Your MSLs often get a short amount of time in front of KOLs, so every second counts. As a leader, your role is to help your team make those brief moments meaningful, memorable, and valuable.
The MSL journal reinforces this, noting that the value of MSL and KOL engagement is crucial to the success of a product and plays a critical role in advancing medical knowledge, fostering collaboration, driving innovation, and improving patient care (1).
Teams need to move beyond simply sharing more data and instead learn how to communicate narratives that guide stakeholders to what matters most. The challenge for leaders is creating the conditions for that to happen consistently.
In a short interaction, rich and complex data can easily become overwhelming. Without focus, teams can fall into “data dumping” and lose the single message that matters most to the KOL in that moment.
When that happens, the impact of the interaction is reduced, the opportunity to build credibility is weakened, and valuable time with a stakeholder is lost. This is where leadership matters most.
As leaders, we need to move our teams away from the idea that value comes from saying more. Instead, we need to reinforce that value comes from precision. Knowing what matters most, shaping it into a clear narrative, and helping teams communicate it with confidence and credibility.
It starts by helping your team answer 3 critical questions:
Crucially, this capability is not built in front of the KOL. It is built in advance through clear direction, coaching, and practice. Your role is to make your teams better by:
A well-crafted story helps teams guide stakeholders through complex data quickly, connecting the evidence to what matters in practice, why it is relevant for patients, and what should happen next. In a short interaction, that clarity is what makes the message stick.
Before stepping into a training environment, give your team a clear story. Offer then a role model that demonstrates the precision and focus you want to see in the field. This matters because as Forbes reminds us, leaders who fail to craft a compelling vision often find their teams disengaged, hesitant, or resistant to transformation (2).
Leaders who demonstrate what good looks like show that storytelling is not about reducing the science. It is about elevating the data so they can be understood, remembered, and acted on in the short time available.
When you equip your team to communicate this way, the impact extends far beyond a single appointment. Conversations become more memorable, credibility builds faster, and insights become more meaningful. Your team is prepared to make every KOL interaction count.
Identify 1 of your key strategic priorities for purposeful practicing and challenge you teams to define:
Using these reflections, create a short narrative you want your team to be able to deliver confidently, record them, and notice:
If you want to strengthen this capability across your team, Amplity’s learning professionals can provide a structured way to build storytelling into everyday commercial and medical professionals’ practice. Our 3-part business and scientific storytelling program help all teams develop core communication skills, and strengthen delivery through voice, body language, and authenticity by using adult learning theory, practical workshops, and micro-learning sessions to help teams practice vocal skills, use metaphors, and create story arcs and hooks over several months.
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