Knowing how to listen to, respond to and resolve a customer’s challenges is essential when joining Medline’s dynamic salesforce.

Now there’s a new “home base” for learning all of it.

More than 40 people, including several area customers, gathered with Medline leaders Tuesday for the official unveiling of the company’s new sales training center – a reimagined suite of collaborative learning spaces at Medline’s main offices in Northfield, Ill. Covering roughly 14,000 square feet, the center is about 50% larger than the previous training area for sales representatives, providing more space for bigger groups from around the country to converge in person for hands-on activities, breakout demonstrations and specialized instruction in one modern hub that addresses the needs of a specialized salesforce and Medline’s growing footprint across all points of care.

With the expansion of the space, Medline’s sales training curriculum has been enhanced, too – incorporating hands-on product training, customer and industry insight and richer training on the soft skills that are critical to building effective customer relationships.

“Our two most important stakeholders are our customers and our employees,” Doug Golwas, chief commercial officer, told attendees before a ceremonial ribbon-cutting. “Providing a world-class training and development environment and program for our more than 2,000 sales professionals allows us to continually develop the best salesforce in healthcare into great business partners for our customers, who are at the center of everything we do. Our training here is squarely focused on building connections for our sales team – to Medline, to each other, to our leaders, to our product divisions, to our culture and, most important, to our customers.”

For more on how the center drives that, the Medline Newsroom sat down with Courtney Bott (below, right), vice president of sales training, who already has seen more than 500 sales reps come through training since the beginning of the year:

Newsroom: Courtney, this is quite the training center. Tell us more about how we got here – the thinking that went into creating it.

Courtney Bott: The space we’re in today has always been the sales training space here at our headquarters, but it was an area that hadn’t been renovated since Medline moved into the building in 2016. The vision in redesigning it was to make it a welcoming, collaborative environment that serves as the first impression our field-based sales representatives have of Medline. We took extra care to ensure it would feel like a “front porch” into the company, immersing trainees in Medline’s capabilities and what our customers care about while also reinforcing what differentiates us in the market.

With that in mind, we’ve designed open, collaborative spaces that spark connection among our sales reps, product experts and leadership. Those spaces include two large-format training rooms with a capacity of 100, compared to 60 before, plus 12 breakout rooms of various sizes that allow facilitators to give in-depth products demos and do role-playing and sales-specific exercises. The three breakout rooms we had previously weren’t enough, so we’d have reps spread all over the Northfield offices during orientations and subsequent trainings. Now we’re all in one spot.

Newsroom: And that’s really the intent, right? Pulling people together?

Bott: Exactly. Our approach to training salespeople at Medline is really a team effort. Out in the field, you have a field manager, as well as an assigned peer field trainer, on-demand access to e-learning modules and virtual interaction with the training team. But here, trainees get a deep, in-person classroom experience that allows them to get to know numerous product experts, clinicians, leaders and professional trainers. There are more than 700 people across Medline whom we tap into across 28 distinct training tracks. The experience can’t be replicated elsewhere. It’s the key to what we consider the three C’s of sales: confidence, competence and connection.

In-person relationships with our customers are a relentless focus at Medline. But part of what makes those relationships with our customers work so well is that we create an environment and expectation for our salespeople to forge strong relationships inside Medline.

Newsroom: How might those internal relationships translate outside to customers?

Bott: When a customer works with someone from the Medline salesforce, they’re not just working with one person – they’re also indirectly working with all the product and solution managers, our supply chain optimization team, our branch managers and Medline leadership. We call this the OneMedline team. The way our training curriculum is designed, there are main areas we focus on to educate sales reps on what to expect with customers: what they care about, needs that may be unique to different points of care. But our reps are also, for example, trained on Medline products by the actual experts who oversee those categories. A lot of that training is very high-touch-and-feel, woven in with how to answer questions and who to go to within Medline when you need support quickly for those products. The better our salespeople understand how to use their resources and relationships with speed, the faster service and stronger partnership we can provide the customer.

Newsroom: In what ways have we updated the trainings for the customer’s benefit? They seem to have evolved as much as the space itself.

Bott: Yes, a lot has changed. In parallel with the construction of the new center, we also revamped our onboarding program – which our reps attend in person four times over their first year – to educate them on what they need to know and do to serve their customers on Day 1, after one month, after three months, after six months and by the end of their first year as their relationships progress. We’ve brought in more industry context. We’ve also brought in more customer voices so we can learn how to analyze customer needs, show empathy and resolve concerns, whether it’s at a long-term care facility, a physician’s office or an acute-care hospital.

A big part of that training is guiding our reps on how to listen, to ask questions, to seek to understand, and then communicate with candor about options. There might be a straightforward solution, or it might be necessary to pull in other people and resources to get the job done. Together, we can reinforce our team approach more than ever in this remodeled space through activities and scenarios that replicate the hands-on collaboration and problem-solving we expect in the field.

Newsroom: ‘Together’ – there’s that word again.

Bott: Again, all of this really is a team effort – including the physical design and build of the space with our Medline facilities team. There are so many collaborative opportunities this new center makes possible, both within our teams and with customers going forward as healthcare and technology continue to evolve and change. When we look at what’s possible in the coming years, what we’re unveiling here is just the start.

Interested in joining Medline’s salesforce? You’ll find opportunities in the careers section of Medline.com.