How to work with key opinion leaders (KOLs)

KOLs play a major role in the health sector and professionally working together with them will boost your career! This episode provides you with lots of insights and tips.

However, to work successfully with key opinion leaders (KOLs) or key thought leaders (KTLs), you first need to understand the many different roles, they have. From the perspective of a pharmaceutical company, they are:

• Customers
• Advisors
• Authors
• Investigator
• Speaker
• Guideline author
• HTA or Regulatory body advisor
• Government employee

Beyond these, it is important to remember,that KOLs of course also have personal interests e.g. to grow their business or academic career or to gain peer recognition.

In this episode, we talk

• about how the interactions between pharma companies and KOLs look like
• which rules are important and how you as a statistician should comply with these
• about practical tips of building relationships with KOLs
• about opportunities to work with KOLs
• and about mindset topics in engaging withKOLs

The episode got quite long, but it is packed with lots of actionable advise and background information.

Transcript:

Alexander: You’re listening to episode 39 number of the Effective Statistician Podcast, “How to work with Key Opinion Leaders”.

Welcome to the Effective Statistician, with Alexander Shacht and Benjamin Piske. It’s a weekly podcast for Statisticians in the health sector, designed to improve your leadership skills, widen your business acumen and enhance your efficiency. Do you sometimes struggle to convince your business partners? Do you sometimes feel excluded from key discussions? If you want to improve your influence within your organization, well we have something for you. The Effective Statistician Leadership Program is here to help you. We will start this course next year in 2019. So if you have some interest in learning about this, check out our homepage, theeffectivestatistician.com/course and register your interest there.

In today’s episode. We’ll chat all about key opinion leaders QLs, KDLs TLs. There’s lots of different acronyms for them. But what is their role and how can you best work together with them? So they feel good and you will as well. This podcast is created in association with PSI, global member organization, dedicated to Leading and Promoting best practices and Industry initiatives. Join PSI today, to further develop your statistical capabilities with access to special interest groups, the video on demand Content Library, free registration to all PSI webinars and much, much more. Visit the PSI website at psiweb.org to learn more about PSI activities and become a PSI member today.

Benjamin: Welcome to a new episode of The Effective Statistician. Today, we’re talking about KOLs, Key Opinion Leaders, Key Thought Leaders, or Thought Leaders. However, they are called. In my life as a statistician, I haven’t come across too many Key Opinion Leaders or so what we call KOL, Key Opinion Leaders, but I’m sure Alexander you did. Did you?

Alexander: Yes. Hi Benjamin, actually key opinion leaders have been on my agenda for quite a while as most of my career. I’ve spent time in the so-called Medical Affairs area. So most late face areas and lots of customer-facing activities. So that’s why my interactions with Key Opinion Leaders, Thought Leaders, or very often abbreviated QLs, KTLs, TLs or whatsoever is quite frequent and it’s always a very interesting experience.

Benjamin:  And I really believe that I’ve been working with some of them as well and I see that as you know, as a matter of fact the CEO Statisticians usually work towards the you know, the Pharma company who then is directly supporting the QL. So, I mean there are exceptions but yeah. Now I agree, so who are QLs? I mean, investigators could be, but what else is?

Alexander: So QLs have quite a wide range of activities. And by the way, if you hear some background noise, we are recording this year in the summer. And I really need to open the door and the window because it’s so hot. So, even if you hear that in the winter, I think they have predicted something like 36 degrees here and it’s healthy long. And so, there might be a little bit of a background noise, but I hope it’s not to disturb him.

