The Question Behind the Question - Field Training with Jennifer Muszik

What separates a good pharma sales rep from a great one? According to Jennifer Muszik, it's the ability to understand the question behind the question — the real need behind what a customer is asking.

In this episode, Jonathan Kaskey sits down with Jennifer Muszik, Head of Learning & Development at Alkermes and board member of LTEN, to unpack what it takes to build world-class training programs in the pharmaceutical industry. Jennifer shares her journey from 17 years at Pfizer to leading L&D across some of pharma's most recognized organizations — and why she almost always hires people who've actually done the job they're training others to do.

They get into the nuances of training new hires vs. seasoned veterans, how to engage your highest performers without making them feel attacked, and why former teachers and coaches often make the best pharma reps. Plus: a candid conversation about where AI can genuinely help — and where human connection is still irreplaceable.

Topics covered:

• Why field experience makes better trainers
• The "pull-through" problem after POA meetings
• Using AI for knowledge transfer (and its limits)
• How LTEN is shaping the future of pharma L&D

Pharma Sessions is hosted by Jonathan Kaskey

Follow along on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonkaskey/

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Transcript

Jenn Muszik 0:20

there's new ways that we could use AI to help us get better, whether it's knowledge transfer, whether it's practice, those type of things. The thing that AI can't do is the human connection and the human engagement with the HCP. Knowledge almost is now just a commodity-- it's table stakes. You need to know that in order to have the discussion. It's really understanding that customer to salesperson communication. What does that mean? What does the customer really need? How do we provide that to them in a way that's meaningful? Those are skills. They're human skills. There's a specific and significant role for field salespeople to engage with customers in really understanding patient needs and potential opportunities to help solve those patient needs. So I think AI is supportive. I just don't think it's, coming for

Jonathan 1:19

Welcome to Pharma Sessions, the podcast that you're currently listening to. I'm Jonathan Caskey, your host, joined today by Jennifer Musick. Jennifer is a true professional in the learning and development space at-- in pharma on the board of L10, an event I'm super excited to attend for the first time in a couple weeks. Currently at Alkermes history at Pfizer, Biogen, Roche and many other companies. As always, the views expressed here are our own and not those of our respective employers. But with that, Jen, welcome to the show

Jenn Muszik 1:57

Thank you, Jonathan. So happy to be here

Jonathan 1:59

Absolutely. So I typically like to start with a little bit of icebreaker to get to know each other before we dive in and talk about all things learning and development in pharma. The one I've been going to lately works well with your last name, right? if you are finding yourself out, colleagues, whomever, at a karaoke bar, what's your, go-to?

Jenn Muszik 2:21

Oh, Jonathan, that's so funny. Yes, the only thing musically about me is my last name. So I will never do karaoke on my own. However my husband and I every now and then do a mean Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice. So that would be my go-to.

Jonathan 2:37

So you do it as a duet

Jenn Muszik 2:38

As a-- I usually just help him in the background a little bit. He's the, face, right? I'm the background dancer, but I'll help a little bit

Jonathan 2:46

Excellent. Well, maybe at the conference you can bring him and we can, see this sometime, but it see- I see a shake of the head, so probably not.

Jenn Muszik 2:53

Probably not

Jonathan 2:54

you have had a fantastic career pharma, that being in L- L&D. Do you wanna take me a bit through your journey, how it started, how you got there?

