Read all about it here: http://fb.me/LXFxtvlb

Research shows that students learn more material in a shorter amount of time when it is presented in an interactive structure. A former elementary school teacher and good friend of mine told me that textbooks are dying out because students can’t relate to them anymore. They have grown up on computers and video games and now they are the best formats for them to process and retain information.

Anyone that uses a computer on a consistent basis can relate to these students. How many people would rather do an internet search than look up a word in a dictionary or go to the library to flip through a reference book? Most of us are finding printed materials more and more cumbersome to use.

Especially those who are in the medical industry. They are given training manuals every time they need to learn a new procedure or a new piece of medical equipment. These manuals contain a lot of information. It is difficult to stay focused for the length of time that is required to truly absorb it all. That is why interactive online training is a great way to go. It is all about learning more in less time.

• Direct reps devote 100% of their selling effort to a single company and its products.
• Since they are employees, maintaining control over direct sales reps is not an issue.
• Product knowledge is maximized when reps concentrate on a single line.
• Clearly representing a company rather than themselves, direct reps have high credibility among customers.
• Direct reps are easier to manage.
• Some direct reps will develop into company managers.
• It is easier to fit a direct sales force into the corporate culture than to achieve such harmony with independent reps.
• As employees operating within a structured corporate context, direct reps are able to tolerate a weak support organization.
• Good will earned by direct reps accrues entirely to the company they represent.
• Sales-function tasks peripheral to actual selling are readily executed when they fall within the direct rep’s job description.

1. State the objectives early; a learner wants to know why they need to comprehend the content.
2. Be relevant to the issue; stay on task and pull from the learner’s past knowledge to create new pathways to learning.
3. Make the navigation fun; use graphics that are consistent with your theme to pull the learner through sequences.
4. Create ‘problems’ for the learner to solve; this creates engagement and continued interest.
5. Add visual appeal that is sometimes a bit out of the ordinary; humor lightens the learning mode and adds some fun.

Anyway, each time I started a new job I was given a training manual to teach me the duties of my position. When the training period was over, and I felt that I had a good grasp of what was expected of me, I would toss the manual into the recycle bin. If there was one. If there wasn’t one, I would throw it into the regular trash.

I cringe when I imagine all the manuals I threw away lying there in the landfill for thousands of years, trying to break down and dissolve into the earth. And I am just one person. There are hundreds of new hires every day. Then there are the people in the medical profession. They receive paper documents and a thick manual every time they need to learn a new piece of medical equipment or medical procedure.

I was curious to see how much paper waste this actually added up to, so I asked a recycling professional from a well-known waste hauler to send me some numbers.

Paper waste makes up about 35% of the total materials filling up landfills. And the average office worker in the U.S. uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year (not counting training manuals), which is 4 million tons of copy paper used annually!

One way employers can help the environment is to switch to online training. It uses absolutely no paper what-so-ever, and you can make your training manuals as long and detailed as you want, without having to worry about the impact on our planet.

Focus on the Winners, Weed Out the Duds

In the beginning, all distributors look great on paper.  Unfortunately, not all of them will work out and you have to quickly determine who the winners are and focus all your attention on them.  Just as important,  you have to figure out who the duds are and quickly get rid of them.

Here’s how to spot the duds: They’ll demand heavy training and support upfront, but only deliver a half-hearted sales launch in their territory with a limited deployment of their team.  When leads do materialize, they’ll call you to fly out and close the deal because they aren’t prepared.  Those sales reps aren’t adding value and will waste your time.  You have to get rid of them ASAP.

Your online training system will allow you to quickly distinguish the high-performers from the laggards.  Training history and test scores will immediately show you which distributors and reps are qualified to sell your products.  As an added benefit, your online training system will make it easier for you to enlist top distributors and strike a better deal with them.  The best distributors understand that your online training system will get their reps up to speed quickly so they can begin generating revenue, which is the same as your goal.  Win, win!