So, going back to the Key Opinion Leaders, they can take lots of different roles. And of course, they are customers, they are very often Prescribing Physicians that treat patients themselves or they have patients in Clinics that they run or Hospitals that they run. And so they actually see patients and therefore they also usually prescribe medications or therapies that the Pharma Companies are working on. I am usually quite experienced, if your leader or opinion leader or salt leader, you need to have some very established expertise in a certain area, very often a niche of the medical field. And such as QL, very often help Pharma Companies to actually do better in their job. Because there’s lots of expertise within the Pharma companies. But these people that we are talking about are very often world-class experts and they have dedicated their life to this specific area. So it’s nearly impossible to have this knowledge in-house and especially when there’s lots of Pharma Companies working on a specific area. It’s nearly impossible to have a certain house. Saying, advising the Pharma companies on all kinds of different things from Study Design, to Interpretation of the Data, what the data means in terms of the Prescribing Physicians, how best to communicate the data? All kinds of different things.

As you mentioned, very often they are also Investigators for Clinical Studies and sometimes Principal Investigators. And as I said, you know, they are often very closely involved with the Clinical Data from the Design of the Studies up to the Publication of Social Studies. And as such they also very often Authors on the publications. Quite naturally, you know, they have provided their expertise to the Design of the Studies and the Interpretation of the Studies and to putting everything into perspective. So that’s another way, another role. Further, when communicating about these results, they also speak at conferences about the data or sometimes also hired to speak at specific Pharma Organized events to talk about the data and to explain the data, what they mean to their peers.

And then sometimes they are overarching things that they are doing. So they might work on guidelines, for example on certain treatment guidelines as they have. They bring out world-class expertise in these guidelines to help Prescribing Physicians that will not have ever the opportunity to build up these expertise to help them make the best treatment decisions. And then they also sometimes play the role of approving things. So, for example, they may be associated or advise Regulatory bodies or HTA bodies, or maybe even a member of HTA bodies. And as such as they’re sometimes, even government employees, they are seen as government employees. And so that of course, has also some further legal implications.

Benjamin: From what hear is that you’re still mainly talking about primarily talking about medical background. So medical persons are people that are in whatever role as you described, but with a medical background.

Alexander: Yeah, mostly they have a medical background, very often they are professors at a certain University with a medical background. In some aspects, sometimes they could also come from other areas. So, for example, when it’s about HDA sometimes, they could also have more, kind of as a Health Economy Background. And advise in that regard, but I think usually a  few of them that we meet will have a fairly Medical Background. Yeah, or maybe a little bit of Biological Background but they’re often both have a degree in Biology and Medicine.

Benjamin: And their role is a medical one. So this is like who that person could potentially be? But what about the interactions? What is the interaction that you usually have with them? I mean obviously what are the pitfalls?

Alexander: Yeah, let’s maybe first talk about the interaction that us Statisticians can have with them. So when you usually run into these Advisory Boards. These are group meetings where Pharma Companies invite a couple of different Key Opinion Leaders, could be just one or two people, but it could also be a dozen Key Opinion Leaders. Could be in that range, so that you can still have a meaningful discussion with them, and it’s quite interactive. Usually the Advisory Boards. So there, in these kinds of Advisory Boards exactly what we just discussed happens. Yeah. So the Pharma Company shows their Study Design and Digital Input or shows the data in terms of interpretation. What I think about it, you know, where maybe you know gaps and the analysis? Other things or maybe better ways to interpret the data, or different ways to show the data, or where to further and publish the data, you know, is that something that is relevant enough for a top-tier journal or is that something that maybe not so relevant. How does that fit into the literature? For example, these kinds of things.

Another thing where you can run into Key Opinion Leaders, of course, are Medical Conferences. So if you are working in a specific disease area, I strongly recommend that you also attend these relevant Medical Conferences there, because it’s really good for, of course, for knowledge gained. But also very good for having interactions with these Key Opinion Leaders and building your relationship and learning from them. So these conferences, very often Pharma Companies will set up, you know, smaller meetings with these Key Opinion Leaders to discuss various topics. And that can be quite interesting. So especially if it’s about a certain project that you’re working on. It’s quite nice to be at these conferences and tend to be within these meetings.

Benjamin: Isn’t this like, usually planned in as study, from a study level?

