Client Successes
Analyzing Training Needs for AMs Selling a Complex Therapy
The Challenge
A global pharmaceutical company offering an innovative gene therapy for a rare cancer found its account team was encountering obstacles in gaining traction with physicians. Since the therapy targets a specific gene and is designed for use after traditional cancer treatments have proven ineffective, the ideal patient population is narrow. Account managers needed to encourage oncologists to test appropriate patients at the optimal time, early enough for the therapeutic to be efficacious. That involved improving oncologists’ comfort level with the patient identification and testing approach, as well as the therapy mechanism. The account managers responsible for this product had access to various self-paced e-learning courses, but there was no formal account management training designed specifically for teams selling this novel gene therapy.
The Solution
iQue Group conducted a needs analysis to identify the skills and capabilities these account managers required to sell a complex therapeutic for a highly targeted patient population. The iQue consultants first conducted in-depth one-on-one interviews with sales and national accounts leaders to glean their insights on the needs of this rare disease account team. Then they observed account managers’ skills and behaviors in action during weekly account team meetings and Quarterly Business Review (QBR) presentations. Based on its analysis, the iQue team recommended five key learning and development themes to focus on in a more advanced workshop and mapped specific skills and capabilities to each area. This engagement helped the client in two vital ways: informing the topics to prioritize in an advanced account management workshop in the short term, and uncovering larger needs that will guide longer-term initiatives for this account group. iQue also developed and facilitated the subsequent accelerator workshop, which provided a standardized account planning process and equipped account managers with practical resources for identifying marketplace opportunities based on data.
What our client had to say...
“We needed to do the discovery work to assess this particular group’s unique learning and development needs and prioritize where to focus. But it’s difficult to do that objectively when you’re immersed in the day-to-day. iQue brought an objective perspective to the needs analysis, immersed themselves in our world, observed our account managers’ behaviors, and provided a clear picture of what our team needed to accelerate their growth. After we launched the initial workshop, we immediately saw our account managers developing more actionable goals and diagnosing their opportunities more quickly and accurately.”