Jenn Muszik 3:04

Sure. I started out in big pharma, as you mentioned. I was at Pfizer for almost seventeen years, and the first half or so at Pfizer, I was in the typical commercial roles, in field sales, hospital sales. My first foray into learning and development was my third role as they called it assistant to the regional manager or training and operations manager. And that's really where I found my love for learning. I had people coming from all different types of industries, and they were coming into pharma and watching the light bulbs come on as they were learning about products, disease states, the way that we engage customers. And after that, I did a couple of more roles at Pfizer, where I was a frontline manager and then a key account manager, but found my love again as I was leaving Pfizer. My last role, I was in field effectiveness, where I was doing national training on how the market was evolving and really helping people think about how we needed to operate differently. And so from that time, Jonathan, I just found that if I could help people learn what they're doing and that they have the knowledge, the skills, and the confidence to engage customers in a more meaningful way, it was just truly my passion point. So since 2013 as you mentioned, I was at other organizations. I was at Roche Diagnostics Biogen, and now here at Alkermes. All of my roles since 2013 have been focused on learning and development because it just really is the opportunity to help people be successful. But in our industry too, it's helping customers make good decisions and ultimately helping patients get the medicines needed to live longer or, more productive lives. And so it's, it's really where I found my home.

Jonathan 4:41

Sure. So I'm just curious, did you, when you first went from the field to, say, internal and you're now training field people, were there big aha moments of, "Oh my gosh, if I had only sort of done this, my day-to-day would've looked, would've looked differently"? I guess, how, how helpful was having that real field experience when you went to go and then start the trainings?

Jenn Muszik 5:04

Yeah, I think the field experience, and now I hire trainers, and most of the time and when I say most, I mean like ninety-plus percent of the time, my focus is hiring somebody who's been in the role before that they're gonna train. And the reason why Jonathan, is they understand what's the customer gonna ask me and why are they asking? Or what's the question behind the question? Or what's the thing about our products or our patient profiles that customers really need to know to make the best decisions for patients? And so, I'm not to say that you can't train people if you haven't done the job. I, I just feel like people are more confident and comfortable training those who are gonna go out and do that job. And so, yeah, it's it's where I lean more towards when I hire people into the role. Yeah.

Jonathan 5:54

Yeah. What's interesting is in some of my experience Hiring teachers has been an incredible thing to see, right? So, so I'm sp- thinking of specifically working on the vendor side, client success roles or account management, or basically the people that once a, a company has decided to work with you, they're now responsible for making sure that it's being used, people are getting value out of it, et cetera. And I was at one particular company, and we were sort of struggling in this role, and we kept hiring people with pharma experience, people with other tech experience. And then once we started hiring former teachers, it was like, "Oh my God, this is, this is incredible." So do you, do you ever look at... When you're building teams, do you ever look outside of pharma, or is it really strictly, that plus a bit of the pharma experience too?

Jenn Muszik 6:50

Yeah. It's, it's a good point though. I'm smiling I-- obviously our listeners can't see me smiling. I'm smiling because two people on my team were former teachers before getting into the pharmaceutical industry, and and now h- were in sales and sales leadership, one of them, and now are on the team. And you're right, Jonathan, they make such great facilitators of learning because they've... And one of them was she taught middle school, and I do think there's a special place in heaven for middle school teachers, 'cause having my f- my youngest child just now leaving middle school, I've been through it several times. But I do think that they come with the in- like already knowing knowledge and skills on how to engage a group. Part of what I do as a learning leader is I do bring people in to teach my salespeople how to be trainers and facilitators. And so that's one of the things that we offer the teams. I just had a company come in not too long ago and focus on our skill sets of being facilitate, which my teachers already come with, right? But it's something that we do have to train too

Jonathan 7:54

Yeah. That's funny. Slight digression, but I have a child in, in middle school now, and I had this thought watching one of her band performances. The first one, it was so rough, and I was like, "Mr. Barbarito is, I don't understand how he does it," 'cause literally my ears hurt. Literally. And I'm like, this guy does this day in, day out. And by the last performance at the end, they were actually pretty good. Like, the, the improvements were amazing, but it's just a level of patience, and he- everybody there was very happy with the performance. He was happy. I think the, the audience was like, "Ugh," Might, might have been challenged. But it really is something where, to start meeting people where they're at, I think is a big thing, right? 'Cause, 'cause training isn't, like, a monolithic pursuit, right? You have your new hires, you have your, grizzled vets, and then, like, a bell curve of, myriad other people in between. So how do you, how do you look at that, right? Like, I, I... there's a lot of training up front, and then sometimes it can kinda feel like it starts to peter out. So how do you tailor to the, diversity of your potential audience?

