Associate Director, Training & Field Effectiveness

Commercial Operations

Nearly 37 million Americans are currently affected by Chronic Kidney Disease. 37 million.

At Akebia we take that number very seriously and every day we come to work, with the purpose of bettering the lives of each person impacted by kidney disease and the renal community that serves them.
Our tenacious, passionate employees' challenge the status quo and work to develop unique therapeutics that have the potential to set new standards of care for people living with kidney disease.

This is life-changing work, and we are all in, are you?

Job Summary

Reporting to the Sr. Director of Commercial Excellence, the Associate Director of Field Engagement and Effectiveness is responsible for gathering field insights regarding launch effectiveness requirements, developing training programs and delivering operational support to the customer-facing roles. This will include disease state, product/therapeutic landscape knowledge, compliance (OIG), and other commercialization processes and systems. The incumbent will need to collaborate across Medical, Marketing, Sales, Market Access, Legal, People and Culture, Regulatory, and other Partner Organizations.

Training (50% of the time)

• Aligning to Akebia's annual strategy for sales and marketing focus
• Develop a sales training curriculum that motivates customer-facing personnel to achieve their goals and align with the strategy.
• Establish a collaborative, clinical, sales focused learning environment with core principles of adult learning
• Optimize curriculum that allows ongoing education for customer-facing teams to ensure consistency in disease state and product knowledge. (product/non-product training modules)
• Lead and coordinate new hire onboarding and training programs for customer-facing teams.
• Collaborate with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to create the appropriate learning content for the respective customer-facing role.
• Direct Field Trainers who will be peer-to-peer trainers with their colleagues within the sales team.
• Liaise with home office/field management about the development and delivery of training material.
• Document and maintain proper records of training initiatives.
• Collaborate with the administration of the Promotional, Medical, Legal, & Regulatory (PRC) process to identify the training requirements and the delivery of material for use.
• Support efforts in Company meeting planning and execution, including agenda creation, workshop development, and delivery as well as overall meeting facilitation for POAs & NSMs.
• Manage vendors and partners to produce meaningful curriculum within established scope and timeframes.
• Perform additional responsibilities and participate in special projects as assigned.

Field Effectiveness Insight Generation (30% of the time)

• Work with Sales Leadership Team to review team effectiveness with the aim of identifying performance gaps and create sales tactics and/or training programs to address them.
• Interpret sales data and KAM call information to develop appropriate training reinforcement and development plans.
• Perform ride along with KAMs to provide feedback on promotional effectiveness, customer engagement and territory management.
• Develop and implement KAM feedback tool to provide written feedback to KAMs to highlight performance attributes affecting promotional success.
• Develop and manage feedback from sales organization on key initiatives

Engagement Effectiveness Administration (20% of the time)

• Manage Learning Management System (Akebia Learning) partnering closely with Compliance, Commercial and Human Resources
• Participate in the implementation/deployment of technologies (Veeva CRM, Sales portal) to be used by the field force to increase efficiency, and effectiveness and determine the best way to train the team.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree required.
• 8+ years' experience in a commercial role within a pharma or biotech company and at least 5 years in a sales/product training-focused role.
• Previous Experience in building a sales training continuum for a life science company
• Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite, including PowerPoint, Excel, and Word
• Proficient in sales reporting and analytics tools (e.g., Tableau), as well as CRM and Learning Management Systems (LMS)
• Demonstrated experience with best-in-class means of training delivery including eLearning, self-study, assessment, audio/video, classroom, and experiential learning to ensure the sales force is trained and can deliver the attributes of our products.
• Strong interpersonal, presentation and facilitation skills required.
• Previous field sales experience is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated success in managing numerous projects simultaneously.
• Ability to challenge the thinking of an established customer facing team.
• Requires 15-35% travel.

Compensation:

Targeted Base: $171,290 - $211,593*

*Base Compensation for this role will depend on a number of factors including a candidate's qualifications, skills, competencies, and experience, and may fall outside of the range shown. Base pay is only one component of the company's total rewards package, all regular employees are also eligible for the corporate bonus program or the incentive compensation program (if applicable), as well as equity. Additional benefits include health care, vision, dental, retirement, PTO, etc.

Are you an Akebian?

An Akebian is curious, empathetic, and values making connections to people and ideas. Akebian's aren't afraid of diving in and owning a process or a problem, because we all want to deliver a great solution. Akebian's believe that we are better together because we are all working toward a common purpose - to better the life of each person impacted by kidney disease. Want to learn more about what it means to be an Akebian? Visit our website: www.akebia.com

Akebia is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes all job applicants. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, protected veteran status, disability, or any other characteristics protected by applicable law.