Life Sciences Sales Academy

Vantage built a series of annual workshops to support a US-based biologics company’s yearly skill-building objectives, helping them to build and expand competencies across their trade, payer, GPO, advocacy, and IDN sales teams. Sales executives self-select courses based on their own needs and challenges. Each course builds on previous deep dives into the content that were rolled out over approximately two years. This program enables a long-term development strategy to increase the overall competency of the North America market access and commercial organization. 

For a global medical device and consumer health products leader, Vantage designed the capstone learning experience in the company’s frontline sales manager development program. As sales executives make the leap from being individual territory managers to running districts with 10-12 reports, this learning journey ensures they possess the strategic thinking and business acumen can to plan their district-level strategies—and prioritize their time and attention across each of the individual territories—to grow and sustain revenue. Vantage’s course combines elements of sales strategy with leadership and coaching, effective customer engagement, and understanding data in order to ultimately meet sales targets and lead in the field.

With margins squeezed by fierce competition and increasingly powerful procurement organizations, a global cardiovascular leader engaged Vantage to help it fundamentally shift the way its sales organization approached customer negotiations. Salespeople needed to negotiate for value—to develop cross-divisional solutions, craft more creative contract terms, handle tough tactics from counterparts, and align and sell to hospital administration, procurement, and clinical personnel. After conducting a negotiation capability diagnostic assessment with a cross-section of sales managers, Vantage rolled out a customized “negotiation toolbox” for sales teams, integrated with the sales process, and a series of intensive, 2-day negotiation training workshops for the entire salesforce, customized for VP-level, through key account managers, to sales representatives. These workshops (and follow-up training) instilled a common negotiation vocabulary and toolset, a collaborative mindset, and new culture focused on long-term contracts with customers that create significant value for both sides. Subsequent Vantage trainings for non-client facing functions further cemented the new negotiation, communication, and collaboration practices into their culture.