Jenn Muszik 9:03

Yeah. It's a great question. I was I was, as you were speaking, that reflecting on one of the first times when I was a trainer and I had two different people in my first training class, and one was more of a seasoned veteran, understood pharma and the verbiage that we have and selling to a customer that's a doctor. And the other was a high school teacher and coach, and had a hard time saying words like efficacy because that just wasn't part of his normal vernacular. And so it was really sitting down, and luckily that class was small. There was just two of them and one of me. But how to even help, the one that had more experience, how does that person help the person with less experience? And how do you really pair people together? But you're right. Early on, there's gonna be a, a common way that we train and a common approach, but we have to think about finding each person where they are and what do they need and what of that can we do within our classroom, virtual or live. But then it's also how do we pur-- how do we transfer that person back over to their frontline leader with information on how to help them get better based on where their strengths are and where their opportunities are? We'll, in a new hire class, we'll have people for the first six, seven, eight weeks of their, career within the organization. So we get the eyes on them quite quickly, and we can see where their strengths and opportunities, where they're confident and not confident. But most of the time, in most organizations, that's all they have. And so it's really then giving that knowledge to the frontline leader to say, "Here's where Jonathan's really great. Pick up from here and help him in these places too." And that's how we can also do some additional learning once they're outside of our classroom.

Jonathan 10:44

How did that story with the basketball coach resolve?

Jenn Muszik 10:49

Yeah. It, great question. I should have answered that too. He ended up winning President's Club multiple times. And to go back to, right, he was a teacher and a coach. And so once he got it and he understood why we were doing what we were doing, the value to the patient, his passion to go out and teach our customers more about the product, more about the why, how it helps the patients, his passion was definitely at a different level than someone who was coming in to, learn and just share information, if you will. He's, he really took it into being a teacher and yeah, multiple award winner. He did great

Jonathan 11:27

That's, that's really fascinating, right? Where it seems like, Or let me ask this as a question. Do you find it easier to train, get people up to speed on the basics, right? Like the understanding the scientific platform what they're allowed, what they're not allowed to say, all of that type of stuff, or generating that enthusiasm to kind of breathe life into the message? And then if it- if the latter one is harder, how do you address that?

Jenn Muszik 11:56

It's, it's so dependent on the person. So if there's people who are coming from pharma experience, and a lot of times we hire people with pharma experience teaching them the ins and outs of our products are pretty easy. It's do they have a connection to the disease state? So in my, in my career, I've had multiple different products and product lines. We currently have at Alkermes CNS products, so for schizophrenia and bipolar, and then we have products for addiction. And when we hire people who have experience in that, even on the addiction side, if they themselves have formerly had been in or if they're in recovery, if they have family members that have been in recovery or have experienced addiction for me, they, they know it. They can breathe it. Like, they live and breathe that every day. So their passion is felt, and y- you just stand around them, and you can just feel the passion for helping people with, with alcohol use disorder or opioid use disorder. So it's it, it's so dependent. It's so dependent on the, on the person and who we're training. And so again, it's a bit of what do you dial up and, and that's what I love about bringing in real patient stories into our classroom is if I don't have someone with that experience, it's really understanding that experience from the patient so that we can start to inspire that passion while also you have to stay within the guardrails. Like that's-- we're talking about pharmaceuticals or biologics that we want doctors to know all the positives and potential side effects and because we're asking them to prescribe it to a human. So it's why I love the-- what we do in this industry versus others is, and I mean no disrespect to car salesmen, but this isn't about getting from one place from A to B in a car. We're educating doctors on the potential biologic or pharmaceutical for a patient and, and that's the piece where both of-- both sides have to be important, the passion as well as the, the details.

