Elite Manager Toolkit
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Blog and Media
Breaking down complex topics about management and leadership skills, the changing needs of the pharmaceutical industry, the workforce, employee engagement and culture, and the market.
Read Our Latest Posts
Hidden Talent: How to Spot Growth Potential in Middle Performers
Not all stars shine the brightest right away. In many teams, the most promising individuals often sit quietly in the middle, delivering decent performance, meeting expectations, and flying under the radar. Yet, beneath this average performance may lie significant growth potential, waiting to be discovered and developed.
Leadership Blind Spots: How to Identify and Overcome Them
Every leader wants to believe they have a clear vision, a firm grip on their team dynamics, and a solid understanding of how their actions are perceived. However, even the most seasoned leaders can fall prey to what experts refer to as leadership blind spots.
Creating Growth Paths for Employees Who Aren’t Climbing the Ladder
Career development has traditionally been closely tied to advancing up the corporate ladder in many organizations. Promotions, new titles, and bigger offices have long been viewed as the ultimate markers of success. However, not every employee aspires to management roles or linear upward progression. Creating meaningful growth paths, not limited to promotional tracks, is essential for companies striving to retain top talent and build a culture of engagement.
Building Scalable Competency Frameworks for Organizational Growth
Scalable competency frameworks align training, coaching, and development efforts across teams, enabling organizations to grow efficiently while remaining agile and future-ready. As companies expand, evolve, or face disruption, the need for clarity on the skills required, where they are needed, and how they should be developed becomes increasingly critical.
Essential Leadership Competencies: Coaching Your Team to High Performance
People leave managers, not companies — that’s why leadership competencies matter. Essential leadership entails setting clear goals, coaching teams toward success, and fostering an environment where people can grow and thrive. To inspire your team and reduce turnover, it is essential to understand and master these key competencies. Strong leadership is built on training and continuous reinforcement of both hard and soft skills.
Exemplary Leadership Skills You Need as a Sales Manager
As a sales manager, your exemplary leadership skills, including your ability to lead, have a significant impact on your team’s performance and the overall success of your organization. Exemplary leadership is the ability to inspire trust, guide teams strategically, and cultivate a culture where people can perform at their best.
Investing in Success: Essential Training and Development Opportunities for Your Sales Team
Essential training for sales teams must go beyond the basics. It should cover clinical acumen, relationship management, strategic and business insight, selling skills, and adaptability. These focus areas empower sales reps to become trusted advisors, navigate complex systems, and execute with confidence.
Time Management for Leaders: 8 Proven Strategies (Includes Free Checklist)
The most effective leaders are not the ones who do the most. They are the ones who consistently focus on what matters most. In today’s fast-paced environment, where distractions and decisions come nonstop, time management for leaders has become one of the most valuable professional skills. If you spend your days reacting to issues rather than planning for outcomes, you are not leading. You are simply managing the chaos.
The Impact of Setting Personal Development Goals for Work on Professional Growth
Personal development is the continuous act of assessing your life values and goals and building your qualities and skills to reach your potential. Employees consider it imperative to their job and future, while employers cite personal development as a way to advance company abilities. This relationship highlights how both personal and organizational success are often interconnected.
Is Pharma Sales Broken?
In a recent conversation with a former pharma CEO, we reflected on just how much the industry has shifted. He began his career in the early ’90s as a sales rep at one of the largest companies, a time when relationships drove prescriptions and product differences were minimal. Those days are long gone.
Personalized Coaching Plan: Unlocking the Hidden Potential of Middle Performers
Walk into any sales organization and you’ll see a familiar pattern. Top performers are celebrated and stretched with new opportunities, while struggling employees receive extra coaching to get them back on track.
The Sales Manager Gap: Why Hiring Externally Isn’t Fixing Performance
The assumption is that if someone has been a manager before, they don’t need training. But skills aren’t validated beyond an interview, and those hires bring gaps with them. Meanwhile, internal talent gets overlooked.
Is Trust the Real Currency of Sales Leadership?
Deadlines, pressure, and constant change are part of leadership in every industry. When the heat is on, technical expertise and training matter — but what truly holds a team together is trust. Trust is the foundation of leadership. Without it, nothing else sticks.
Blended Strategies in Pharma: Building Stronger Leadership Development
Many pharma companies had already embraced remote learning; however, leadership training has been the lone holdout. The blended learning enabled people to enter the field more quickly, eliminating the need to wait for live training.
Strengthening Partner and Internal Relationships: Five Essential Strategies to Help Master Training Management
Managing supplier partners and internal relationships is a critical skill for trainers in life sciences organizations. Trainers work with multiple stakeholders — balancing the needs of sales teams, marketing, medical, legal, and regulatory (MLR) requirements, and supplier capabilities to deliver quality learning experiences.
Bridging the Gap: How to Keep Middle Level Employees Inspired and Invested
Middle-level employees are the connective tissue of every organization. They translate executive vision into action, manage frontline teams, solve day-to-day problems, and maintain operational stability. Yet, despite this essential role, they often feel stuck in a quiet middle, neither celebrated like high-potential new hires nor empowered like senior leaders.
Leadership Lessons: You Can’t Fix a Problem That You Can’t Talk About
The most effective leadership lessons show managers how to foster a culture where problems are raised early, discussed honestly, and solved together before they can escalate. If your managers avoid difficult conversations, even the best strategies will stall.
Why AI Won’t Replace Great, But Will Make Them Better
If you’re in a manager role today, it’s easy to worry that AI might one day replace your role. That fear isn’t new—it’s been around since the Industrial Revolution. And yes, some jobs have been replaced by technology. But just as often, new roles have been created. Opportunity has always followed disruption.
Watch Our Latest Videos
Leading from Within: Keith Willis on Building High-Performing Teams and Effective Leadership
In this episode of The Sea Captain Way podcast, Keith Willis, President and Founder of Core Management Training, shares invaluable insights on leadership, team development, and the power of recognizing individual strengths.
Networking and Proactivity: Keith Willis on Advancing in Pharma Sales
In this episode, Keith Willis explains why managers are pivotal in shaping sales careers. He shares how networking and taking proactive steps help reps create opportunities, stand out in competitive markets, and build long-term success in pharma sales.
Bringing Your A-Game: Keith Willis on Coaching, Training, and Career Growth
In part two of this conversation, Keith Willis shares why top pharmaceutical companies invest in coaching and training to build stronger sales teams, and why reps should do the same for their own careers. He explains how self-development, coaching, and skill-building help you stand out in interviews, succeed in competitive territories, and create long-term career opportunities.
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