The Nu Approach: Elevate Your Game

After 18 months of virtual meetings and zoom calls, the Nuwellis team was long overdue for an event that would bring everyone together for some hands-on in-person training.
With many of us reemerging from our remote environments, the Marketing and Education teams collaborated to create an intensive selling and messaging training program designed to bring everybody up to speed with face-to-face conversations: the National Sales Meeting 2021 (NSM).

To prepare the field team for the dynamic two-day event, the Marketing team organized two pre-training calls.
Pre-Training Part 1, which took place on July 19, focused on clinical baselining, including The Nuwellis Sales Approach, an array of sales skills that promote adoption and drive sustainable utilization of our therapy.
The session also educated the team on the main clinical stakeholders and their points of view including:

• Cardiologists/Heart Failure Physicians
• Intensivists/CV Surgeons
• Nephrologists

Knowing your audience and understanding their specific needs through the use of probing questions was the topic of to Pre-Training Part 2 on July 23. Thanks to that extensive preparation, our field staff was equipped and confident for our in-person meeting. Our new SVP, General Counsel, and Chief Compliance Officer, Neil Ayotte, also presented on current off-label marketing and promotional limitations as part of the Pre-Training module.

Excited to reunite with friends and colleagues for the first in-person event in a year and a half, the Nuwellis team jetted off to Dallas, TX to kick-off the National Sales Meeting with a Pediatric Intensive on Monday, July 26.
The first part of the NSM was mandatory for all our Clinical Education Specialists (CESs) while the rest of the Account Managers (AMs) were encouraged to attend.

Linda Hart, Clinical Education Manager, and Kellsey Newell, Sr. Clinical Education Specialist, presented a real-life experience-based presentation to immerse the team in pediatric disease state training followed by a conversation on how to build a Pediatric Program. They capped off the session with an interactive discussion on on-label use for our Pediatric indication.

Our GC and Chief Compliance Officer, Neil Ayotte, was also present for a Q&A session, where attendees were invited to ask questions and talk about their experiences, from navigating challenging conversations with customers to fielding questions about off-label uses.¹

On the second (and last) day of NSM 2021, the Marketing team led by Pete Olson and Liam Jackson divided our field staff into 4 groups; with each group addressing different scenarios, audiences, and critical questions.
Eager to test their mettle and demonstrate their new skills, each member of the team was set up on a 15-minute “speed dating” session with a leader posing as a doctor specializing in Heart Failure, Nephrology, or Critical Care/CV surgery.
For the first 10 minutes, team members had to set up the conversation with the physician and answer any questions the ‘doctor’ might throw their way.
For the remaining five minutes, team members received real-time feedback from the leader. The exercise was a success — many participants were awarded a competency certification.

But no NSM would be complete without some time to bond, relax and have a little fun!
We concluded our meeting with a “Western Game Night” full of casino games, sports simulators, a green screen photo booth, and even a mechanical bull — a bit too wild of a ride for many of us northern-state folks.