Excellence in Capability Development

Summary of work

Following a STEM audit, Leo Pharma UK identified a key area of development for its already motivated and successful team of account managers and reps. The STEM insights had shown a need to focus on the style of sales calls, moving from a transactional to a more values-based, consultative selling approach to further enhance performance.

The learning initiative had to be experiential, address the different needs of the individuals in the team, and be able to demonstrate that it had achieved the desired results at the next STEM audit. This two-part programme did just that. The first session, ‘Competitive selling and building value’, brought together the whole team to experience ‘forum-theatre’, where participants were able to practise their skills working with actors and pre-written sales call scripts – stopping the performance to provide input and adapt techniques in real time. The follow-up event ‘Activating the inner warrior – productive pressure in practice’ further refined the skills by using NLP techniques and exploring archetypes, providing the opportunity to review the learnings from the first event. STEM audit 2 clearly demonstrated that this training intervention met and exceeded its objectives, alongside encouraging comments from learners.

Judges' comments

This project had very clear objectives linked to the outcomes. It showed a creative approach to improving skills and demonstrated a clear business need.