Alexander: Yeah, that could be planned from a study level. These conferences just offer a very nice opportunity to meet with these people, because if that’s an International Conference for disease X, Y or that. All the relevant people will be there. So it’s very easy to meet them with rather low effort. Of course the very important People will have quite a busy schedule. You can still meet them and you know, between the sessions or in the morning or in the evening and speak about projects. But sometimes you also have Project Specific kinds of meetings with these Key Opinion Leaders. Something like mini advisory boards, where maybe for specific study You meet with just one or two advisers to then only talk about this specific project, either at the Design Stage or at the Data Reader or Publication Stage.

Another area is Speaker Training. I think this is not an area where traditionally Statisticians have been strongly involved in because very often they kind of see things happen, when all the data is already published and things like this, but I have seen that having Statisticians at these kinds of events. Very much help for the customers to understand the data better, and to understand the pitfalls, to understand the limitations. And the speaker training is really where you invite people from different countries. People that speak on behalf of Pharma companies. In Pharma company, organized events, and of course, they need to be familiar

with the data that we speak about. And with these pitfalls, they need to be able to answer questions from the audience about these. So that’s another area.

Benjamin: Basically, it’s a study of specific affiliate training, let’s say so that the local affiliates of local study groups.

Alexander: It could be specific, but could also be kind of its own therapeutic area specific or molecules specific. Yeah. So let’s say you launch a new drug, and in this area, of course you want to inform all the different Prescribing Physicians about the data, from the phase 3 package and then you need to have these speakers that basically communicate your data, in a more kind of small group settings and that are able to put these data into perspective. And these people are the speakers who are then centrally trained usually. Actually one other thing where I think it’s really good to get in touch just as a side note, and that may not be directly with Key Opinion Leaders, but could also be with Key Opinion Leaders, always with, you know, just the usual Prescribing Physicians. Is to get in touch with them when you have the right sales rep.

Benjamin: I think you have discussed this before.

Alexander: Yes. If you have never seen this side of the business, I encourage you to do that. It’s great learning. Sometimes it’s difficult for Statisticians to get actually into these settings, advisory boards and things like that. But yeah, it takes a little bit of time and in additional effort to get into these meetings.

Benjamin: But actually from what I heard is that the Statistician the Pharma Statistician is usually invited to Advisory Boards at least in the past in my history. The studies that I did were broken on that. It wasn’t me but it was the Study Statistician who was attending The Advisory Board. It’s not uncommon.

Alexander: Yeah, I think there’s a very good reason for it.

Benjamin: Absolutely.

Alexander: Because a Statistician is usually the only deeply methodological trained person in these rooms and thus provides very complimentary knowledge to all these different things. So imagine you have the Physicians from the Pharma Companies and then you have all these Physicians, the External Physicians, Key Opinion Leaders there. And of course, they are all medically trained. Yeah, and my experience is that the view of the statistician is highly valued by especially the external Key Opinion Leaders, because very often they will not have access to statisticians very easily at their Institutes where they are working. Or at least maybe not to statisticians that are specifically trained in these kinds of areas. As a statistician, you shouldn’t be thinking minor about yourself, but seeing these kinds of strengths. If you for example compare yourself with your colleague from the Medical Department, you know, I would foresee  that they potentially have much more problems in these areas, because you know, they speak with their peers, but these peers, their medical colleagues have much more experience in terms of these specific diseases. They are professors on these diseases, they have published maybe hundreds of Publications on these kinds of things, they have invested years or decades of their life into these specific things.

Whereas you as a Pharma Physician, you know, maybe you have previously worked on completely different indications. Yeah, and you just jumped into this quite new. Of course, maybe your company data battles and the external. But the externals have so much more knowledge. So I think there is no reason as a Statistician to go fearful into these kinds of meetings. But remember your strength, your complimentary knowledge and I think that also gives you the advantage that you actually can ask really nice questions and therefore contribute.

Benjamin: Before we move on, the mindset of the Statistician on how to interact with us. What are other surrounding rules or things you should consider when you work with the QL, KOL or talk to him?

