L&D Serving as Business Partner to Developing Account Management Capabilities

At the recent LTEN conference, a life sciences gathering for L&D professionals, the theme was to level-up employees to be more effective in the evolving healthcare marketplace.  As executive and commercial leadership reshape their strategy(ies), L&D professionals need to remain agile and focused on developing an account management mindset, skillset, and will set of their customer-facing roles.

Below are 5 key areas to focus on:

1. Focus on marketplace knowledge first. 

Start by ensuring customer-facing employees obtain baseline knowledge on the various healthcare stakeholders and business models impacting prescribing decisions. This includes expanding knowledge on topics such as: accountable care organizations, integrated delivery networks, pharmacy benefit managers, oncology care, and other evolving business models. Learning professionals must make sure this information stays current.

2. Analyze the healthcare ecosystem. 

Each geographic marketplace is unique. It is critical for customer-facing individuals and account teams to identify and align on who the dominant healthcare stakeholders are (organizations or individuals), as well as the over-riding healthcare policies that impact prescribing decisions. Account teams that follow a process to analyze the current state and can anticipate future changes (e.g., stakeholder consolidations, mergers, or new players entering the market) are able to plan and execute more effectively. Learning professionals need to provide resources and train employees on how to evaluate marketplace dynamics such as the business environment, demographics, and state policy(ies) to understand healthcare delivery in a given marketplace.

3. Delve deeper with account profiling skill development.

One basic principle of account management is that each account is different with unique clinical, business and operational drivers. It is important to systematically profile each account to uncover the customer’s drivers. This process will assist in determining how your company’s portfolio and priorities align. Customer engagement discovery skills are key to uncovering these unique drivers and opportunities for value-added solutions.

4. Enhance data analysis capabilities.

Customer-facing roles are often provided with various sales and market analytics reports, yet the ability to review, evaluate, and draw meaningful insights from these reports vary. To address this need, learning professionals need to include data analysis skill development to enhance customer- facing teams’ ability to understand what is happening and why. These insights are needed to ensure account teams can identify opportunities and execute against priorities.

5. Build relationships and customer engagement skills.

With larger organized customers and multiple people calling on the same account, customer-facing employees need additional learning and support to improve relationship skills. Internally, across account teams, employees should be focused on teamwork and collaboration for shared goals.  Account Directors need negotiation skills for contracting.  Externally, employees need skills in stakeholder mapping and advancing business-to-business relationships to help yield higher levels of trusted partnership.