Today more than ever, the role of thought leaders—also referred to as key opinion leaders (KOLs), external experts, and other designations—is critical. Influential experts help shape medical practice, guide research priorities, and influence treatment adoption. Yet, for marketing and medical affairs professionals, managing relationships with KOLs is fraught with challenges.
In this blog post, we explore the top three challenges in thought leader management, along with practical considerations for overcoming them.
Challenge 1: Access to Thought Leaders
KOLs are, by definition, at the forefront of their fields. They are clinicians, researchers, and educators—often juggling demanding schedules and multiple commitments. This makes securing their time and attention a perennial challenge for pharmaceutical companies.
Key Obstacles:
- Competing Demands: Multiple companies and internal teams (from development to marketing and medical affairs) are often vying for the same KOLs’ attention, leading to a crowded and sometimes overwhelming outreach environment for these experts who are already limited in the time they can spend with industry.
- Institutional Barriers: Increasingly, hospitals, academic centers, and clinician networks are imposing restrictions on external engagements, limiting the ability of company representatives to connect directly with KOLs.
- Preference for Efficient Engagements that Provide Value: KOLs expect interactions to be efficient, relevant, and respectful of their time. It is critical to be well-informed and well-prepared to have engagements with KOLs be mutually beneficial.
How to Address:
A unified, coordinated approach rooted in your KOL strategy is essential. Technology platforms that not only centralize KOL information and engagement history, but also provide strategic data and insights leveraging AI, can help teams differentiate themselves from the competition in the quality of engagements with KOLs, all while advancing your strategic priorities.
Challenge 2: Multiple Sources for Information and Management
Managing KOL relationships often means wrangling data from a bewildering array of sources: online healthcare practitioner (HCP) databases, PowerPoint profiles, Excel spreadsheets tracking conference participation, and more. This fragmented approach is not only inefficient but also prone to errors and missed opportunities.
The Pain Points:
- Disparate Data Sources: Information about KOLs is frequently siloed across different formats, platforms, including software platforms like Microsoft Office and Google Docs, making it difficult to get a comprehensive, up-to-date view of each expert’s activities, interests, prior engagements, and sentiments on emerging and current data and treatment options. Companies also use various formats for planning and tracking engagements, adding to the myriad of data sources that need to be monitored and managed.
- Manual Processes: Teams often spend hours consolidating data, which can quickly become outdated. This manual effort in generating reports for colleagues diverts valuable time from strategic engagement and insight generation.
- Lack of Integration: Without a comprehensive and configurable platform, pharma teams are forced to piece together a “Franken-system” of information that takes countless staff hours to integrate smoothly. This is at the expense of time that could be spent accessing and engaging with KOLs.
The Fix:
Centralizing KOL data and engagement management in a single platform can transform this process. For example, solutions like Panorama allow regional marketers and MSLs to filter KOLs by customizable client-provided criteria, such as therapeutic area, geography, and professional affiliations, and to map relationships—all within one dashboard that also encompasses upcoming conference presentations by KOLs, planned engagements with KOLs, and focused sentiment tracking. Comprehensive and customized KOL information streamlines workflow, reduces errors, and ensures that teams always have access to the most current information.
Challenge 3: Sentiment and Advocacy Collection and Tracking
Understanding what KOLs think about your products, your company, and the broader competitive landscape is essential for effective engagement. Yet, capturing and tracking these insights is challenging.
Why It’s Challenging:
- Diverse Channels of Expression: KOLs may express their views differently depending on the context—what they say in private meetings with company reps may differ from their public statements at conferences or on social media.
- Dynamic Sentiment: Advocacy and sentiment can shift rapidly, especially in response to new clinical data, regulatory changes, or competitor actions. Real-time tracking is necessary to stay ahead.
- Internal Reporting: Translating KOL insights into actionable intelligence for internal teams is often hampered by inconsistent reporting formats and lack of centralized data.
The Solution:
Effective sentiment tracking requires more than anecdotal notes—it demands systematic collection and analysis of KOL feedback across all touchpoints. Platforms like Panorama can integrate sentiment reporting, product and competitor analysis, and historical engagement data provide a holistic view of the KOL landscape, enabling marketers to profile and prioritize KOLs, address concerns, and tailor engagement strategies, all augmented by AI.
A Path Forward
The complexity of thought leader management is unlikely to diminish as the pharmaceutical industry continues to globalize and digitize. However, by recognizing and addressing these core challenges—access, information management, and sentiment tracking—companies can build stronger, more productive relationships with KOLs.
Technology is not a panacea, but comprehensive and configurable platforms like Panorama are helping teams move beyond manual processes and fragmented data, enabling a more strategic, unified, and responsive approach to thought leader engagement. In an environment where every interaction counts, this kind of operational excellence can make all the difference in building lasting advocacy and driving better outcomes for patients.
If you’re interested in learning more about Panorama, schedule a demo now.
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