Jonathan 13:50

For sure. So it sounds like a lot of what you're talking about is the approach for a particular person based on their own respective strengths and weaknesses. One thing I've found challenging in my career when I've been in sort of sales leadership positions kind of responsible for teams is sometimes the the hardest people to get to buy into training are the most successful people on your team. And it's almost this idea of like, well, I mean, it's, it's working. What, what, what more do I want to do? I always think it's funny you brought up basketball. I, the analogy I always think of is like Steph Curry shooting foul shots at the end of every practice, right? Like, there's always, there's always things that can be worked on. But when you're dealing particularly with those people that are your really high performances, how are you, alerting them to potential blind spots or giving-- finding areas for them to improve without them feeling attacked?

Jenn Muszik 14:45

Yeah. I, I think that's funny whether you say Steph Curry doing extra, practicing free throws. And I remember I grew up in the '90s with Michael Jordan and the Bulls, and he always said, "I played a fifth quarter," right? 'Cause you just never knew if there was gonna be overtime. And then the Allen Iverson, practice. that's-- it's-- I think what you're talking about is like the, "I don't even... What are you talking about, practice?"

Jonathan 15:05

Exactly

Jenn Muszik 15:07

We're getting ready to do our plan of action meetings, and that focus across our entire team, so the people who are brand new, but also the people who are the curmudgeons and saying, "I don't need to practice." It's the whole purpose of these meetings is getting them to verbalize and really hearing how other people sound and what good s- what good sounds like and what are the questions that people are having and how are they answering those questions with customers. So part of the folks that are coming in thinking, "I don't need this," it's having them sit as the leader. So, right, so setting the expectations for them. You might not learn a lot new, but there's a lot that you can share. And so will you be a table leader? Will you be a room facilitator? Will you be a table coach? So if we set the, the stage that all people are gonna come in at different levels, and this is the purpose, to get everybody, like, upskilled to, to the new foundation or the new level of, of, of expectations. What I find funny is the people that I say, "Oh, you're gonna be the table leader. You're... I'm sure you're not gonna learn much." The feedback I get afterwards is: "Oh my gosh, this person that just came out of training, they said something that I haven't heard of before, and that was really good." And I just, I'm like, "That's awesome. I'm glad you also got something out of it." And I don't say, "Of c- of course, and this is I told you you were gonna learn something." It's just, it's that happy accident that happens. But I think it's again, it's that setting the stage of, I need you to lead from the front or lead from the table,

Jonathan 16:32

Right

Jenn Muszik 16:33

that helps us to have that success.

Jonathan 16:35

Right. You're putting them in a position to learn by taking advantage of all their expertise. 'Cause legitimately, it sounds like they, some people are performing really well, right? And they, they are at a different, a different space. But that gets to a point somebody I was talking to in the commercial operations space was talking about what a pull- he called a pull through is, where it's like, hey, we have all this messaging, we have our great POA meeting, everybody leaves super psyched, and then three, four weeks go by and it's, it's almost like back to back to status quo. So what's your... I'm thinking about specifically maybe, like, the regional managers or, or pe- those people that are those frontline coaches. What's your approach to working with them to really help, help this pull through challenge?

Jenn Muszik 17:24

Yeah. So I'll say a couple things. So first, we always make sure people are prepared to come into the meeting, and that the meeting is really focused on practice. In my former years what used to happen was marketing would, release a new marketing messaging at the POA or at the NSM where people had no exposure to it. And so they're trying to learn it while also pr-practicing it at the meeting. And then they'd go-- and they just wouldn't pull it through because they really didn't understand it. So we make sure that they get the information ahead of time, so at the meeting, it's actually practicing. We also have our frontline leaders leading the workshops from the front of the room because if they're gonna coach it in the field, they have to know what's happening. So we've ensured that our frontline leaders are the ones delivering the workshops at the meeting so that they can support it. And then the third thing that we do is we actually have the field coach reports that are digital, that our team owns. Sometimes that's owned by field operations. In our organization now and in former organizations, that's been owned by learning and... 'cause we've got leadership development under our side too. So we'll update the FCR that has key pull-through information from the POA or from the NSM, so every time that coach is out in the field, in front of them is what's the level of confidence, what's the level of skill set, right? The actual demonstration of the skill set. So we can see that wraparound pull-through. So it, it's not a, fail-proof approach, if you will. But we've tried to put the things in place to be able to really see sustainment and pull-through.