Alexander: Yeah, so there are lots of rules actually. And it’s all under the big umbrella of compliance. So if you go back in history, well, there’s lots of stories that you probably hear from your older colleagues about how Pharma has run the business kind of in the last century. And that is, of course, very different from how it runs today. And you need to be very careful in how you react with these people. Because many of these will be seen as Government Employees, or maybe they are not factually, but, more or less legally as heinous have. So bribery rules and these kinds of things are all effective here. And so, it’s really important to be aware of these different compliance rules. One thing that I think usually helps is to have someone, if you speak with a Key Opinion Leader, to have someone that is from the Medical Affairs Department, Medical Science liaison, or you know, someone else a local Physician from your company together with them. Because they will be aware of the local rules that apply to this physician. Yeah, so, of course, you can’t be aware of the French rules, German rules, the UK rules, or rules from Denmark or whatsoever.

So my recommendation is always to have someone from the same location as the QL, that helps you to be aware about the rules. And also, when you want to invite them to dinner or you want to invite them to breakfast, in association with your working meeting. These people will be aware about whether there are any gaps in terms of how much it costs or do analysis things. So that’s really important to have in mind.

Benjamin: Okay. So now let’s get back to the mindset. So when you said that the statistician should be standing up and be open and should be shy and as Statistician should be just discussing. So what else would you recommend? What are the ways you should prepare to meet a QL?  What do you usually want to get out of it? I mean, it’s probably different from meeting to meeting. But what is the aim of the meetings? And so what can you recommend then?

Alexander: So if you think about it, interacting with Key Opinion Leader a is quite complex because they have so many different roles. Yeah, on one hand they are customers and another thing is an Adult Advisor, and then they may also be an Author and so on, and so on. So first having the kind of complexity in mind is really important because it helps you to be aware about all the different interests here. From a mindset point of view, I think it’s first and foremost. It’s being open and being trustworthy. Yeah, because that’s the foundation of a good relationship here. And if you are not seen as trustworthy well it will directly stop.

Benjamin: This is probably applicable to all other interactions with Key Opinion Leaders.

Alexander: Yeah, but probably very general but you know these relationships are very sensitive. Yeah, if you mess up the relationship with a client or with a CRO. Well, you need to find a new one. It’s much more difficult because he’s kind of a Key Opinion Leader you know, just one president for the world organizations for your disease that you can work with. Yeah, so It’s really sensitive. So that’s why being trustworthy is really important. It’s very easy to make commitments. And I always recommend being very cautious with that, because if you give a commitment then, are you really kind of authorized to do that? And can you really hold to this commitment? Can you follow up on this? And so I’m always very cautious of that. Of course you need to make commitments. Rather than, “Well, we will do this as a company”. You say “I will follow up on it”. And report back to you. So given the commitment to follow up but not the commitment that the company will actually do something and that usually is already enough.

Then in terms of working with them, it can be quite frightening. When I first met with these kinds of people where you think he’s a world-class expert, they regularly speak at large conferences and large audiences. They determine the treatment guidelines for four continents and influence how patients are treated around the world. Thinking about this can be quite frightening and sometimes also say, can be quite charismatic and that can also be kind of frightening, but I always recommend that, think about your strengths, think about they’re also just people. They need to eat, they need to sleep and that you can actually help them with your expertise as a Statistician. Having that in mind helps to overcome this fear and to be able to not freeze in front of these world-class experts when you actually meet them.

Benjamin: Yeah, I would like to mention, I think it’s basically you said that these are just humans. I mean, obviously. Sometimes you might struggle with that opinion, but at least it is in general. I mean, yes we Statisticians, we are experts in specific areas as, you know, in the data crunching people, it’s always kind of seen as something special, something different, people usually talk to people that are not as knowledgeable in the area as you are. And that’s basically, that’s how you work and how you walk through your working life. And meeting Key Opinion Leaders or meeting other colleagues. I think  even though we put this really into a one episode meeting Key Opinion Leaders because it’s a big topic. I mean, these are not aliens, they are really just humans and still. I mean no one, no Statisticians should be afraid of Key Opinion Leaders. So nobody should be afraid of Key Opinion Leaders. Except maybe, as you mentioned before, it might be.

