For over 15 years, SNI has been conducting training programs and providing real deal consulting services that have helped our clients generate and save millions of dollars and secure long-lasting partnerships.

While we are undoubtedly proud of these accomplishments, we’re also extremely excited about the next evolution of our company: Virtual Training Partners.

For year, webinars, video conferencing, and other technologies were touted as the models and platforms for the next generation of training.  While they continue to exist and are used in a limited capacity, these technologies have never materialized as viable alternatives platforms for interactive training needs.

Today there is something new on the horizon, and SNI has devoted an extensive amount of time and resources into uncovering its potential.  3D Virtual Training platforms such as Second Life are quickly developing and receiving the real support to finally provide that technological leap to applicable skills training.

While instructor-led trainng will always be the primary platform for providing skill transfer, we are convinced that virtual platforms are going to revolutionize the way training is conducted.  As a result, we created Virtual Training Partners, an entriely separate division of SNI dedicated to virtual training success.  We’re proud to be recognized as experts in this training area.

This immersive, engaging, and fully interactive experience creates a world where the only limit to training delivery is the creativity of the human mind.  In fact, in some ways, this training platform will allow for increased creativity and practice that not even instructor-led training can reach.  Virtual training technology provides organizations with a way to reduce or even eliminate travel expenses and time out of the office, making it a realistic and effective alternative to instructor-led training.

In October, Mark Jankowski, Co-Founder of both SNI and Virtual Training Partners, invites you to join him for a one-hour complimentary open enrollment training event in Second Life, Preparation Skills for Effective Negotiation.  The dates for the program are as follows:

October 6, 2009

October 13, 2009

October 20, 2009

October 27, 2009

Each program will run from 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm EST (9:30 am - 10:30 am PST).  The number of participants for each program is extremely limited, and not everyone will be able to attend due to limitations with computer systems and corporate firewalls.  SNI’s staff will help guide interested parties through a quick process to determine their ability to participate.

If you are interested in being part of these groundbreaking programs, please visit the following link: Virtual Training Program Information.

We are often asked to work with companies and organizations that do not negotiate in the traditional sense of bartering over price (or terms). Some sales representatives do not have any control over pricing or terms due to organizational norms or the commoditization of their products or services. Other companies, such as pharmaceutical firms, are even more limited in their ability to negotiate due to regulations. For example, pharmaceutical sales representatives cannot “trade” services, samples or “extras” for prescriptions.

We struggled at first to apply the usual negotiating lessons and techniques to the “indirect sale” until we realized that a tactical approach to sales would be less effective than a strategic influencing approach.

Let’s use the pharmaceutical sale as the example. A pharmaceutical sales representative spends their day detailing physicians about their products in a very limited amount of time, perhaps as little as 30 seconds while the doctor signs for their samples. Some busy physicians see as many as 15 different sales reps in a day. Most pharmaceutical reps see upwards of 10 physicians a day (often with a variety of products in their “bag”). The message has to be clear and concise and yet the “call to action” has to be more subtle than a direct sale - “Will you try Product X on patients who present the following indications…?” is about as direct as you can be within the pharma guidelines. The best “close” a pharmaceutical rep can hope for is a promise that the physician is willing to try the product at some point in the future.

The pharmaceutical sales rep has no direct control over the “sale”. The physician makes the prescribing decision on their own in the examination room after the sales representative has left the office. The doctor has built a prescribing habit over time and it is very dfficult to change the habits of a highly trained, intelligent and busy physician.

We believe that the key to successfully changing a physician’s prescribing habits is based a sales representative’s ability to develop three critical components of INFLUENCE:

1. The Credibility of the sales representative when educating the doctor about their products;

2. The Relationship that the physician enjoys with the sales representative; and

3. The Value that the sales rep delivers to the practice.

If the sales rep can build enough credibility, and the relationship with the practice and the value delivered to the physician outweigh the RISK of switching the prescription (the efficacy, safety and patient economic impact of the new product), the sales representative has started to influence the physician successfully.

In the next post, I will show you how the systematic approach to negotiating can be applied to influence physicians more successfully.

John Buelow

John is the Chief Learning Officer at Shapiro Negotiations Institute (SNI), a training and consulting firm based in Baltimore MD. SNI has trained over 300,000 professionals around the world since 1995 helping people to close more deals, faster at higher margins.