COACHING

The 90-Second Conversation: A Coaching Opportunity Most Sales Leaders Miss

By Ed Gutshall, Performance Development Group 

Every sales leader I talk to wants the same thing: more access. More time with physicians. More opportunities to deliver their message.

But here’s what the data actually shows: 70% of HCPs believe pharma reps don’t understand their content needs. Only 14% believe reps fully understand their needs. And 39% of physicians haven’t communicated with a rep in over six months.

Most commercial leaders look at these numbers and see an access problem. They’re wrong. This is a value problem.

Most physicians aren’t “anti-pharma.” They’re anti-waste. They restrict access to reps who show up with monologues instead of conversations. Who lead with product features instead of practice insights. Who squander the limited time they actually get. When every interaction feels like a pitch, why would they make time for it?

Many organizations respond to numbers like these by doubling down on training: more product knowledge, more clinical data, more messaging refinement. But that’s not the gap. Your reps already know the product. What they need is coaching to make the most of every interaction—even the ones that last less than a minute.

The Reality of Rep‑Physician Time

Before you can coach to better conversations, you have to understand what your reps are actually working against. Most interactions with HCPs aren’t conversations. They’re 30 to 45 seconds in a hallway while the physician moves between patients, or a quick exchange while signing for samples. Anchor appointments exist—lunches, coffees, scheduled meetings—but they’re limited. Once a month, once a quarter, depending on the practice. The rest of the time, reps are working with seconds, not minutes.

So what matters to physicians in those seconds? Research shows HCPs prioritize practice knowledge over product knowledge 2:1. When physicians say this, they’re really saying: “I don’t want a rep who’s just here to recite talking points.” They want someone who understands their patient mix, their formulary constraints, their office workflow: someone who can make the clinical conversation relevant to their specific practice.

If your reps are trying to deliver a full message in a 30-90 second window, they’ve already lost. The goal isn’t how to cram more content into less time. It’s how to make those seconds valuable enough that physicians want to give you more.

That’s a coaching conversation, not a training module.

Coaching the 90‑Second Conversation

Your reps already know your product inside and out. What they need is someone helping them turn that knowledge into conversations that matter. That’s the coaching opportunity.

The skill that separates reps who get extended time from reps who don’t is the ability to ask a good open-ended question. A good opener doesn’t guarantee engagement, but it does create the only real opportunity to invite a physician into a conversation worth continuing.

Reps don’t learn this in training. They learn to deliver messages. The skill of reading a room, asking the right question, and following where the physician leads—that develops through coaching. Through a leader who watches the call, identifies the moment the rep talked past the physician’s concern, and helps them see it. Through repetition, feedback, and practice in the field.

Here’s what a good interaction may sound like in a specialty market where you have visibility into patient starts:

“Hey doctor, I saw you submitted a patient for approval on our product last week. Thank you for prescribing (product name). Can you share why you chose our product for that patient?”

Doctor responds.

“That’s great. Have you had any challenges so far with reimbursement or getting the patient started? … Good to hear. Are you also aware that we have an indication for [related condition]? Would you mind if I shared some clinical data on where you might consider it for those patients?”

That’s a conversation. The rep is starting with something specific to the practice, asking questions that let the physician direct the dialogue, and earning the right to share clinical information.

There’s nothing more tone deaf than asking a question and then trying to sell them what you wanted to sell them anyway. If you ask and then don’t actually listen, you’ve made things worse. That’s a coaching moment: helping the rep recognize when they stopped listening and started pitching.

What Effective Coaches Practice

Most organizations fall short here. Not because they don’t value coaching, but because their leaders aren’t set up to do it well. Many leaders show up for ride-alongs, but they don’t prepare. They get in the car, ask where lunch is, take conference calls between appointments. They take over calls instead of letting them unfold. They ping-pong the rep with feedback after every interaction—“on this call you didn’t open well, on this call you closed great”—instead of looking for trends across multiple calls.

Effective field coaching looks different:

Prepare like the rep does. The leader should do the same pre-call work—review the data, understand what’s happening in the practice, know what the rep is walking into.

Observe, don’t take over. Let the call unfold. You can’t coach what you don’t see, and you can’t see it if you’re doing the talking.

Look for patterns. One call tells you nothing. Three or four calls reveal trends—where the rep consistently opens well, where they consistently miss opportunities.

Coach through dialogue. Share what you observed. Ask if they saw it the same way. Give them the opportunity to push back. If the rep doesn’t agree with your perception, they’re not going to change their behavior.

The leader’s advantage is perspective. When you’re in a sales call, you’re trying to get to the other side of the court and return the ball. When you’re coaching, you’re sitting in the high chair with a view of the whole match. You can see things the rep can’t see in the moment.

That perspective, applied consistently, is what turns message-deliverers into conversation‑havers.

Turning Access Into Value

Physician access time isn’t going to change. The 30-second hallway interaction is the reality your reps are working with.

But here’s what can change: when reps show up with practice knowledge, ask questions that matter, and focus on solving real problems instead of delivering messages, physicians respond. They give more time. They engage more deeply. They remember the rep who actually helped them.

That’s the shift. Not more product knowledge—more conversation skill. Not more training content—more field coaching.

When reps deliver value, access follows.