By M. Usman Asim, RPSGT
Building rapport with your pharmaceutical reps can transform routine meetings into valuable professional relationships. It’s been a long week, and your midday break is the recharge you’ve been looking forward to—until you remember that lunch is booked with yet another pharmaceutical rep. You appreciate the meal, engage in polite conversation, but find the interaction predictable and uninspiring. If this scenario feels familiar, it may be time to rethink your approach and turn these meetings into meaningful connections that benefit both your practice and your patients.
The Fundamentals of Building Rapport With Your Reps
Pharmaceutical company representatives have a multitude of job requirements and responsibilities, though ultimately their job is to drive sales of medications associated with their company. Approaching them as medical industry professionals, not just sales people, could be a valued first step in maximizing what they can offer you and your practice beyond the appreciated but often repeated lunch offering.
The Importance of Building Rapport
It’s important that you and/or your team define the terms of this professional relationship. You have to advise these folks when it is best to visit your office and how much of your time and attention they can expect. For some of you, an early morning meeting over coffee, inside or outside of your office, could be the preferred setup to jumpstart your day. Others may lean towards a full on breakfast set up for you and possibly team members too.
As previously mentioned, the tried and true lunch meeting could be the best choice as could an end of the work day sit down. The random daytime pop in meetings during active clinic hours may be agreeable for some and there are many that could benefit from a combination of these options which can help break up the monotony of a business day.
How Feedback Plays a Role in Building Rapport
Feedback plays a key role in building rapport. Be honest in your feedback to these reps in how you perceive, plan on using or not using their medication(s) along with providing what response your patients have had when taking said medication(s). Then, in turn, ask these professionals to provide their insight into your practice: ease of interaction with your staff, assessment of waiting room area, observed staff interaction and workflow, effectiveness of your practice’s work with pharmacies and insurance companies and whatever else you view as valued feedback.
These professionals are in and out of medical practices all day, all over your region and possibly have past experience in other regions too. Tap into all the information they have gathered to see how your medical business stacks up. In doing so you and your team can strive towards meeting or exceeding the best practices of other medical offices.
In addition to this, be open to considering whatever they can offer in terms of free medication samples for your patients, coupons or discount programs to offset cost to the end user, continuing medical education credits, speaking engagements or opportunities, insight into medical trends and upcoming breakthroughs in the medical field. They can also serve as a liaison between you and other medical practitioners in and beyond the region you are located in. These are a few simple steps you can take while building rapport with your rep.
Setting Boundaries While Building Rapport
I purposely chose to end with the most important aspect when dealing in the boundaries of this business relationship: it is up to you to remain fully up to date on what is allowed, not allowed and even what could be considered a gray area issue when it comes to what can happen ethically, morally and legally in this medical provider to medical industry professional interaction. Please routinely review FDA, state medical board and state pharmacy board regulations. Relying on others to always be doing the right thing when it directly involves you, your medical practice and livelihood is never the right prescription. Contact Bright Ideas Medical Consulting to learn how we can elevate your practice!