Linking Training and Development to Performance

NGP spoke with Mike Capaldi, Associate Vice-President of Sales Training and Leadership Development for sanofi-aventis US, about how he drives his field force’s effectiveness.

NGP. You were awarded sanofi-aventis’ President’s Circle Award for your innovative License to Sell program. What is this program all about?
MC. I received this award in the year 2000. License to Sell is a field force certification program, an annual certification that took place at one of our national sales meetings. The purpose of the program was using simulation to certify our field force. We used the License metaphor because the thought was, much like you’re getting your driver’s license, there’s a knowledge component and a skills component. We took that concept, and we built a simulation for roughly 1,100 field sales professionals at a meeting in San Francisco, where we implemented the program. It’s a program that started in 2000 and has lived on even through a merger.

NGP. You were also recognized by the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) as one of their best in 2006.
MC. That is an annual award that is given to deserving companies in all industries. ASTD looks for more than typical training and development that you deliver day-to-day. They look for cutting-edge ideas that are implemented and examples or case studies in which the training and development that was delivered led to some sort of a performance impact. And so as part of that process, you complete a very exhaustive application where you provide those types of examples.

NGP. Sanofi-aventis regularly introduces new products and updates. How do you ensure that your employees meet the demands of the company’s ever-changing product portfolio?
MC. In a company like ours, it’s important that our sales professionals and management be extremely knowledgeable and deliver the most appropriate and timely information to the customers. I look at this in two different factors. First, there are the existing products. And we work very closely with our marketing or brand teams to get all of the product updates, whether it’s changes to labeling, new indications, precautions – anything relevant to that brand. Our training team, which is structured to support and partner with those brands, takes that information or those changes and translates it into training and development for the field sales professionals, as well as the other functions that we support.

The second component is new products. Like many companies, we have a new products team. We begin working with them long before the product is commercialized to develop disease state training and to become prepared to deliver the training if and when the product does launch. There are cases where we work with the new products team on compounds that don’t even come to fruition, but we have to be prepared so that when a product does get a label, we can launch that to our field force through training and development.

NGP. What are some of the challenges that you come across in trying to achieve this?
MC. The commercialization of a product is dependent on its ability to obtain a label through the FDA. You can develop some training for the disease state leading up to the label, but until the product receives that label from the FDA, you can’t make the training specific to the product. And when you do get the label, organizations want to launch the product as quickly as possible, which makes sense. But it doesn’t give you a lot of time to develop the training to be able to support that launch.

NGP. How do you respond to this challenge?
MC. You have a number of delivery systems these days, so training is no longer just traditional modules or workshops. The accessibility of e-learning, as an example, is a great way to develop content in a much shorter fashion, as well as to deliver it to the end user much more quickly than you could in the past. Before, simple logistics like shipping or travel would slow you down. Nowadays, you can deliver training, whether it’s online learning or some sort of distance material, in a much more timely fashion. You’re able to maintain quality, even though you’re working under a greater sense of urgency.

NGP. Sanofi-aventis employs approximately 16,000 staff in the US, of which 8,000 to 10,000 are field sales professionals located at 14 geographical sites throughout the country. How do you respond to the challenge of delivering quality learning from a distance?
MC. It is of course a challenge when two-thirds of the employees are geographically dispersed. It’s a must to have a mix of training and development, and by that, I mean a mix of delivery. With a company this size, you can no longer only rely on face-to-face or instructor-led training. You must support the rest of the training with delivery systems that are distance. Some examples of that are online learning, books, and modules. With a field force that spends a lot of time in the car, audiotapes are another great way to deliver the training.

Not only must you have a mix of delivery because of the disbursement of the employees, but in today’s learning environment, everyone has their own preference as to how they like to learn. You need to have a blended approach so that you can tap into those preferences, because if they are motivated, then they’re more likely to take advantage of the training.

NGP. How do you track each employee’s progress?
MC. There are two ways that we do that. The first is more or less macro, and we have a learning management system, not unlike many large companies. Within that learning management system, we track all training and development at the employee level, as well as at the organization level. Whether it’s an online learning or a workshop that they’ve participated in, all of that is tracked through the learning management system.

It’s one thing to track that, but how you really make that come alive is by utilizing your management team, who is charged with reinforcing as well as measuring the learning and the competency change. That is also done through our line management. Engaging them in the process frankly is a more effective way to measure progress. But having the technology in the learning management system also enables us to automate that process.

NGP. What role do incentives play in optimizing your sales force’s effectiveness?
MC. From a training perspective, training and/or learning can create the link for the individual on how their effectiveness can increase their performance. If we can educate people on why their increased productivity and effectiveness will drive their performance in front of the customer, then the incentives that are delivered by the organization should come naturally. It’s a fairly linear process in that if you raise your effectiveness, it will raise your performance, and then the incentives will follow if it’s truly an incentive system.

From a philosophical standpoint, I’ve never believed in incentivizing training monetarily. You deliver high quality training that is requested by the end user. If it meets its objective of driving performance, then the incentives offered by the organization will follow.

NGP. What are current controversies in training?
MC. Number one, with the dispersed field force that spends all of their day in front of the customer in the field, is the balance of online learning and distance learning. One of the attractions of that type of learning right away is the fact that it’s less expensive, and it can be delivered immediately or real-time – that’s a benefit. But if you overuse that delivery method just for those benefits, then you can wear out a field force, keeping in mind that they’re not logged on to their computer all day. They’re visiting customers. So that will always be a controversy in a pharmaceutical industry that has the majority of their employees field-based.

Something that we should pay attention to moving forward, especially in the US, is that we have a new generation that’s coming into the workforce. Some of them refer to this as Generation Y or the Millennial Generation. This is the generation that is roughly 25-34 years old; one in which technology has played a much greater role in their life growing up, even as a child. Many of them had cell phones, and they’ve never had a time where they didn’t have the Internet. As we make decisions on how we motivate, and more specifically train and develop that field force, we need to be much more selective with the technology that we use, and perhaps even go further than we’ve gone in the past, because this generation has higher expectations for what that technology can deliver.

Field force effectiveness is probably the hottest topic in pharmaceuticals. Training and development departments – ours included – have to be careful to move away from our academic principles and move to a human performance improvement mentality. By that, I mean focusing all of the learning, training, and development linked to performance, which ultimately will drive that field force effectiveness.

NGP. That’s something you are doing at sanofi-aventis, I would expect?
MC. It is. It’s always a delicate balance when you’re in training and development. But we have made some strides. This is one of the reasons we were recognized by the ASTD as one of their best. We are beginning to move away from event-based training to more of an ongoing competency and performance-based environment.

NGP. What would you point out about sanofi-aventis’ training and sales force?
MC. What you find here is a very heavy emphasis on a performance environment. Traditionally with training and development departments, you don’t always find that – they focus more on the learning. But we really focus on the performance and how that translates into the field. That’s different from what traditional training and development organizations do.

NGP. What are your goals for the future?
MC. Our goals for the future are to continue linking training and development ultimately to performance, and also then using it as lever to drive additional investment in training and development. As an example, as people start to see that particular skills that they learn or are trained on help them to perform in their role, and ultimately drive greater incentives, there will be even greater demand for additional investment in their training and development.

As a pharmaceutical industry, from a training and development standpoint, for too long we’ve focused most of our resources and time on new hire training or new product training only. The greatest opportunity for us is to focus on the sales professionals that are more tenured, as well as their ongoing development. If we focus there, we can raise the overall effectiveness of the industry.