L&M Blog
Zoom, Adobe, Teams, Go-to, Ring, FaceTime, all extremely valuable tools, have become indispensable for our work productivity on a daily basis in the age of COVID-19. Almost immediately after the lockdown was instituted in early 2020, these platforms became the new way we worked, socialized, celebrated holidays, and observed life’s milestone events. This article will discuss alternative virtual learning environments that will allow you to effectively implement your peer-to-peer education initiatives even as COVID-19 has recently spiked to alarming levels worldwide. The hard truth is that virtual communications will remain vital for the foreseeable future.
Our reluctance to travel on airplanes out of state or out of the country, coupled with our concern about sleeping in hotel rooms and meeting in large groups has effectively eliminated face-to-face interactions. In other words, Virtual meetings and events will continue to be the main form of peer-to-peer communications as we move through 2021. As a result, you must ensure that you are offering a virtual learning experience that is creative and compelling that will attract and engage your target audiences and motivate your speakers to deliver the best presentations possible.
Get Your Virtual Events off “The Grid”
Consider planning your programs throughout the day, not just at a typical dinner hour. No longer are HCPs interested in coming home from the office, clinic or hospital only to go straight to a computer or tablet to watch another interaction on screen. Like most of us, HCPs suffer “Zoom-fatigue”. Offering alternative formats will give them a very compelling reason to join you online.
Creative formats can include:
- 3-D Virtual Studio Broadcasts
- Virtual Studio Archived Programs
- Clinical Connections/Expert Encounter 1:1
- On Demand Expert Encounters
- Highly interactive Hub and Spoke Programs
- Bureaucast multi-office Programs
L&M Healthcare Communications is at the forefront of the industry in offering virtual programs like the ones listed above that accommodate HCPs when, where and how they want to engage. Our Peer-to-Peer formats range from the elegant and visually spectacular to the basic and just-in-time. We have successfully helped our clients pivot to the virtual world with stellar engagement results from the very earliest moments of the COVID-19 environment. As we enter 2021 let’s make sure every single interaction is meaningful and drives the awareness your brand deserves in a format your audience will appreciate.
Thanks for reading.
Adam Margolis, CEO, L&M Healthcare Communications
Speakers Bureau 2021: A High-Quality Speaker Program Depends on Having High Quality Speakers
There are a myriad of components that go into managing a successful Peer-to-Peer program in support of your brand. Technology, compliance and content remain vital components to ensure a program’s success. This article will explore how your approved speakers must be trained to skillfully engage with the material and the audience in a virtual environment.
Speakers are an extension of your team. They are contracted to provide a service to your company by delivering an effective and engaging presentation which elicits participation and interest from the audience. But like any other member of the team, they require effective skills training on all of the scenarios they may face. Right now, we are experiencing a seismic shift in the skill set required to execute Peer-to-Peer programs properly.
Hello? Can You Hear Me?
Like many of us in the age of COVID, speakers have been forced to interact with audiences using technology and virtual platforms that are new and largely unknown to them. While speakers have vast experience in front of a live audience using a laptop, slides, a screen, laser pointer and a podium, now they are using a small screen and a webcam in a remote location.
A live audience allowed for important interaction with the speaker through discussion, questions, body language and other visual cues. These days…we stare at a green light glowing over a faceless webcam while we fiddle with “sharing our screen,” or seeing people in a “waiting room,” or acknowledging a chat box question or hand raise. 🙋♀️✋
Be prepared…
In a future post in this series, you will learn about the various virtual program formats to consider. But in the meantime, how do we get our speakers ready for all of these new scenarios? Speakers need to be coached. They need to practice in real time in the environment. Rehearsals are critical to ensure that speakers are comfortable and confident with the buttons to be pushed and the formats they’ll face. Additionally, speaker skills and training need to evolve to deal with sound, camera, lighting, posture and voice to make the speakers the best they can be on screen.
Speaker training in the COVID and post-COVID age must evolve to provide robust training on how to be the most effective Virtual Program Speaker they can be.
L&M Healthcare can be your partner for highly effective speaker training, which readies your speakers for the new age of Virtual.
Thanks for reading!
Adam Margolis
CEO, L&M Healthcare Communications
As we round the final turn of this truly bizarre and challenging year of 2020, we must look back and commend ourselves on the monstrous pivot we all undertook, made necessary by the COVID pandemic1. We must also ensure that changes implemented as a result of COVID continue to enhance, evolve and refine how we roll out successful speaker programs in 2021. This article will provide you with specific actions steps you should consider to ensure continued success in your Speaker Bureau activities in 2021.
The lingering effects of a global pandemic, gradual economic recovery, political instability and re-thought personal priorities will be critical to keep in mind with regards to your efforts to support Peer-to-Peer education and communications moving forward.
Whether you’re an employee of a pharmaceutical or biotech firm or an agency support company, there are numerous critical issues to think about as we head into 2021. We have the luxury of hindsight to inform us that we must anticipate that a highly unsettled global environment will force adjustments to your once tried-and-true plans and tactics and an evolution of your thinking. A current and reactive Peer-to-Peer program will ultimately enable deeper engagement between your company and the health care community.
Several critical issues must be explored and integrated into your Peer-to-Peer programs:
1. Nurture your Key Opinion Leader and Speaker relationships:
• Provide opportunities for your speakers to participate in the educational process and evolve their critical speaking skills
2. Create content and learning environments which engage your target audience regardless of the educational venue:
• There are a myriad of new program formats being implemented which go beyond the Zoom grid, and which take advantage of different times of day and learning preferences for your critical audience.
3. Constantly evolve and innovate your data management and portal technology:
• Now is the time to ask yourself, is your Speakers Bureau portal the best, and most modern system it can be? Are there features you’ve longed to have, and still can’t seem to implement?
4. Work with legal, compliance and operations to maintain rigorous and standardized operational processes and workflow but leave room for creative thinking:
• View your extended team through the lens of keeping your program safe and compliant, while allowing for new programs and business rules to accommodate these radical new times. Provide evidence and plan to your professionals, so that the automatic answer isn’t always….no.
5. Remain highly compliant through accurate transparency and reporting:
• The current environment poses a myriad of challenges, not the least of which are compliance and reporting issues. You must remain vigilant about sign in sheets, expense reporting, and timely payments. There are some amazing technologies, which represent relatively simple solutions, to critical problems.
Watch this space in the coming weeks for additional posts on this topic. We at L&M Healthcare Communications will share our expertise to help you address these vital changes for you and your clients.
Thanks for reading.
Adam Margolis
CEO, L&M Healthcare Communications
