Associate Director, Commercial Learning

General Scope and Summary  

Sage Therapeutics is searching for a creative, resourceful, integrative thinker for an important role that is responsible for designing, developing, maintaining and implementing education on disease and therapy, account management skills, market access knowledge, market dynamics, and selling skills training programs for the commercial organization and will be a conduit to the cross functional partners in identifying, building and executing training with a goal of positively impacting the business objectives of the organization. 

Responsibilities will include but not limited to: 

Roles and Responsibilities (Essential Functions) 

• Design, develop and execute training programs from new hire onboarding to advanced continuing education training 

• Design, develop and implement training programs/certifications for all commercial meetings including National Sales Meetings, POAs, launch meetings, Train the trainer meetings, virtual classroom meetings, teleconferences and other identified training opportunities in a continuous learning mode. 

• Maintain subject matter expertise within Commercial for disease states, products and therapeutic areas aligned with Sage’s portfolio and account management strategy 

• Partner with subject matter experts and resources, both internally and externally, to implement and deploy learning solutions 

• Coordinate with Regulatory, Legal and Medical for the review and approval of training material 

• Partner with Marketing and Sales Leadership to build training initiatives that support the execution of tactics aligned with brand and business strategic imperatives and coordinate the rollout of promotional materials 

• Manage external vendor partners and perform project management to bring high quality services within the set budget and on time 

• Apply principles of adult learning to ensure training effectiveness. Access resources to keep up-to-date on industry best demonstrated practices 

• Develop and maintain facilitation skills expertise in support of training content delivery 

• Maintain the standards for training materials ensuring they are current and working within the LMS 

• Measure and assess the current training offerings by conducting gap analysis and field observation and identify areas for continual improvement and development 

• Responsible for implementation of appropriate customer engagement model and objection handling model 

Experience, Education and Specialized Knowledge and Skills 

Must thrive working in a fast-paced, innovative environment while remaining flexible, proactive, resourceful and efficient.  Excellent interpersonal skills, ability to develop important relationships with key stakeholders, good conflict management and negotiation skills, ability to analyze complex issues to develop relevant and realistic plans, programs and recommendations.  Demonstrated ability to translate strategy into action; excellent analytical skills and an ability to communicate complex issues in a simple way and to orchestrate plans to resolve issues and mitigate risks. 

Basic Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s degree required 

• 6+ years of pharma/biotech/medical device required including 

• 5+ years of training experience required

Preferred Qualifications 

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills 

• Ability to teach, coach and develop people in complex sales organization 

• Demonstrated ability to collaborate and execute in a matrixed environment 

• Demonstrated understanding of the selling process - ability to comprehend and execute sales processes 

• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously and complete those projects on time 

• Demonstrated results orientation and high productivity through setting high standards and achieving stretch goals 

• Expertise with technology platforms (e.g. iPad, LMS, Vault, SurveyMonkey) 

• Proficient with Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and other tools 

• Strong team player that has a customer service approach and is solution oriented. 

• Ability to think critically, strategically and cross functionally 

• Exceptional presentation, facilitation and written communication skills 

• High level of initiative and desire to work in a dynamic and fast paced environment