It’s just that we want to emphasize the sensitivity of the topic, working with the KOL well, and therefore, you will be moving or going through these points in such detail, but actually, it’s a meeting like every other meeting that you should prepare. You should be coming in, You have a name. I mean, we talked about it in previous episodes. Get into the meeting, You know you would get out of it. Let’s say you get this study designed, you need to get the interpretation of the reality. You may have questions that you would like to ask, and so on. So there are their aims for meeting. So you go in and introduce yourself and don’t be afraid. I mean, you’re a Statistician, you’re an expert and he’s a medic and he’s an expert. So, yeah, two experts work together. But actually, it’s sensible as well.

Alexander: Yeah, two experts working together. Yes, I think that’s a very good mindset to go into this. Lots of our fellow Statisticians made me much more of an introvert that these people. Me going into these areas made me much more of an extrovert. And, of course, as an introvert, you might not feel completely comfortable with that, but I really urge you to train these kinds of things. And to get out of your comfort zone and get into this and that. It helps over time by doing it over and over again. You realize that you get more and more used to it and become more and more normal. And so I really encourage people to embrace these situations and go into it. Yeah, what I sometimes see at those events is that People don’t embrace the situation but then kind of just hang around with their colleagues. So imagine that you have an Advisory Board and all the Pharma People are there. First, they arrived early to set up the room to check if everything’s working from a logistic perspective and then, the first Advisors arrived, What do you do? My advice is to act as a host. Yeah, you as a company are organizing this event. So the guests are coming and you’re the host. What do you do at home? You know, if you have a dinner party and the guests are arriving, you don’t stay in the kitchen with your wife, you go to the door. You greet them, you ask if they had safe travel and then these kinds of things, you interact with them, offer a drink, and things like this. Yeah, but despite these kinds of usual things that we would do at home for dinner parties, You don’t see it. Yeah. Because people stay within their comfort zone and talk to their colleagues that they see every day rather than, you know, talk to strangers that they have never met before.

What actually can help them is that you prepare a little bit more for these kinds of meetings. You prepare or check the profiles of these people, how do they look? So you can connect a name with a face. Where are they coming from? What’s their expertise? you know, whatever the reason, a big publication that they had so that you know who you talk to. You can know their names, you know whether they had a long-distance flight or things like this and you have some kind of material that you can talk about, you know, just on a chat kind of area. Yeah, so to have these kinds of more light interactions in the beginning that you want to have. Of course be aware of cultural differences. Yeah. How people greet each other, that might be very different. And then just don’t forget what your mother told you about being polite. Don’t frown on them, instead smile at them. Give a handshake if it’s culturally appropriate.

Benjamin: Introduce yourself.

Alexander: Yeah, introduce yourself and you know say that you are a responsible Statistician, what you’re doing, and that will spark a conversation. Yeah, but really embrace it, go into it, even if you’re a little bit afraid about it. This is where growth happens in these kinds of discomfort zones. You can decrease this kind of anxiety, if you do it over and over again, and if you prepare for this kind of stuff.

Benjamin: I think you mentioned the word preparation quite often now. I think this is really one of the key points. Sometimes you go into a meeting and because you didn’t have time to prepare and then you just get out of it, that’s fine. But meeting such people, I mean they will understand right away and they will not accept usually, if you come in unprepared and you ask them questions where they expect you to know it or where they expect to have the background. So it is a waste of their time, that’s what they usually see. I mean, important people, they have a busy schedule and they come into a meeting explaining a Statistician’s stupid questions about things that they should know. Preparation is really key or key things to do when you get into such a meeting, fully agree.

