Focus Supplement 2 - Summer 2017 - 16

MEMBERINTERVIEWS

Supporting &
Cultivating the Field
■ By Tim Sosbe

n many ways, the field sales trainer role is about support. Supporting your business, supporting your clients and
supporting one another. Fortunately, LTEN members are the supportive type, happy to share their wisdom, lessons
learned and best practices with one another.
For this article, several LTEN members shared their thoughts on how organizations train their field trainers, how
field sales training is connected to and supported by the home oﬃce training team and what advice they'd give field
sales people interested in building a training career. Naturally, the advice and the processes diﬀer from company to
company, even when the end goal is the same.

Thomas Hood

Mark Wilson

At Bayer HealthCare, field
sales trainers have two phases of
training, said omas Hood,
deputy director, field sales
leadership development,
pharmaceuticals. Each of the
phases are four days long.
"Phase I focuses on coaching,
facilitation skills and emotional
Dasha Persaud
intelligence," Hood said. "Phase
II focuses on executive presence
and virtual facilitation skills."
At ResMed, said Mark
Wilson, senior director of
ResMed's Global Learning
Center, field sales trainers are
selected annually through a
nomination process.
"We have one field trainer per
region,
" Wilson said. "Many
Melissa Lowe
times the field trainers are renominated by their regional manager, so we
have a mix of experience on the field
training team. We call them regional sales
trainers, or RSTs."
Dasha Persaud, associate training
manager for Astellas Pharmaceuticals U.S.,
said the Astellas process has two assigned
certified field trainers (CFTs) who take on
the development role for a two-year period,
part of a possible path into management or

training. e CFTs go through three days of
training to standardize and establish
eﬀective coaching behaviors and techniques,
that includes workshops and distance
learning.
"CFTs also receive a clear overview of the
company's performance, direction and
brand strategy for the upcoming year from
marketing and senior leadership in relation
to their role and responsibilities toward the
company's vision," Persaud said, adding that
the process also includes role-plays and
calibration training.
Spectranetics holds two in-person
development meetings a year, covering
topics including skill and competency
development, coaching fundamentals,
master facilitation and emotional
intelligence, said Melissa Lowe, senior
manager, VI sales enablement & learning.
About 75 percent of the meeting is
dedicated to development, with the rest
covering process, policy, corporate culture
and team-building.
"at sounds a little unconventional and
there's a reason for that," Lowe said. "I've
designed it for them to be developed as
leaders, coaches and mentors. If they're
going to be the face connecting with the
new hire, I not only need them to say
everything correctly about the products and

FOCUS | Field Sales Training 2017 | www.L-TEN.org

http://www.L-TEN.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Focus Supplement 2 - Summer 2017