Focus Magazine - Winter 2013 - 16

COVERSTORY

increasing the
effectiveness of
sales reps. The
strategy was to
supercharge reps’
sales negotiation
skills and clinical
acumen to
enhance
confidence and
improve
performance. Our
major tactic was to
allow reps to learn
and practice
advanced skills
with actual
Medtronic
from a Langevin Learning class to
business cases and with live customers.
demonstrate a positive ROI, we paused.
The training program was
What if we measured the sales
communicated as a career and
performance of participants after the
performance developmental
program? It felt
opportunity and
gutsy. The
Measuring the impact was offered to all
interesting discovery
on performance is the Coronary reps in
was, while the
the U.S., Canada,
“white elephant” often and currently
commercial
managers were
ignored in corporate training Western Europe.
interested in ROI,
Our partner,
some preferred the more visible
Yukon Group, provided proprietary,
yardstick of sales performance.
online pre-work training (the “Before
Phase”) and interactive classroom
Assessing Sales
training (the “During Phase”) on nego-

FIGURE 1

Performance

We embraced a clinical trial
approach to assess performance,
betting it would be relatable to
management, given familiarity with
clinical trials. Similar to a controlled
experiment like a clinical trial, we
measured performance of the “new
therapy group” (reps who received the
new training) versus the “control
group” (reps who did not participate).
We agreed on a modest goal of a 2
percent increase in average daily sales
(ADS) for the new therapy group
during the remaining 11 weeks of the
quarter versus prior quarter, compared
with the control group.
The training program goal was to
drive incremental revenue by

tiating strategies and tactics designed to
enhance our reps’ abilities to identify
their own negotiating styles, spot the
style of others, recall the process to
move customers from uncooperative to
positive positions, and recall collaborative tactics to attain win-win negotiations. (See Figure 2). We added an
additional interactive section to the
“During Phase” where reps practice applying these advanced skills with
Medtronic case studies, and in front of
Medtronic customers, specifically an
interventional cardiologist, a cath lab
director and a purchasing director. Immediate feedback was provided to participants, and coaching points were
passed on to sales managers.
We placed a heavy emphasis on the
“After Phase,” the critical three-month
period after the training program. Our
goals were to minimize the “forgetting
curve” and to maximize skill retention
and practice for positive results. (See
Figure 4.)

Learning Reinforcement
Many studies have been conducted
on memory, learning retention and the
criticality of learning reinforcement.
The earliest was in 1885 by Hermann
Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist,
who discovered that after learning new

FIGURE 2
Positional Negotiations

Collaborative Negotiations

• Recognizing styles

• Reinforcing the value
proposition

• Recognizing positional
issues
• Saving face
• Handling difficult situations

• Planning
• Setting the Tone
• Uncovering interests
• Using creativity

• Recognizing tactics

• Closing the negotiation

• Recognizing non-verbals

• Team negotiations

Content used with permission from Yukon Group

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Focus Magazine - Winter 2013

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