Alexander: Yeah, fully agree. And actually there’s some nice tools within the different companies to do that. Some companies have some kind of cheat sheets before such events that you can go through where the CRM data from all the different customers are displayed. So CRM, Customer Relationship Management, a lot of companies have these tools where they capture all different interactions with their service, their customers. Like most of the companies nowadays have. There’s also things you can find about: has this person previously talked about this study already, who has he met? Who already knows from the company? Who is the local contact for that person? So there is lots of information about the relationship with the Key Opinion Leader already in there. That you can look into and prepare for your interactions.

So, in terms of interactions, I think, you know, most of these Key Opinion Leaders are very passionate about their topics. Yeah, so it’s especially in these kinds of, let’s say, breaks, coffee breaks between within the meeting. It’s good to talk with them about all these things, they love to talk about it.

Benjamin: They sometimes really dedicated their life to the topic and that’s what you feel when you talk to them.

Alexander: Yeah. And they can give you a much more kind of feel for the problems of the everyday patient. So, what do they face in terms of obstacles in treating these patients? And that can both help you with your job, but I think it also helps you to get a better connection of why we are running this kind of study and why we are developing the treatment. So, I always find these kinds of interactions very powerful, very encouraging. So as a Statistician you have the ability to also ask lots of medical questions that maybe your medical colleagues are afraid of asking. Yeah, and that’s another kind of a good thing.

One other point. If you are successful in managing these relationships that will be seen also by others. And that also will help you with your career overall. So I’ve kind of remarks about the decisions that we as senior leaders within the company have seen. “Oh, he’s good with customers”. Yeah, he has this ability to interact in a meaningful way and provide value to customers and that is seen and that is something that is very important for some Pharma Companies. So it’s something that you can build as a skill set and that’s an asset for your Career.

Benjamin: I agree. I mean, just as an example if you have been named by one of the Key Opinion Leaders, you know, as a successful collaboration that you worked together with you as a Statistician. And this is being sent in an email to, you know, within the company. I mean, this is just pure gold for your career.

Alexander: Yeah, So that’s why it’s useful to invest time into this and really trying to get into these kinds of things. Yeah. So if you work at a company where it is difficult to get into these interactions. Talk to your medical colleagues, at least you can get to sit on that side table to get into this first. Yeah, and maybe you can help with a presentation together with your medical colleagues about the data, so that he speaks maybe about introduction, you talk about the methodology and some key results and any kind that closes up on the interpretations, in your outlook, and things like this and framing it. And that way you can be helpful, provide value, and get into these kinds of things.

I think the key is, you need to show your value that you bring to the table. Yeah, I think I’ve seen very often people request to be in there and then with an argument, because it’s helpful for me. You know the organizer of the Advisory Board doesn’t care whether it’s helpful for you. He cares if it’s helpful for him and the advisors. So it doesn’t make sense to speak about the value for you. You need to speak about what value you can offer. Because only those people get invited to these kinds of things that contribute to it.

Benjamin: Yeah, adding value to it.

Alexander: And of course for adding value, you actually need to speak up.

Benjamin: And you need to prepare.

Alexander: If you go to these meetings and you don’t speak up then you don’t contribute and you don’t add value, maybe that’s the last meeting that you were invited to. Yeah, like the Advisory Board there’s very often higher boundaries to get into this, because it sometimes requires additional travel and training and additional costs and maybe the room is not big enough or whatsoever. Yeah, so it’s not like this usual company meeting where people, maybe don’t care, whether there’s five additional attendees. Yeah, but for these kinds of meetings they see hurdles much bigger and, you know, it might be that if the organizer of that meeting picks you, you need to say no to another one, because there’s just limited space. So it really helped to get an understanding of the value that you bring and I hope, you know what we talked about already helps you to get some of these kinds of value points, that you can bring to the methodology to collect experience. You can bring complementary knowledge, you may have already experience with working with these Key Opinion Leaders. You have shown how you can bring value to them.

Benjamin: And you know the company data for other studies or related studies, previous studies and so on. So there’s a lot of expertise you can bring and add value to it.

