PDG Blog | Sales Training

Driving Global Marketing Excellence at the ATD Conference

Posted by Amanda Holm on May 11, 2015 11:08:00 AM

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Join PDG and Pfizer at the ATD International Conference

When you work in the life sciences industry, change is a constant. And when you're one of the largest companies in that industry, change must be part of your strategy. That's exactly what was keeping the marketing excellence team at Pfizer up at night. In a world that shifts constantly, how do you keep the skills of your marketing team fresh and relevant? And how do you craft your message so it is practical and implementable for your marketing teams in nearly 100 countries worldwide?

In this Association for Talent Development (ATD) Conference session, you will learn how Pfizer created a global performance initiative to address these challenges, using key strategies such as bringing together top subject matter experts and finding ways to get them to create a cohesive and focused curriculum, using global learning archetypes to design for multiple global audiences, aligning the effort to Pfizer's business goals, and tying the curriculum to Pfizer's performance management strategy.

Application on the Job:

Determine the types of global market changes that require constant re-evaluation of employee skills and knowledge.

Identify how those changes can be translated into a flexible curriculum that addresses not only today's needs but needs for years to come.
Discuss strategies for bringing together a diverse team of stakeholders, subject matter experts, and learning professionals to create a consistent curriculum that can be deployed globally.

Find out more at the ATD International Conference & Exposition at, Driving Marketing Excellence Through a Global Learning Curriculum on May 19 from 1 - 2 PM.

Our Presenters

Robert Baker
Senior Director, Enterprise Training Strategy | Pfizer

Bob Baker is Senior Director, Enterprise Training Strategy at Pfizer. In that role he is responsible for improving the overall colleague learning experience. His 20+ years at Pfizer includes sales, marketing research, country and global brand management as well as new product development. In his last role, Bob developed Pfizer’s way of marketing that includes the standards of excellence, frameworks, tools and training that colleagues need to be successful. His team has also created a learning ecosystem with its 4,000 members of Pfizer’s Commercial Community to accelerate their professional development and collaboration abilities. Bob has a BA in Economics from the College of William and Mary, and an MBA in Marketing from Rutgers. Bob is currently the President of ATD NY.

Kim Robbins
Director, Change Management and Communications | Pfizer

Kim Robbins is Director, Change Management & Communications for the Pfizer Marketing Excellence Team. In this role she works with leaders to design change strategies and learning and development resources to develop and retain talent and support Pfizer marketing in meeting the needs of customers. Kim is a member of the Communication Leadership Exchange and the Association for Talent Development. She holds a Master’s degree in English from Rosemont College and is currently taking graduate courses in Organizational Dynamics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jamie Rondeau
Principal Consultant | Performance Development Group

Jamie Rondeau is Principal Consultant at Performance Development Group. She is a visionary learning strategist with demonstrated ability to impact business performance through the development of human capability. With more than 20 years of experience in learning, sales, marketing, leadership development, customer satisfaction, organizational development, selection and assessment, Jamie draws on her combined expertise to build results-based solutions that are practical and measurably impact performance. A graduate of Arizona State University, Jamie has a Bachelor of Science in organizational communication with an emphasis in marketing.

Find more information on marketing and sales training at PDG Resources.

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Topics: Global Learning, Conferences, Sales Training, Life Sciences

Tomorrow’s Sales Training at the LTEN Conference in June

Posted by Amanda Holm on May 4, 2015 3:32:27 PM

Graphic_Novel_Example Is it difficult to get new behaviors from an experienced sales team? The tenured sales force responsible for Genzyme’s Multiple Sclerosis product (AUBAGIO®) had seen it all. The Genzyme learning team knew they needed to find an engaging, time-effective way of spreading best practices across the sales team to drive continued performance. Learn how Genzyme used both cutting-edge and well established methods to create a blended approach that feels fresh and new.

Using best practices from high performers with the greatest market share, Genzyme and their partner PDG created three methods for delivery of best practice: podcasts, graphic novels, and articles, all of which shared a similar look and feel.

Learning Objectives:

Determine how to motivate and grow a mature and high-performing sales force
Define the steps necessary to evaluate and benchmark best practices to drive up performance of all team members
Identify how to create a vibrant blended approach to gain and hold sales force attention.

Find out more at the LTEN Annual Conference at, Tomorrow’s Sales Training: Using a Multi-Modal Approach for a Tenured Sales Force, on June 2. Visit PDG staff in the LTEN exhibit hall at booth 139.

Our Presenters

David Barker

Dave Barker works as a Training Manager with Genzyme in Cambridge, MA. His over 15 years of Sales and Training experience includes work on three continents, in over a half-a-dozen countries, and in a variety of industries, working at all levels of organizations. He has a strong background in developing training strategy, curriculum/e-learning design and delivery.

