Case Study: Life Technologies
Sales and Marketing Training
Company Profile:
Life Technologies is a global biotechnology tools company dedicated to improving the human condition with innovative life science products and applications. The company provides premier systems, consumables, and services for scientific researchers around the world. The company had sales of more than $3.3 billion, employs approximately 9,000 people, has a presence in 160 countries, and possesses a rapidly growing intellectual property estate of approximately 3,900 patents and exclusive licenses. With more than 50,000 products used by more than 75,000 customers around the globe, Life Technologies is advancing scientific research in areas like academic research, drug discovery and development, toxicology and forensics, disease diagnostics, clinical cell therapy, and regenerative medicine, and biologics manufacturing.
Life technologies approached Element K in the second quarter of 2010 for a proposal for their sales and marketing training initiative. Because of the large number of products, Life Technologies wanted a better way to train employees on how to market and price the products they sell in order to increase the bottom line.
Life Technologies was presented a demo of capabilities and they particularly liked the use of gamelets and interactives and wanted to utilize those methods to motivate their learners.
The Business Challenge:
- Educate LIFE employees in Marketing knowledge and attitudes related to Positioning and Segmentation (market/product/customer segmentation, profit segmentation, positioning, buyer types, customer stratification, etc.) and Pricing & Profitability (pricing & discount guidelines, profitability, value, etc).
- Enhance problem-solving and decision-making abilities in strategic and tactical/operational areas of marketing.
- Present case studies of how firms organize their marketing efforts and manage the various elements of their marketing programs.
- Provide frameworks, concepts, tools, and methods to improve marketing profitability, competitor orientation, pricing and profit orientation, market analysis, strategic marketing, and customer focus.
- Facilitate the application of the materials learned to “real-time” projects in LIFE, enabling learning by doing, collaborating across teams and functions, fostering innovation and calculated risk-taking, and driving competitive sustainability.
Outside of the learning objectives, the project requirements were very flexible. Content changes were made up to the very last minute. An additional challenge was focusing in on a target audience. The Life technologies employees had a wide array of backgrounds from MBAs to Ph.D. chemists. The inclusion of real-world projects also presented a challenge.
Solution:
For phase one, I attended the three-day workshop in person and used the data collected there to serve as source documentation while the event itself served as the content outline From this I designed the course framework and re-purposed content (PPT and audio transcripts) to create a storyboard.
In phase two, I worked closely with our multimedia team to create interactive gamelets that checked learning and decided on a media treatment to use for the course. Additionally, I determined how the real-world projects would serve as practice within the designed course framework, inspired the idea of a webinar for face time between learners and the SME, and wrote assessment questions for course completion credits.
After the product was delivered, the client desired more interactivity in the course. So, for the third phase, I analyzed the existing interactivity and made recommendations on areas to improve interactivity. I created a storyboard that was reviewed and ultimately approved and implemented within the course.
Outcome:
Life Technologies was able to launch its first Life University course on time and was able to hold two more face-to-face workshops shortly after launch. Currently, at least three groups have utilized the blended program to guide them through their real-world projects to increase the marketability of their products and ultimately make their projects more profitable.
View an interactive storyboard for this project.