Alexander: Yeah, and you can help in presenting Physicians if they get challenged on specific points, what does that methodology actually mean? The computation methods that you use, all the analytical methods that you use. And another company uses something different. Why did you use this approach? And these kinds of challenges are often difficult to explain for Physicians, and if you are there as a methodological trained person you can help with these. And I think this is really important. Another point is you hear first hand what people think about your data, external people think about your data and that is very useful. Like this all the information, if you only hear it through someone else, there’s already a filter on, it is already a, you know, interpretation on it. And you can hear many more different kinds of things. So you see when you know, people don’t get it. And the way you have prepared the data. So you maybe need to think about, okay, we need to visualize the data differently or better. And so, I always enjoy these kinds of interactions because I learned so much about my data.

Benjamin: Alright, I think we’re running out of time. That’s a good closing sentence.

Alexander: Maybe just one kind of special thing at the end, and then we can close. I know this is a pretty long episode. It’s a pretty important topic. And one last special note on the medical conferences, as these conferences you know, all the different companies, you want to meet with these kinds of Key Opinion Leaders. They are usually quite busy, because maybe they also have a couple of presentations as chair sessions and maybe also have some kind of duties, such as being, working in these Medical Associations. So it’s very important to proactively organize these things. Sometimes you can catch someone after his presentation for a short five-minute discussion, but if you want to have a more in-depth discussion at these Medical Conferences. It’s good to organize these and maybe have you know special rooms where you can meet with them. It’s good to engage with your Medical and Marketing Colleagues that regularly go to these conferences and you can join them to meet customers. So, can I ask the people from the different affiliate organizations. They may meet their customers for breakfast for dinner anyway, and you can join them. And therefore, have these kinds of occasions, have interactions with a Key Opinion Leader and build your relationships.

Sometimes, there’s also a central person that coordinates all the different requests, because especially in very big companies there might be different groups within the company that all want to speak with the same Key Opinion Leader for different kinds of reasons and to coordinate that. Sometimes it makes sense that there’s just one person, that it’s a central person for that.

Another thing for conferences. In most of the medical conferences that I know there’s also an exhibition area attached to see Medical Conferences. Where the  different companies have booths and that’s also great place to meet people because people will just come by

and listen to this man.

Benjamin: Usually quite a busy place with everyone.

Alexander: Yeah, it depends. Usually these kinds of booths have different parts. Say they have more of a commercial part and the more medical part and usually, they are somehow a little bit separated and one part is sometimes a little bit more busy than the other, and of course, there’s certain periods of time where I kind of everybody gets out of the session into the exhibition hall and then it’s completely crowded. But that’s within the sessions, when the sessions are on. It may be more quiet and still some people are coming around. Yes, of course there’s a certain additional rule for these boothers that you need to be aware about that. Yeah, another good place to meet.

Benjamin: Yeah, we should make an episode about preparing for conferences of everything. How to get the best out of them. I mean, I think just because he touched the area now, it’s been, you know, there are a lot of things that people sometimes or even me I realized afterwards but I missed after, you know, after attending conferences.

Alexander: Yeah, that’s a good topic. So by the way, if you want to learn more about all these kinds of different things, you can register at our homepage theeffectivestatistician.com No slashes just all one word, and then you’ll never miss an episode. And in the future we are also thinking about preparing some additional materials there, so just stay tuned. Leave your email address there and you will know when you get the most out of our podcast.

Benjamin: Thanks for listening.

Alexander: Okay. Thanks a lot, it was great talking to you again Benjamin.

Benjamin: Bye Alex.

Alexander: So this episode was a lot about influence and if you want to further build these kinds of influencing skills register your interest on the leadership program at theeffectivestatistician.com/course. This show was created in association with PSI. Thanks for listening. And as always, please visit theeffectstatistician.com to find the show notes and know more about our podcast more about our to boost your career as a Statistician in the health sector, but really, the most important thing is if you want to learn better about influencing skills, then go to the course home page and register your interests are.