Ever spent half an hour unsubscribing from 30+ newsletters, for which you never purposefully signed up?
30 Emails – that’s roughly the number of outreach emails that health care professionals received from pharma companies every week – even before Covid-19 and pre-Chat-GPT (BI, 2015).
Since then, this number has increased drastically. A 2023 BCG study predicts that generative AI is growing faster in healthcare than in any other industry, with a compound annual growth rate of 85% between 2023 and 2027 (BCG, 2023), and HCP communication is a major use case for generative AI in pharma.
The volume of AI-generated emails is expected to surpass human-generated Emails by the year 2027 (Salesforce). By that time, the average HCP might receive 60 or more pharma Emails per week. The exponential increase of outreach messages due to generative AI will soon overwhelm HCPs.
Digital oversaturation is particularly problematic in special care, where the audience is often small. The pharma industry targets its most lucrative audience, specialized doctors, like oncologists or cardiologists, with enormous ad spending and limitless content.
Generative AI – often expensively packaged as “AI agent” – can learn from human data and outperform humans in many transactional tasks. With the ability to reach millions instantly through multiple channels like emails, automated phone calls, SMS messages, and personalized ads, its potential is clear. However, the very strengths that make it so powerful could also lead to its downfall.
Generative AI is powerful for creating content at little cost. Yet, Healthcare professionals (HCPs) are increasingly skeptical of pharma-created digital content, with 80% expressing distrust due to concerns like data cherry-picking (Fierce Pharma, 2023). This has led HCPs to seek out more reliable sources of information, such as academic journals and conferences, which only reach a limited audience.
Yet, relying on HCPs to proactively seek out information (e.g., through search engines) is not a good idea, especially when launching new products. Only 42% of HCPs regularly attend their specialty's annual scientific conferences (Doximity, 2025), and even if they do, they will struggle to process all relevant information.
Due to oversaturation and information overload, it takes a long time for HCPs to recognize new developments on- and offline. In part due to fewer in-person meetings with sales reps, recent new drug launches have, on average, underperformed by 19% relative to pre-Covid benchmarks (IQ Via, 2023).
While sales representatives remain crucial in introducing new products to doctors, to earn the trust of a younger generation of HCPs who are more likely to seek information online, they must evolve.
Some pharmaceutical companies are attempting to address this issue by inundating their sales representatives with an abundance of informational materials.
They believe that providing access to a greater quantity of studies and more substantial trial results will lead to improved interactions with healthcare professionals. This strategy assumes that having access to additional studies will enable sales representatives to engage in more meaningful conversations with skeptical doctors.
The results are discouraging. A significant portion of doctors (67%) find pharma advisors unhelpful, and 35% are considering reducing or eliminating sales rep visits (Fierce Pharma, 2023).
Pharma reps can easily access clinical studies and general knowledge online. However, their role in your omnichannel strategy is to build meaningful human connections – to become trusted advisors for HCPs.
To get there, they need to go beyond simply memorizing or sharing information. By understanding the specific challenges and situations of healthcare professionals (HCPs), pharma reps of the future can develop personalized solutions and truly solve problems.
The future of sales will belong to those who excel at:
AI's true potential in sales is not about replacing human creativity and ingenuity, but about empowering sales representatives to foster stronger human connections. AI should be used as a means to enable and coach sales reps, not to replace them.
AI software for sales coaching or training (in the following called "AI sales coaching") has been around for years, and it comes in different shapes and forms.
The most effective AI sales coaching solutions leverage virtual role-play simulations that offer personalized feedback and actionable advice. This coaching method encompasses a variety of use cases, including but not limited to:
AI sales coaching provides several key benefits: it facilitates rapid adaptation to market shifts by ensuring the sales force is well-versed in clinical and real-world evidence (RWE), it fosters trust by empowering advisors to build strong connections with stakeholders, and it enables the transformation of methodologies into scalable, individualized playbooks for each pharma advisor.
Step 1: Generative AI: AI-driven coaching generators leverage existing documentation to extract successful communication strategies. AI analyzes existing product and sales documentation to develop optimal playbooks with effective strategies tailored to diverse healthcare professional personas (and other stakeholders). AI coaching can be trained on MLR-approved materials, enabling the provision of recommendations pre-approved by the medical, legal, and regulatory team.
The image illustrates how effortlessly you can create AI coaching sessions with straightforward steps.
Step 2: Virtual HCPs: AI coaching enables you to build virtual twins of your actual clients. These virtual twins effectively engage your sales team ansowfd accurately replicate pertinent interactions. Transform detailed persona profiles into realistic AI avatars that emulate the behavior of your actual stakeholders. You may give these avatars distinct personalities, needs, and challenges. Upload applicable data to control HCP knowledge, such as new studies, product details, and competitor intelligence. The AI coach generates AI simulations that reflect authentic scenarios, enabling your team to hone their abilities in crucial HCP interactions.
Step 3: AI-enabled role plays: The AI coach empowers your sales representatives by analyzing their conversations with the simulated virtual HCPs and by providing personalized recommendations, closing knowledge and skill gaps. The AI coach analyzes verbal and non-verbal behavior and gives immediate feedback, simulating interactions with HCPs in a psychologically safe environment. This allows sales reps to practice their skills and receive personalized coaching anytime, anywhere.
Step 4: AI analytics: AI sales coaching provides sales executives and training administrators with an in-depth understanding of behaviors that lead to success or failure within their organization. By analyzing behavioral data, they can identify the strengths and weaknesses of their sales reps, discover new best practices, and pinpoint training opportunities.
AI coaching significantly accelerates training delivery, offering over 10 times faster results compared to traditional methods. It effectively engages user cohorts at scale, boasting activation rates of 80% or higher. The AI coach analyzes both verbal and non-verbal behaviors, providing valuable insights that drive learner impact and result in increased sales readiness prior ot HCP meetings.
Moreover, the AI coach connects coaching to tangible business outcomes, enabling the tracking of metrics such as market share increase, Net Promoter Score (NPS), and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT).
AI coaching isn't just about memorizing facts. It's also about helping the sales team apply what they've learned to real-world situations. The AI sales coach does this by simulating real-world scenarios and giving personalized feedback.
A study by Retorio with 3.301 users suggests that people who use AI coaching are 8 times more effective at applying what they've learned on the job.
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+25%* gain of knowledge |
8x* more effective in |
The future of sales training is already here, and the time to act is now. Traditional training methods can no longer keep pace with today’s fast-changing sales landscape—but AI can.
Retorio’s AI-driven coaching platform empowers your sales teams with personalized, scalable, and data-driven training that delivers real results—faster onboarding, and more confident, top-performing reps.
With cutting-edge innovations like generative AI role-plays and emotional intelligence analysis, Retorio ensures your teams don’t just keep up but stay ahead.
The choice is clear: embrace AI-powered training today, or risk falling behind tomorrow.
Ready to future-proof your sales team?
Discover how Retorio can transform your training strategy—before your competition does.