Marcus Hswe

Marcus Hswe is the Associate Vice President, Business Development, Sales as well as a Consultant with Performance Development Group (PDG) of Malvern, PA. He has over 10 years of experience in design, development, and management of enterprise training initiatives. With a concentration in the life sciences arena, Marcus works directly with senior executives to determine effective and efficient solutions to their business issues.

Find more information on sales training at PDG Resources.

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Topics: Conferences, Sales Training, Life Sciences

Life Sciences Learning Trends in Focus

Posted by Amanda Holm on Mar 3, 2015 11:15:00 AM

There’s no denying that changes in the world economy are having an effect on every industry. And the Life Sciences industry is feeling the effect like everybody else. As budgets for learning and development get battered from all sides, the savviest Life Sciences learning organizations have realized a simple truth: it isn’t about doing more with less, it’s about fundamentally rethinking the way learning and development gets done.

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PDG’s Ann Stott and Rich Mesch recently published an article in Focus Magazine, the journal of the Life Sciences Training & Educators Network. Titled Learning in Changing Times: 5 Trends in Life Sciences Learning, the article focuses on how changes in the Life Sciences industry are changing the requirements of an effective learning function. The learning trends covered include:

Rethinking Product Launches
A Return to Shared Services
Demand Planning and Flexible Learning Resources
Building Long-Term Sales Team Success
Increased Focus on Informal Learning

Click here to read the article for free online. For more insight into the changing world of Life Sciences learning, read Ann Stott’s series on The Changing Face of Life Science Product Launch:

The Changing Face of Life Science Product Launch

The Changing Face of Life Science Product Launch, Part 2: The Launch Toolkit

The Changing Face of Life Science Product Launch, Part 3: The Role of the Learning Team

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Ann Stott is the Vice President, Global Accounts at Performance Development Group. She leads the life sciences practices, focusing on pharmaceuticals, health care, biotechnology, and medical devices. Her extensive consulting experience is used to grow the PDG advisory services capabilities. Ann is an accomplished, respected, and energetic leader with more than twenty years of experience in the corporate training environment.

Rich Mesch

Rich Mesch is Vice President, Customer Engagement at Performance Development Group. A frequent contributor to industry events and publications, his most recent article was Taming the Learning Demand Curve: Using Supply Chain Methods to Manage Your Learning Function for Training Industry's online magazine.

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Topics: Business Issues in Learning, Organizational Change, Informal Learning, Sales Training, Workforce Development, Flexible Resource Management, Product Launch, Life Sciences

Join PDG and Bristol-Myers Squibb for an LTEN Webinar!

Posted by Rich Mesch on Jan 5, 2015 11:56:00 AM

PDG's Marcus Hswe will co-present with Keith Willis, the Associate Director, Cardiovascular Training for Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) for an exciting new webinar presented by the Life Sciences Trainers & Educators Network (LTEN) on January 9, 2015.

Benchmarking Your Best: Using Your Top Talent to Grow Your Salesforce

Friday, January 9, 2015 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM EST

Many of us are challenged by salesforce turnover, and the need to constantly onboard new talent. But the Cardiovascular team at Bristol-Myers Squibb had a more intriguing challenge. BMS built and nurtured an extremely high-performing team, one that experienced very little turnover. How do you grow a great sales team and make them even better? How do you change the behavior of a team that’s had great success with the “old” behaviors?

Attend this lively and practical LTEN webinar to learn how BMS uncovered the differentiating behaviors of their top performers and created a series of best practices and benchmarks to help raise the performance of the entire team.

In this session, participants will learn:

• How to motivate and grow a mature and high-performing salesforce.
• How to evaluate and benchmark best practices to drive up performance of all team members.
• How learning needs to be approached differently for an experienced audience.

Our Presenters:

Keith Willis
Associate Director Cardiovascular Training
Bristol-Myers Squibb

Keith Willis has 22 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry where he has honed his sales management and sales training skills with companies like Johnson and Johnson and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals and Otsuka. Keith is currently Associate Director for Sales and Access Learning at Bristol-Myers Squibb responsible for Cardiovascular Training. Throughout his career he has won several sales awards, launched numerous products as a district manager, operations manager and training manager and developed several training curriculums.

Marcus Hswe
Consultant
Performance Development Group

Marcus Hswe is an Associate Vice President, Business Development with Performance Development Group (PDG) of Malvern, PA. He has over 10 years of experience in design, development, and management of enterprise training initiatives. With a concentration in the life sciences arena, Marcus works directly with senior executives to determine effective and efficient solutions to their business issues.

For more information, or to register for the webinar, click here.