As your product launch proceeds:

• Online training allows you to PUSH updates without paper, binders or CDs — therefore, no time lag in getting information out.

• Allows refresher training without taking reps out of the field.

Stay Tuned! “Launching and Selling New Medical Devices Part 3: Benefits of a Direct Sales Force” is coming soon…

Some points that should be followed are:

•  Stay away from bullet points; the learner can read faster than the audio so the speaker is automatically disregarded

•  Layer information on the slide; think animation and bring forward images and text in sequence so the learner can absorb the image and the audio together

•  Change graphics to silhouette or black and white to create interest and to ‘pop’ a particular image that is more important

•  Mix graphics such as a label taped to a wall or text on a whiteboard to simulate real life situations

•  Be sure to match graphics with content; graphics without meaning are distracting

Remember these points if you want your audience to really learn rather than ‘page turn.’

Company Name: Solta Medical

Location: Hayward, CA

Classification: Medical Device Manufacturer

Industry: Aesthetic Products, Procedures, and Services

Worldwide Sales Reps: Approx. 100

Distributors: Approx. 80

StarCast Solutions Utilized: StarCast Sales Portal,  StarCast Physician Portal

Solta Medical is a worldwide leader in developing aesthetic products, procedures and services.  The company has three primary products lines:  Thermage, a skin tightening and body contouring procedure, Fraxel, a skin rejuvenation and skin resurfacing laser, and Isolaz, an acne treatment solution.

I recently spoke with Leslie Whitehead, Marketing Manager at Solta and Johanna Beckman, Manager of Sales Training and Inside Sales at Solta.  Leslie manages Solta’s StarCast Physician Portal, a customer training solution that provides Solta’s end users–dermatologists, plastic surgeons, and their staff–with training courses and materials on Solta’s line of products.   Johanna, alternately, manages Solta’s StarCast Sales Portal, a tool they utilize to keep their worldwide sales reps current on product updates, benefits, and sales techniques.

How do you use StarCast?

Leslie: We use StarCast in two very different ways.  Johanna uses it for sales training.  I use it for physician training.  The training presentations on my side show our physicians how to properly use our devices to treat patients.  We are communicating the clinical pearls and basic training that we need to provide to our clinicians so that they have A) Safe Procedures and B) can get great results for their patients.

Johanna: We give the reps access to the customer training but we also give them more extensive, in depth product training.  This includes courses like teaching them what composes the laser, or how the Rx radio frequency technology has been designed.   We need them to have a scientific understanding of our products as well as tips and tricks on how to train their physicians and their offices, how to sell the product, and how to highlight the features and benefits.   Currently we’re adding new modules on more corporate policies as well as finance issues that they need to know and understand.

Leslie: When a new hire comes on board, Johanna assigns them a new course load that they need to take.  That way when they come to the office for their formal training here in Hayward they at least have a strong foundation of knowledge.  The sales reps need to watch these courses or they cannot come to live training.

Johanna: Generally I will check on a new hire before they have attended training.  About a week out I will look to see if anything has been watched.  If nothing has been touched I will write their manager and say “look you need to address this or I’m going to address it”  and they’ll usually get on them to complete their training.  It’s great motivation because the sales force knows we have access to see what they are looking at and more importantly, what they have not looked at.  It keeps them honest.

How Did your Sales Reps Respond to this form of training?

Johnanna: Sales Reps still moan and groan about having to complete the training, but they really like the ability to be able to have the training on demand;  to be able to go back and access them.  The reps that are best described as the “studious type” are really thankful to have the courses.  This is also true internationally where we have a hard time getting to our reps or them getting to us to go through physical training.  It really provides an outlet for them to brush up on stuff before coming in and asking a ton of questions.  In general it is very well received by the reps.

