Ask not what your opinion leader can do for you...

Comparing the volume of approaches that an individual company can make to a KOL to making them feel like the protagonist in the painting 'Scream' by Munch was a somber yet sincere way of Andrew Schiefle getting the delegates to realize that KOLS are often innundated with requests or expectations without thought to what their actual needs, desires and capacity might be.

As a regional Medical-Science Liaison professional for Amgen, Schiefle advocated the need to create a cross-functional team to interact with experts and to stick to a primary point of contact where possible. It is easy to 'overuse' one expert at the dearth of interactions with another and common to forget to ask what the particular expert's preferences might be.

Compounding this is the relatively short turnover in role of the average pharmaceutical professional with the drug lifecycle and in turn with the expert themselves who may infact have the most enduring and long-standing allegiance or understanding of a company's products for use in a given disease. To that extent, Schiefle acknowledged that the MSL is often the best person to establish an alignment of interactions with experts and in many cases vendor groups, or individuals therein may in fact have a deeper understanding of the expert's interests.

Crating an integrated KOL engagement plan is crucial and must be open about all individual needs and should align opportunities with the specific strengths of the KOL. Customer-relationship management databases can help to integrate and orchestrate the plan but care should be taken to make sure you do't just approach engagement in a mercenary fashion. Infact, ask not what your Opinion Leader can do for you... but what you can do for your Opinion Leader.