Jonathan 18:56

That's very cool. So you really are trying to enable them to the best of your ability with digital tools. We're obviously in this big period where everybody's trying to figure out how and why and where to implement and integrate AI into their processes. And I think a massive part-- I mean, I've been involved personally in some really large enterprise implementations, and the change management aspect of it is the most important part to the success or failure of any technological endeavor, AI or, or otherwise. So what's your take on that?

Jenn Muszik 19:33

Yeah. Yeah. I think everybody's trying to figure out AI, Jonathan, so it's something that we all need to get our hands around. I would say as far as a, a department, we're, we're somewhat early adopters, but I still think we're in the beginning stages of what truly-- how AI can truly support our ability to create content faster, to make it more adaptable to each individ- like we were talking about adaptability to each person. How do we make it adaptable to, to individuals? How do we create content one way but use AI to create it in different ways? So I might do an e-module, but can I use that, drop it into Claude and make it a podcast and ma- like this, right? Make it somehow so people learn differently. So we're still trying to figure all that out. I would say the one thing that, I'm excited about with AI is I think AI is gonna help us get the knowledge transfer faster, more specific to humans. What I don't think AI could do

Jonathan 20:31

that?

Jenn Muszik 20:32

Yeah. So I think that we could use AI again to think about how people learn, how do we get them information that's at their fingertips. I think it's adapting it to different forms. I think we could take a look at using assessments to see where people are, and then can we recommend content to them that will help them take their learning to the next level? So there's been some, information that we've had in the past that was a lot harder to get to, that now we can get to it faster. And even the practice these days, they've got-- there's a solution where you could put information into it, and you could practice then with like the AI bot, if you will, or the agentic AI bot.

Jonathan 21:13

and

Jenn Muszik 21:14

Yeah. And so I think that there's new ways that we could use AI to help us get better, whether it's knowledge transfer, whether it's practice, those type of things. The thing that AI can't do is the human connection and the human engagement with the HCP. And so what I do love about some of the AI pieces is it is focused on knowledge almost is now just a commodity. Knowledge is just knowledge tran-- it's table stakes. You need to know that in order to have the discussion. But it's really understanding that more customer to, to salesperson communication. What does that mean? What does the customer really need? How do we provide that to them in a way that's meaningful? Those are skills. They're human skills that an AI bot's not gonna be able to, well, at least not today. Who knows? With the agentic AI and everything else, maybe in the future there's gonna be some bot that can meet everybody where they are and give them what they need. But I don't foresee that happening in the near future. I still think that there's a specific and significant role for field salespeople to engage with customers in really understanding patient needs and potential opportunities to help solve those patient needs. So I think AI is supportive. I just don't think it's, coming for our jobs at least. Although I, I giggle sometimes because I remember when people would say like, "I'm gonna send an email," and I thought I would never get away from sending an actual paper card. And now, although I do have cards again, for your audience, they don't see it says, "From the desk of Jen Musick." I do still have cards that I write and sign and put stamps on, but things have changed.

Jonathan 22:54

thing because a little human touch these days never, never hurts any-anything. But yeah, I mean, if you-- my-- I, I completely agree with what you're saying, right? And if, if you f- if we're really thinking about it, I mean, we've essentially ever since the invention of the cell phone, at least, right? Like, forget about the internet. You can go back further. But since, Steve Jobs and the iPhone, right, we've all... All that information is, is fully available. It's just doctors, they have, depending on the hospital they're with, maybe they have eight minutes per patient, maybe they have fifteen minutes per patient. Like, they're metric, they're scored, they have other things to do, right? And, and the job of an MSL or field rep is to, as you said earlier, understand the question behind the question. You're almost their concierge, right, for filtering that information so they don't have to spend all of their time reading journal articles or, or, or whatever, right? And AI can hopefully enable that part of the job to go faster and be, be easier. But the core of what you're talking about, about truly understanding I think having, having this agentic approach in a supportive way rather than a, like, cannibalistic way is, is clearly the path for, for success hopefully for the long term.

