To start with, could you tell us a bit about your company – Elekta?

Elekta is a high-tech company in the medical device industry. We develop innovative radiotherapy solutions to treat cancer (in fact, our tagline is “We’re here till cancer is not”). Our people are very passionate and motivated, proud to be part of a team that brings solutions to the world.

How would you describe the purpose of the Motion5 program?

We have a great product to treat breast cancers called APBI (Accelerated Partial Breast Irradiation) and we wanted to create more awareness in the market, especially among healthcare professionals, to showcase its benefits and added value as an alternative to surgery. M5 was the right partner to help us achieve our goal.

How would you describe Motion5 to another company?

When I think of Motion5 the first 3 words that come to my mind are: dedicated, personal and highly motivated.

They’re all related to the great interaction with the M5 team: from the first moment there was a synergy with the consultants (Frijke and Mante). Their dedication to this collaboration was always clear; they made the program personal and allowed our team to be comfortable taking this new approach. And you can tell they’re really motivated and passionate about it. They’re a pleasure to work with and that’s part of the reason why we would like to continue in the future!

What did you learn from the program?

The program helped us to develop a structured approach to customers. We learned how to structure and plan our interactions with customers. Thanks to the SPORTSMAN© tool we’re now aligned, with 1 dashboard instead of multiple ones. We all had ideas from experience on how to approach a client, but with the tools and training from M5 we can now focus on the things that really matter. This new approach also brought the whole team, not just the sales department, to an alignment and helped us tackle upcoming challenges in a structure way.

What was the biggest impact you noticed so far?

Let me start by saying that our sales colleagues are all experienced professionals, yet they embarked on this new experience with open minds and I could really see a change in their behavior. It forced them to think out of their comfort zone, not relying on the old habits but thinking with a new mindset.

To give an example, one of our colleagues in Italy needed to introduce APBI to a hospital and convince them to switch to it. In a “normal” scenario we would have reached out to the Radiotherapy Department to pitch our ideas, but thanks to our new approach she was able to identify a new group of stakeholders (breast surgeons) as potential advocates and to build awareness to them about the advantages of this treatment technique. Usually we don’t interact with them, but with our new mindset we were able to see the potential in doing so and created a tailored plan to interact with them: explaining the benefits of APBI and bringing them on board as advocates. This colleague really stepped out of her usual approach and it paid out.

Another example was the creation of a detailed APBI Toolkit for our teams: a toolkit with all the info, possible Q&A scenarios for different stakeholders and technical aspects. The team really appreciated having all these concrete APBI specific examples in one single place, which made it easier for them to directly use in practice. The learning here was that if this was useful for one product, it would help us sell other solutions as well, and so now we’re working on toolkits for other solutions too.

What were the most important results Elekta achieved with this program?

We got a significant long-term benefit: we are equipped to build a solid pipeline for the future, thanks to the newly found structured approach and tools we learned. And because of this, we were able to identify the first group of prospects to work with. A big win for us!

How would you describe the transition from a face-to-face program to an online program with Motion5?

It was a nice learning for everyone: face-to-face training definitely has it perks, as it allows for maximum engagement and personal interaction, but I must admit I was positively surprised by how smooth the transition was. The M5 team was so dedicated, which made it easier for us to keep the engagement level high: people were fully committed to using the tools, the sales team kept moving forward and working on that pipeline.