Commercial Training Manager

At Eakin Healthcare we put our patient at the heart of everything we do.

Fifty years ago, it all started with one man’s mission: pharmacist, Tom George Eakin. He saw his patients struggling with leaking urostomy pouches and decided enough was enough. He got to work and formulated what would become the game-changing, eakin Cohesive® seal.

Fast forward to today, and we’re still keeping it in the family. We’ve grown a lot since then, both organically and through acquisitions. We now have a team of over 700 colleagues across three manufacturing sites and 12 sales and distribution centres. We’re making a difference in three therapeutic areas:

• Ostomy
• Respiratory
• Surgical

We’re proud to export our innovative products to over 60 countries through a network of 40 distributors plus our own offices in Japan, The Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium and Luxemburg.

We’re good at what we do – come and join us!

ABOUT THE ROLE

This is an exciting new role and an opportunity to play a key part in supporting Eakin Healthcare to develop and execute an outcomes-driven global learning capability and support an approach to clinical voice that will enable colleagues and partners to achieve excellent commercial execution in healthcare.

To do this, you will work across the breadth and depth of the organisation, leading the development and implementation of a cross-functional training framework. This role will help position Eakin Healthcare as a trusted, customer-focused and clinically credible employer and business partner of choice. The clinical, product and commercial training framework will ensure confident and competent clinical, product and commercial knowledge of our market-facing employees and business partners.

The Commercial Training Manager will ensure a clear link is shown between the clinical application of the product, the procedures our products are used for, the outcomes intended with the products and how, where and why to use our products.  Ensuring clarity of value proposition within each market, product positioning and an understanding of how to access the market.    

KEY ACTIVITIES

Creation and setting up of training framework

• Immediate creation and delivery of clinical, product and commercial training to all new and tenured Eakin Healthcare employees, international subsidiaries and business partners
• Collaboration with each commercial therapeutic area to develop and deliver high quality training content for their teams and to their business partners. Includes facilitating the creation of clinical product training content (i.e. procedures, patient risk factors, anatomy and physiology, terminology and disease processes.), commercial training content (competitive positioning, purchasing pathways, contracts and tenders, objection handling) and product training content (instructions for use, indications, contraindications, demonstrations, advanced training)
• Work with Human resources (HR) to deliver a comprehensive and consistent company induction training and the development of a structured training plan for each new employee
• Collaboration with all business functions to ensure non-commercial employees receive the appropriate level of clinical, product and commercial training to be successful in their role, ensuring compliance to medical device regulations and the Quality Management System.
• Design, structure and format of training content for optimal learning, including presentation templates, self-directed study, competency assessments, video, physical or online.
  • This will include identification & filling training gaps or additional content creation and overseeing international language translations & market specific content.
• Coordination of the creation and maintenance of role-based training matrices which includes Quality Management System (QMS) training requirements and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) plus clinical, product and commercial training requirements and competency levels by role
• Coordination of training plan documentation for employees and business partners (could include eQMS, HR, EDU-NET, Excel, MetaCompliance)
• Oversee the creation of an online training platform suitable for all users, including business partners.
• Delivery of training and train-the-trainer training

Ongoing training execution, lead towards ‘best in class’ for industry

• Identify ongoing training needs across the business and for our core business partners, along with trends in commercial excellence training and learning.
• Manage recording of learning outcomes, competency levels and feedback; analysing the progress and reporting back on organisational progress versus ambition using KPIs and metrics
• Delivery of a training competency certification framework for foundation and advanced levels of training
• Explore activities such as education accreditation, expert (KOL) developed content or strategic partnerships which will elevate Eakin Healthcare’s knowledge excellence
• Drive a culture of continuous learning and development by coordinating a highly visible Eakin Healthcare (clinical, product and commercial) training schedule
• Overtime, will be responsible for developing and implementing an improved ‘best in class’ training framework (content, format, structure and delivery).

Support our centralised voice of customer framework

• Help to coordinate and support the effectiveness of a centralised clinical advisory framework that ensures compliance and consistency in approach, where appropriate, across therapy areas and customer stakeholder groups. Support to collate the outcomes required and achieved and measure the return on these advisory activities . 
• Support process for knowledge and insights gleamed through clinical advisory activity to be appropriately translated into commercial initiatives and ensure all knowledge is retained in a secure and accessible format.

Other

• To adhere to the company’s Equal Opportunities policy and Dignity at work policy in all activities and to actively promote equality of opportunity wherever possible
• To be responsible for your own health and safety and that of your colleagues, in accordance with the company’s’ Health and Safety policy
• To adhere to the company’s Quality policy and Environmental policy
• To undertake other duties as may be reasonably required.

KEY SKILLS

Essential

• Passionate about learning with a proven track record of working in a commercial setting, building and delivering dynamic and engaging clinical, product and commercial training programmes which promote confidence and knowledge retention.
• Demonstrate commercial acumen and an understanding of the end-to-end medical device sales process and decision makers in domestic and international markets.
• Have been a Registered General Nurse (RGN) with clinical experience, or can demonstrate strong clinical product training and clinical selling experience.   
• Ability to translate clinical and scientific evidence and health economics arguments into simple , commercial training messages
• Illustrate understanding of regulatory requirements for class I and class II medical devices in major international markets and the compliance and governance requirements regarding product training.
• An understanding of how people learn, and experience of applying training strategies.
• Demonstrate relationships built with KOLs and clinicians whilst working in a commercial setting.
• Experience of collaborating cross-functionally and influencing within matrix organisation.

Desirable

• Experience working with medical devices used in both acute settings and for chronic conditions managed in the community.
• Recent experience within either Ostomy, Wound management, Respiratory or Surgical instruments
• Direct sales and marketing management experience
• Understanding of clinical careers
• Previous experience delivering sales model training i.e. Challenger or SPIN
• Building online training (eLearning) platforms i.e. Adobe Captivate or Moodle LMS
• Some exposure to supporting or organising clinical advisory boards

KEY WORKING RELATIONSHIPS

Internal

• Corporate Development Office
• Ostomy, respiratory and surgical commercial teams
• HR - all roles/levels but with a key working relationship with the Head of Learning & Development
• R&D
• Finance, IT and operations functions
• Management Forum

External

• International business partners (i.e. distributors)
• Key Opinion Leaders (KOL)
• Healthcare systems, hospitals and clinics
• Universities and other educational institutions

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 

• Occasional domestic and international travel to support commercial teams and business partners where required
• Role can be based in Cardiff, Comber or Coleraine 

COMPETENCIES

Business Insight
Applying knowledge of business and the marketplace to advance the organisations goals.

Balances Stakeholders
Anticipating and balancing the needs of multiple stakeholders.

Cultivates Innovation
Creating new and better ways for the organisation to be successful.

Collaborates  
Building partnerships and working collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives.

Interpersonal savvy
Relating openly and comfortably with diverse groups of people.

Communicates Effectively
Developing and delivering multi-mode communications that convey a clear understanding of the unique needs of different audiences.

Instils trust
Gaining the confidence and trust of others through honesty, integrity, and authenticity.