KOL Development Isn't an Advisory Board, It's a Relationship
It's easy to fall into the trap of equating KOL development with an annual advisory board meeting — a single room, a single agenda, and radio silence in between. That format can check a box, but it will deliver a fraction of the value that is possible.
The gap starts with who is in the room. Academic physicians are well represented, but private practice and community hospital-employed physicians rarely are — even though they often see more real-world case volume and represent the environments where a device will actually have to work. And the gap continues with what those physicians are asked to do. Concept and prototype feedback is useful, but it's a narrow slice of what a KOL can contribute. Left there, a company never activates these relationships to help build out a clinical strategy, shape a clinical education roadmap, or pressure-test a commercialization plan — all places where physician input, early and often, would change the outcome. The cost isn't always visible in a single launch, but it compounds: the same academic voices get tapped project after project, the clinical education plan gets built without input from the community physicians who will actually be the ones delivering it, and the company ends up guessing at real-world adoption dynamics its KOLs could have flagged months earlier.
I think about KOL development differently: as an ongoing relationship, not a deliverable. That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. KOL identification is a list. A one-off advisory board is an event. KOL development is neither — it's a sustained relationship where the objectives, the areas of focus, and even the format are tailored to each individual physician. Some KOLs do their best thinking in a group advisory board setting, energized by debating with peers. Others give you far more candid, useful input in one-on-one conversations with marketing, R&D, or clinical — settings where they're not performing for colleagues or worried about contradicting someone more senior in the room. Treating every KOL the same, regardless of format, is one of the quieter ways companies leave value on the table.
Two questions guide how I build this out for a client. The first is who: I look for a diverse cross-section of KOLs, not a convenient one. That means diversity across geography, not just a company's home region or a few coastal hubs. It means diversity across practice type — academic medicine, private practice, and community hospital-employed physicians all see the market differently, and a strategy built on academic input alone will have blind spots the moment it meets private practice and community settings. And it means diversity in the type of influence a KOL carries — some are global thought leaders who set the clinical conversation, some are regional champions whose word carries weight with a specific referral network, and increasingly, some build influence through social media and physician-to-physician platforms in ways a traditional publication count won't capture. A strong roster also mixes mature, established voices with rising ones — the KOLs who will still be shaping this space five and ten years from now.
The second question is how: understanding what's actually important and interesting to each KOL, and aligning that with what the franchise needs. Some physicians are motivated primarily by clinical research — they want to be part of generating the evidence. Others care most about teaching and clinical education, and want to be the ones training their peers on a new technique. Still others are driven by R&D connectivity — the chance to genuinely shape a product's evolution, not just react to a finished concept. None of these drivers is more valuable than another, but a company that doesn't know which one is in play with a given KOL will default to generic engagement, and generic engagement is exactly what produces the shallow, one-and-done relationships I described above.
What that looks like in practice is fairly simple, even if it takes discipline to execute. Picture two KOLs on the same program: one is a nationally recognized researcher who lights up at the chance to co-author a clinical paper or sit on a steering committee, while the other is a high-volume community physician with little interest in publishing but who happens to be the physician every rep in her region calls when they need a second opinion on a tough case. Run both through the same advisory board agenda, and the researcher may disengage from questions beneath her level of interest while the community physician stays quiet in a room full of academics she's never met. Split them into the right formats instead — a research collaboration for one, a one-on-one conversation and a regional speaker role for the other — and both become far more valuable to the franchise, and far more likely to stay engaged through the next product cycle.
This work doesn't belong to a single phase of the product lifecycle — it belongs across all of them. KOL input should start at concept testing, continue through clinical, regulatory, and reimbursement strategy, and carry into commercialization. Starting KOL development at launch, once the clinical strategy and go-to-market plan are already locked, wastes the parts of a KOL's expertise that could have shaped those decisions in the first place. And KOL work doesn't sit in its own lane — it connects directly to message testing, to advisory board design, to peer-to-peer education programs, and often to reimbursement and market access strategy as well. A KOL who understands the clinical evidence a payer will want to see, or who has relationships across regulatory and reimbursement circles, is a different kind of asset than one brought in purely for clinical feedback — and companies that only use their KOLs for the latter are underusing a genuinely strategic resource.
If I had to distill this into a framework a marketing leader could use tomorrow, it would be four steps. First, clearly define and prioritize the organization's objectives — what does this franchise actually need physician input and advocacy to accomplish, and in what order? Second, identify the diverse cross-section of KOLs needed to execute against those objectives, resisting the pull toward a convenient, familiar, mostly-academic list. Third, take the time to understand each KOL's individual drivers — what draws them to this work, and what would make the relationship genuinely rewarding for them, not just useful to you. Fourth, craft a tailored engagement strategy for each KOL based on what you've learned, rather than running everyone through the same advisory board format because it's the easiest thing to schedule.
Done well, KOL development stops looking like a research task and starts looking like what it actually is: a long-term relationship-building strategy that happens to also generate some of the best clinical and commercial insight a company will ever get.
If you're building — or rebuilding — a KOL program and want a second set of eyes on it — the roster, the segmentation, or the engagement plan — reach out and let's discuss.