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Topics: Sales Training, Life Sciences, Benchmarking

Join us at SPBT: Creating an Advanced Sales Training Curriculum

Posted by Amanda Holm on Jun 5, 2014 12:33:46 PM

Discover how PDG partnered with Biogen Idec to create an advanced sales training solution. Mark Lockett, Director of Commercial Training on the Biogen Idec Commercial Training Team and Marcus Hswe, a Consultant at Performance Development Group (PDG), are presenting the topic The Next Generation: Creating an Advanced Training Curriculum at the Society for Pharmaceutical and Biotech Trainers (SPBT) Annual Conference in Grapevine Texas on June 10.

Participants will learn to:

Promote the effectiveness and impact of an advanced training curriculum design and development model
Identify the drivers for enabling a successful advanced training curriculum
Identify how a patient-centric selling model can build more effective relationships with health care providers

Biogen Idec has successfully helped Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients manage their disease for years. To capitalize on that success, the organization benchmarked its best sales reps to evaluate how optimal behaviors can be adopted by those who work directly with health care providers.

The result was the Advanced Training Curriculum to meet the following challenges for rep training:

Make it a WOW factor
Get away from “me too” and make it unique
Must be motivational and engaging
Centers on retaining top talent
Supplements current rewards system

This curriculum leveraged the Patient-Centric Model, a relationship-based sales approach that focuses the conversation on a health care provider’s patients and their individual cases. With this Patient-Centric approach, Biogen Idec trains the sales team on specific actions to build and maintain those relationships to drive revenue and market share. More information on the presentation The Next Generation: Creating an Advanced Training Curriculum and how to register can be found on the SPBT Annual Conference website.

Mark Lockett

Mark Lockett currently serves as a Director of Commercial Training on the Biogen Idec US Commercial Training Team, focused on leading the development and implementation of an Advanced Training curriculum. Mark has 25 years of experience in the pharmaceutical, device and biotech space, and has held leadership roles in Sales Management, Marketing and Training.

Marcus Hswe

Marcus Hswe is a Consultant with Performance Development Group of Malvern, PA. He has over 10 years of experience in enterprise learning, especially in the design, development, and management of training initiatives.

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Topics: Sales Training

Becoming Proficient: From Onboarding to Performing

Posted by Reni Gorman on Oct 1, 2013 12:24:00 PM

Part 1: Teaching New Hires How to DO Their Jobs

The goal of any new hire program is to get new team members trained and up and running in their jobs as fast and as effectively as possible.

When people are learning something new, they need structured formal learning because they “don’t know what they don’t know”. However, as they move down the continuum toward becoming proficient, they may still need to be able to reference training content to answer questions as they “get stuck” but this environment has to be unstructured and informal letting the learner drive their learning experience.

Moving from Beginner to Proficient from Structured Formal Learning to Unstructured Informal Learning

I suggest ALWAYS designing and developing learning interventions with a performance and business goal in mind. Structured formal training programs are a great way of getting learners started with learning something brand new, but providing reinforcement of that learning after the fact, back on the job, is a critical component of ensuring people achieve performance goals as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

The Forgetting Curve: Showing Retention and Elapsed Time

Remember that Hermann Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve tells us that from the time your learners leave the training program, let’s say at 5 pm one day, to 9 am when they come back the next morning; they will have forgotten approximately 35% of what they learned. Amazing isn’t it? I remember the moment I learned this fact and I wondered what I was doing in the learning profession. Then I learned that with reinforcement we can raise the forgetting curve and dramatically increase memory.

Imagine the following scenario: A learner goes through the new hire training program, and is introduced to all the new concepts and processes that she needs to know, but that doesn’t mean she can now perform proficiently. She will still struggle as she tries to remember all the information, such as the details associated with process steps. In fact, cognitive research about the brain and its capacity to remember has proven that people don’t initially remember all the details of what they learn—what they initially remember is the high-level concepts, the big picture, the key points. Consequently, what they initially forget is all the details of how to execute various processes.

In fact, research shows that there are five distinct moments of learning need.

Five Moments of Learning Need Consider this example:

If the learner is learning about a new process, there will be a time initially where they are learning for the first time
Perhaps as they become more knowledgeable they will want to learn more about the process, how their process fits into the processes around them, and what exactly happens downstream and upstream from them so they can be mindful of how they execute their part of the process
There will also be times when the learner may forget some of the process steps
Especially for infrequently used processes, there will surely be times when the learner is stuck and is trying to remember
Finally, something goes wrong and the learner has to figure out what it was and how to correct it.

Bottom line: We need to create learning that can be used to teach people who are learning something for the first time, but can also be reused as people progress through the learning process. In addition, this can be used for performance support as learners move from beginner to proficient, to create a multitude of advantages.

Some of you may remember years ago when everybody talked about, “author once and publish in multiple ways.” Are we back to that? Yes, but now there is a much easier, faster, better, less expensive way to do it. I’ll talk about that more in my next post!