Learning How to Increase Usage of a Digital Sales Tool for Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives

Our client had been making seasonal updates to their interactive visual aid (IVA), an iPad sales tool. Their analytics showed little uptake by sales representatives, and when they did use it they weren't using key screens.

I planned our generative research: I established research goals, guided the team to one on one interviews as a research method, wrote the discussion guide and participated in interviews with sales representatives. I synthesized the data and developed key problem and How Might We statements, and organized the ideation workshop to develop solutions.

Jump to:

• Background, Timeline, and Methodology
• Research Statement and Goals
• Discussion Guide and Interviews
• Findings, Insights and Ideation Workshop
• Impact and Reflections

The interactive visual aid (IVA) is a closed loop marketing tool where the screens that sales representatives use are tracked. Reps are supposed to follow a strategy where they use key message screens.

But reps were often not using the tool, and when they did they weren't using the key message screens. The urge was to start ideating on design solutions to get reps using it more, but I cautioned the team that we risked solving problems we didn't know existed.

We really wanted to get a clear picture of what was happening in doctor's offices, how sales reps made decisions about what to talk about, and why they used the sales materials they did. And we wanted to discover their mindset from when they planned their calls through when they closed. A few methodologies we considered were:

• Contextual inquiry. I imagined sitting in on sales visits and then asking questions of the rep afterward as we drove away. But COVID-19 made all this impossible
• Focus groups. We considered speaking to a small team of sales reps, hoping synergy would develop around the descriptions of their shared experiences. But this may have also bred competition, judgement and idealized representations of their practices

Ultimately one on one interviews was the methodology we chose. The one on ones were not only about discovering the sales rep experience during visits but also learning how they feel about and decide to use the sales materials they use.

We wrestled with what we wanted to learn: is this about what happens during these visits, or specifically about how reps use the IVA? Is it worth learning how reps are using IVA content if they are going to be coached on what content to use anyway? Is the impact of COVID-19 worth asking about if this is a temporary issue?

View the full Discussion Guide

Our discussion guide was structured into two main sections:

• Questions about the in-office experience of the visit, and then questions about their decision to use or not use the IVA without getting into specifics of their IVA use.
• Questions specifically about how they used the IVA.

Starting the Visit:

• Walk me through how the conversation started
• What materials did you start with?
• Tell me about why you didn't use the IVA (if they didn't use it)
• Take me through how you decided what to talk about

Specifically about the IVA:

• How often would you say you utilize the IVA?
• Tell me how you feel about using the IVA
• The last time you used it, were there any challenges in using it?
• (If yes) In the IVA, show me where this is a challenge

We talked to 6 different reps. I wanted to talk to a mix of higher performing reps and reps that were struggling so we could get a range of experiences and thought processes, but the client wanted to focus on the best performers thinking that would yield the most useful findings.

Last minute interventions prevented me from fully moderating the interview. The client decided they should moderate, and that I could take notes and chime in with any questions I wanted to ask. Not having the liberty to intuitively ask questions and probe where I wanted, I had to pivot in my approach.

When called upon, I started by re-introducing myself, thanking the participant for their time and making sure I expressed how great their feedback was. I validated everything they had been saying to make them feel comfortable, assured and that they were the expert.

I liked to include, "This is all really interesting to myself and the larger design team, so thanks for being so open talking about these things."

I got very used to saying, "I want to take a step back to where you said…" and, "Let's rewind a bit: did I hear you correctly when you said…"

After the interviews I planned on taking all the recordings, transcribing them into an Excel sheet and moving the key thoughts into cards on a Miro board to run an affinity diagraming activity with the copy, art, product, strategy and account teams.

But, all the recordings were behind a firewall on the company's server and it took us 4 days to get access to them!

We had no time to re-listen to the interviews and analyze. I transitioned to all my notes and quotes, and synthesized these into insights. My goal was to set the table for the larger team to ideate on solutions in a larger workshop.

For the workshop, I developed a problem and How Might We Statement that would be at the center of our ideation. I teamed up with our strategy team to design the workshop.

Shifting their attention from the doctor to the screen may make the reps feel perceived as disorganized and prevent them from using the IVA. The IVA made reps look bad, so they avoided using it. I wanted to make our HMW positive, so I asked how we could design it so they looked good using it.

I started with the problem and HMW statement, and moved into a brainwriting exercise in Miro:

As a design solution we focused on landing spots for reps that they could anchor to. We wanted to design the navigation so reps could anchor to a landing spot from which they could make one tap to get to a key message and then without having to assess the screen, get back to the spot from which the came.

I wireframed this to get client buy-in, and then we prototyped in AxureRP to usability test with reps to validate the approach.

The client leading the interview moderation affected the data we got, priming the sales reps responses: it felt like reps were often presenting an idealized representation of their work. But I was happy with the questions I was able to ask sales reps during the interviews, and the reps didn't hold back. They really enthusiastically poured out a lot of information when I engaged them.

But most fulfilling was having the entire team, and client, go through this process. Spending this much time in the problem space in designing an IVA was not something anyone on the team had ever done.

When justifying our design decisions, we had a wealth of findings and quotes to point to. We were able to say things like, "remember when we heard...," and "think back to the rep's description..." I think everyone felt better about this as opposed to anxiously making gut recommendations.

And then we moved much more efficiently towards solutions because our concerns were scoped by the research: rather than thinking of all the ways an IVA could be redesigned we were able to aim at a core problem and focus on a limited palette of solutions.

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