different than you/they originally thought.

3. Flexibility.

4. Pro-active project managment.

5. Becoming part of the team, to help you over the long haul.

My consulting practice focuses quite uniquely on Project Definition, Vendor Selection, and Vendor Management. That’s why we not only provide a “matchmaking” vendor recommendation service (free of charge, to help you find the optimal partner[s] for your needs), but also offer an on-site lunch-and-learn program to help the entire department understand how to successfully define projects and select vendors. Contact us and let’s get you doing a lot more ravin’, and a lot less ragin’!

“When we needed to find new vendor/partners for some crucial eLearning projects, we turned to Impactiviti. With very short notice, Steve came up with targeted recommendations that turned out to be exactly right for our needs.” – Mohammed Tenouri — Manager, Technology & Assessment, TAP Pharmaceuticals

My mind is actually on those terms Ragin’ and Ravin’ a lot right now, as I’ve gotten in a fresh supply of my favorite BBQ sauce, Ragin’ Raven from Ravenswood vineyard. Rich, tangy, with a Zinfandel flavor.

Would you like to try some Ragin’ Raven? Call us in August to discuss your training needs, and let’s see if we can save you some time and effort by suggesting best-in-class suppliers for you. For giving us the opportunity to serve you we’ll send you a bottle (while supplies last)!

Contact Steve Woodruff at: stevew(at)impactiviti.com, 973.947.7429

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