Training the Complexity and Reading the Room
Developing sales expertise is no longer about memorizing scripts — it’s about thinking in context. As André Brauers from Zeiss Medical Technology noted, “We’re moving from product selling to workflow solution selling. It requires new mindsets and skills that go beyond technical knowledge.”
This shift reflects the transition from simple product promotion to managing ecosystems of decision-makers. Tanja Feldmueller of Ulrich Medical added, “Our sales reps used to focus on one surgeon. Now they have to deal with procurement, hygiene, and reimbursement teams — often all at once. That’s a completely different job.”
Hugo Cardoso from Abbott summarized the practical challenge: “We need consistency across countries but flexibility for local realities. Account management doesn’t mean the same in Germany as in Norway — yet the core skills must remain scalable.”
This comment resonated with everyone: training must balance structure and adaptability — just like effective sales strategies.
The challenges raised by our participants align with what research tells us about how expertise actually develops and with the real-world challenges. Elena Ciani our Head of Neuroscience – who works at SkillGym’s methodology- explained the principle behind this challenge: “Expertise forms when people practice complex skills repeatedly from different perspectives. That’s how they build automaticity and flexibility — the true marks of mastery.”
As supported by the Accelerated Expertise framework (Crandall et al., 2006; Fade & Klein, 2010), experts build expertise by encountering the same situations repeatedly from different angles — this depth of exposure and experience enables them to handle familiar situations quickly and effortlessly and navigate new or tricky situations with confidence.
This is why, at Skillgym, we designed “Circuits” — a dynamic set of scenarios that allow to practice the same set of skills from multiple perspective. A pricing negotiation Circuit, for instance, might first involve a cost-conscious buyer, then a value-focused executive, then a committee decision — same core situation, different dynamics. This forces trainees to adapt their approach rather than memorize scripts, building expert-level pattern recognition and adaptive problem-solving in weeks instead of years.
Practicing and learning with this kind of complexity and flexibility allows sales reps to develop not only technical fluency but also the pattern recognition needed to “read the room” effectively — exactly what Cardoso, Brauers, and Padmanther were calling for.
Rejection Resilience and Tolerance to Frustration
Every participant agreed: sales excellence requires emotional strength. Michael Faje, an experienced training leader, pointed out that, “Many technical experts turned sales reps struggle because they’re not used to rejection. They move from being ‘the good guy’ in hospitals to facing constant no’s — and that can break them.”
Even though there was a certain skepticism about the ability to train some skills, like emotional strength,“Tolerance to frustration can be trained” Elena Ciani connected this idea to psychology: “Frustration tolerance is tied to self-efficacy — the belief in one’s ability to succeed. When people believe they can handle challenges, frustration drops. When they doubt themselves, it grows.”
Her view echoes Albert Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy (1977, 1997, 1986): mastery experiences are the strongest way to boost confidence. In training, this means replicating real challenges and providing constructive feedback to help participants feel progress.
Paolo Gentileschi from Edwards built on this: “Discipline often precedes motivation. You may not feel like going to the gym, but if you start and see results, motivation follows. It’s the same for learning — structure and follow-up help people keep going.”
In Skillgym’s approach, simulated rejection moments are designed to strengthen emotional regulation through repetition and debrief. Immediate multi-layer feedback — emotional, qualitative, quantitative — helps trainees understand both what they did and how they felt. Over time, this fosters resilience, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence — all critical ingredients of sustainable high performance.
Passion-Driven Performance and Cultural Consistency
As the conversation progressed, Edwin Simons from Teleflex reminded us of something fundamental: “Passion makes the difference. It’s what keeps people pushing when everything else fails.”
We explored how organizational culture shapes that passion. Tanja Feldmueller reflected, “People don’t leave companies; they leave managers. To keep a positive mindset, culture must support learning and openness — especially in times of regulatory pressure.”
Consistency emerged as a shared theme. Cultural values, when turned into measurable, actionable behaviors, become the true drivers of performance. Elena Ciani summarized this link elegantly: “Self-efficacy grows in the right environment. If you only get negative feedback, confidence collapses. Culture must sustain people’s sense of capability.”
This aligns with the principles of Cognitive Transformation Theory (Klein & Baxter, 2009): when learners connect purpose, practice, and positive feedback, they internalize excellence as identity, not as instruction.
At Skillgym, we often say “Methodology eats technology for breakfast.” AI and digital tools can accelerate learning, but without a solid human-centered, neuroscience-grounded methodology, technology alone doesn’t create behavioral change. Passion, culture, and lived consistency do.
Conclusions
The Brussels roundtable made one thing clear: sales excellence in MedTech can be accelerated — not by shortcuts, but by smarter, more human training.
By combining cognitive science, emotional intelligence, and practice-based learning, organizations can transform performance and identity alike.
As a company operating for nearly two decades in this field, our belief is unwavering:
Invest in people. Strengthen their self-efficacy. Help them practice complex conversations safely.
When training reflects reality — and culture reinforces growth — strategic account management becomes not just a skill, but part of who people are.
References
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Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215.
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Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
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Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W.H. Freeman.
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Crandall, B., Klein, G., & Hoffman, R. (2006). Working Minds: A Practitioner’s Guide to Cognitive Task Analysis. MIT Press.
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Fadde, P. J., & Klein, G. A. (2010). Deliberate performance: Accelerating expertise in natural settings. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 23(1), 7–24.
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Klein, G. (1998). Sources of power: How people make decisions. MIT Press.
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Klein, G., & Baxter, H. C. (2009). Cognitive transformation theory: Contrasting cognitive and behavioral learning. In The PSI Handbook of Service Delivery (pp. 139–160). Wiley.
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Noon, C., & Hallbeck, L. (2001). Time, productivity and ergonomics in the kitchen and beyond: Vol. 1. Learning, Requirements, and Metrics. Nokomis, FL.
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Renkl, A., Mandl, H., & Gruber, H. (1996). Inert knowledge: Analyses and remedies. Educational Psychologist, 31(2), 115–121.
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Schwartz, D. L., Bransford, J. D., & Sears, D. (2005). Efficiency and innovation in transfer. In Transfer of Learning from a Modern Multidisciplinary Perspective (pp. 1–51). Information Age Publishing.
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