Jenn Muszik 24:12

I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more

Jonathan 24:15

All right, so let's switch gears 'cause we-- I'd mentioned it a few times, but you're on the board of L10. How, how did that come about? How did you get involved with that organization? How long have you been connected with them?

Jenn Muszik 24:27

Oh, goodness, I have to do math. So I've been part of the L10, I wanna say since 2014, 2015. So it's been a good 10-plus years. I joined the board, I think it was 20-- I was on the advisory council in 2016 and joined the board in 2019. So I've been on the board now for almost seven years. How it came about, my former leader was on the board when he joined Roche Diagnostics, and so he asked me if I would come and join the advisory council, and then through just my career progression, moved from the advisory council up to the board seven years ago. But it's a great community of learning leaders in pharma and life sciences and diagnostics. Us coming together to say, to the point that we talked about before even, is how do we support our community? We have got people that come into learning and development at a variety of different stages. Some come in as former teachers, some come in as former sales reps, some come in in different ways, some stay for a hot second. That was one of the board articles I wrote recently, was, is learning and development truly your career path, or is it just a stop in your journey? And so how do we think about all the different ways that people come into learning and development in life sciences and really support their development, either as learning leaders forever in the, in the function or going back out and being learning leaders as, heads of sales or heads of marketing or some other roles.

Jonathan 25:49

Yeah. And so what are some of the key themes you're anticipating for this year's conference?

Jenn Muszik 25:54

Oh, I'm absolutely certain the AI topic's gonna come up, Jonathan. So there'll be, I'm sure, a lot of topics on tools and technology and how we leverage tools and technology to be more supportive of our learners, whether that's, teaching our leaders or teaching our sales reps or our marketers. So I know AI is gonna be part of it. But what I'm also really looking forward to is this-- at, at the LTEN, we have a, a learning lounge where we get to sit and meet with all the different agency partners, and I love to see how agency partners are continuing to evolve their-- what they've provided in the past and how they're using AI. And it's maybe not AI for us to use, but how they leverage it to help us be better in the work that we do. Plus, it's just a great time to reconnect with other people that are leading organizations. It's a, it's a community of leaders that are so open and willing to share and support and help each other. And so I just love, brainstorming with folks over lunch or breakfast on, "Here's a challenge that I'm facing. What do you think about that?" And whether it is a small meeting like that or in a workshop, it's people are really trying to help each other get better at what we do, because ultimately we know we're-- while sometimes we're competing, at the end of the day, it's the doctor's decision for the patient. And so it's really not us, quote-unquote, "competing." We're-- It's up to us to really share the right information for the customer to make the right decision for the patient. And so that allows us to be very collaborative in ways where other potential indus-industries may be a little less collaborative, I would say.

Jonathan 27:26

Yeah. Well, I'm looking forward to going. I've never been to this conference before but I will be there in a couple of weeks, so hopefully I will, I will see you there. And yeah, I think it's June-- starts June 15th, I believe. So we'll make sure this episode gets out through that. But I think it's a great place to leave it. This was... Hopefully, I can do some cleanups in post-editing, but for every listener, we've had a lot of, a lot of technical challenges. Nobody's fault but we had mics fall out. My cat literally threw up on my call discussion guide as, as I was going to change my microphone. So I'm about ready to say great job, Jennifer, and I will see you in Florida.

Jenn Muszik 28:04

Oh, Jonathan, thanks so much. Those are things you can't make up. So thank you for dealing with all of that too, and it's been great chatting

Jonathan 28:11

Absolutely. It was a pleasure, and thank you so much for joining, and we will talk soon.

Jenn Muszik 28:16

Super