Leslie: When the StarCast Sales Portal was first launched a lot of sales reps were like “thank you thank you thank you, this saves me a lot of time.”   They have a lot of territories and they need as much time savings as possible.  A lot of them have large territories and sometimes travel between 5 states.  So having StarCast saves them money on not only their time but also because now they don’t always have to travel to see their physicians when training can occur online.

Why did you decide to implement StarCast?

Johanna: The Physician Portal was definitely needed.  Our sales force had been asking for something like this for a very long time.  One of the challenges that we face with training is that turnover in a medical office is very high.  We need to make sure that the RN’s or Estheticians who use our devices understand the procedure and the technologies used.  In addition, we want to provide additional training to the person who is doing the procedure who may have forgotten some little tidbits of information or might be looking for some treatment pearls.  Previously, whenever our customers had problems,  sales reps would always have to go back to their office to train them.  It wasn’t something they could do over the phone.  They had to do it live.  So with the launch of the StarCast Physician Portal we were able to send physicians and their staff members online to train on the procedures.  StarCast is just a lot more economical for us.  Also, from the physician side, one of the great things about the sales portal and the way that it is integrated is that the sales force can see which of their customers are signed up with StarCast and who has watched what because they can actually see that if they choose to.

How were you doing your Training before StarCast?

Leslie: We had another company that we were utilizing to do physician training.  The other product was very customized and it was very intensive to record the training. We had to have someone come here physically, set up all the equipment, record it, take it away, edit it, and send it back to us.  It wasn’t something we could fix or update very easily.  Our technology changes very quickly and we need to make updates immediately to the training materials and that system wasn’t allowing us to do that.  With StarCast we knew that we could.  Additionally, when we launched the physician portal we had already partnered with StarCast to use them for sales rep training, so it was an easy add-on solution to a system that we were already using.  The other system was very expensive and it wasn’t easy.

Does StarCast help in any other areas?

Johanna: Yes.  When we need technical information or technical training to go out to our customer database, we can use StarCast.  Often times we use it to fulfill regulatory requirements as we did recently at Thermage with our CPT training.  After taking the training we had a test that our users had to complete and that was enough for us to satisfy the legal and regulatory requirements of training on those physicians.  We were able to go back and put it in our database saying “yes these customers have been trained on this product.”

Leslie: We have class 2 laser devices and class 3 medical devices so when we’re talking about training, it could go back to a product liability issue.  If we were ever in some sort of litigation where the customer is claiming we didn’t train them properly we can go back and say: “look, yes we did.”  We as a company want to make sure that the end user, the patient, is getting safe and efficacious treatment.   That is why we are in business.

Johanna: From a sales training side I think it does allow us flexibility in the sales training program and is a great way of getting information to a rep before they come in for a live class.  When a rep gets hired they could be working in the field for 2 months before I have an actual class being held at corporate, so it allows flexibility in terms of getting them up to speed quickly.  It really helps get people the knowledge they need quicker in the field.

How do you build content?

Johanna: We are building the content ourselves.  I’m actually in the process of recording one right now.  The system is just intuitive and it’s easy to use so the turnaround time can be really quick.

Do you recommend online training for medical companies with similar challenges?

Leslie: I think with a worldwide sales force and a worldwide customer base, online training really is something you need to do.  It’s a necessity.  It’s no longer something that’s nice to have.  And in the age where printing things and shipping things out to customers and distributors isn’t economically feasible, it’s so much easier to ensure that we are getting a consistent message out to everybody by having something like this.  I would definitely recommend it.

For more information about Solta Medical and its range of innovative products, please visit:  www.solta.com.

Additionally, please visit Solta’s product websites at:

Thermage (the premier solution for skin tightening and contouring): Thermage.com

Fraxel (the premier solution for skin resurfacing): Fraxel.com

Isolaz (the premier solution for acne and deep pore purification): Isolaz.com

Claro (the only hand-held IPL device to use heat and light to clear acne): clrstechnology.com

To view more information about StarCast please visit: www.starcast.net

Or take a look at our 2 minute StarCast demo video here: