Echelon Performance

For many commercial teams, the question is no longer whether coaching is happening. The bigger question is whether coaching is making a measurable difference. That is the focus of Echelon’s LTEN 2026 co-hosted workshop, “The Missing Metric: Why Coaching Belongs at the Center of Commercial Learning Strategy.” We will cover: • Why coaching quality deserves a place alongside revenue, productivity, and market share metrics • How leaders can define effective coaching in practical terms • Where technology and AI can support consistency without distracting from the work The session will be held June 16 at 3:30PM and feature: Echelon's Ed McCarthy, iCoachFirst's Ted Power, and Botanix's Dan Listemann. #LTEN #LTEN26 https://hubs.li/Q04jlWXT0

LTEN will be full of conversations about AI, tools, and how to scale training faster. Important? Yes. Enough? Not if strategy still breaks down in the field. The real test is what happens between a first-line manager and a rep. That is where brand strategy becomes behavior, sales execution gets reinforced, and leaders get a clearer view of what is really happening with customers. At Echelon, that coaching conversation is where we spend our time. First-line managers are carrying more pressure than ever. They are expected to develop people, drive execution, support strategy, and report meaningful field insight back to leadership. But coaching is too often treated like one more task instead of the mechanism that makes the rest of the system work. If you are heading to LTEN, let’s connect. We would welcome the chance to compare notes on what you are seeing across your teams, what is working, and where coaching still needs to get sharper. Schedule time to meet with us at the show: [https://hubs.li/Q04hxY6y0] We will also be participating in an LTEN workshop with Ted Power from iCoach and Dan Listemann from Botanix on June 16 at 3:30 PM, with more details to follow. #LTEN #LTEN2026 #LifeSciencesTraining #FieldCoaching #SalesLeadership #CommercialExcellence #SalesTraining

Across her career, Margie Gozdiff has seen that most coaching challenges are not unique, they are repeated patterns across every industry. She sees the same breakdowns again and again: • Managers rely on their own approach as the only path • Coaching conversations become directive • Skill development is inconsistent across teams • Initiatives lose momentum without reinforcement • Real behavior change never fully takes hold Her focus is helping managers make one critical shift. Move from directing to discovering. When managers ask better questions and stay with development long enough, performance follows.Across her career, Margie Gozdiff has seen that most coaching challenges are not unique, they are repeated patterns across every industry. Read the full article to learn more: https://hubs.li/Q04gpnfl0

Strong field coaching isn’t about more ride-alongs, it’s about creating consistency, clarity, and follow-through in every development conversation. What drove measurable impact in this case: • Managers shifted from feedback only to clear, forward-looking development paths • Coaching documentation became more specific, reinforcing accountability between visits • Monthly reinforcement helped embed new behaviors into daily execution When coaching becomes structured and repeatable, managers don’t just support performance, they actively shape it across the organization. Read the case study to learn more. https://hubs.li/Q04dScWK0

Early in his career, Ed had a representative who was exceptional. She hit every number and ran her territory independently, so self-sufficient that he believed she required little management. She resigned. Not because of the role or the compensation, but because he had never coached her. She performed at a high level, and he assumed that meant she was fine. She was not fine. She was invisible. That moment shaped a lesson that has held true across two decades of working with managers: even your strongest performers need someone actively invested in their development, especially those who appear not to need it. In 2016, Claire Davids joined, bringing two decades of experience running and selling her own business, along with a systems-oriented approach that reshaped how the company operated. Together, they built an organization that has influenced how some of the most advanced life sciences teams approach field coaching. The work began with a simple question: what is happening when a manager coaches a representative in the field? Twenty years, tens of thousands of coaching conversations, one Cool Glasses Club, a few condemned offices, and a body of work that has changed how organizations coach. The question remains the same, as does the focus on the work that matters most. Read the full story, including the office with the X-ray machine that, in retrospect, warranted less time than it received. https://hubs.li/Q04ck2Mw0

20 things we learned in 20 years Echelon Performance turns 20 on April 15th. Here's what two decades actually teaches you. 1. Your best rep needs coaching too. Leaving high performers alone because they're "fine" isn't managing. It's neglect with good intentions. 2. Put it in writing. We're not as memorable as we think. Write it down. Make it worth reading. 3. Some people just love coaching. We worried we might be the only coaching geeks in the room. We were very wrong. 4. AI is here to stay. PowerPoints became dashboards. Dashboards are becoming something else. Stay ahead of the curve. 5. Live training will always be the best form of learning. Nobody ever had a life-changing moment in a RISE module. 6. The field coaching report is the most underused asset in life sciences. More signal than most organizations ever extract. Genuinely exciting. And a little frustrating. 7. Every field ride is a trust fall. Great coaches start from the same place — trust. Twenty years in, most organizations still haven't fully cracked this. 8. Coaching changes the coach too. Authenticity matters more than technique. 9. The key to great coaching? Listening. Great coaches don't open their mouths until they've earned the trust of their team. 10. Great coaching is portable. What makes a great coach in pharma makes a great coach on a football field. The context changes. The principles don't. 11. The outsider sees it clearest. Claire spent twenty years building and selling her own business before joining Echelon — and started asking the questions the rest of us had stopped asking. 12. Clients are the best thought-partners. Every leap we've made started with someone asking: "What if?" Now, the things they don't teach you in business school: 13. Ask which room had the X-ray machine. Don't wait until your staff starts glowing. 14. Three teenage sons are surprisingly useful when moving offices in a snowstorm. No movers. Slushy streets. Desks. We are not not proud of this. 15. Never schedule leadership training in Amsterdam without an evacuation plan. Fire alarm. Turkey lunch. Champagne at 3pm. They needed coffee. 16. Reading tens of thousands of coaching reports will eventually require corrective lenses. We have a club. Membership is not optional. 17. A red-tailed hawk outside your office window is a good omen. Our unofficial mascot since Shrewsbury, NJ. Unverified. We're choosing to believe it. 18. Clients who believe in you make everything possible. Every leap started with someone who trusted us enough to ask the hard question. 19. Twenty years goes faster than you think. The questions get better. 20. Without people who believe in you, you won't last one year — let alone twenty. To every client, collaborator, and colleague who has trusted us, challenged us, and grown with us: thank you. That's because of you. We're just getting started. Here's to the next twenty. — Ed & Claire, Echelon Performance #Echelon20

One of the things we love about partnering with En Fuego Leadership? Their deep roots in life sciences, combined with growing reach into other industries. Here's why that matters for evidence-based coaching: The bulk of our 75,000+ coaching conversations analyzed came from life sciences, across therapeutic areas, regulatory environments, and the unique challenges of leading technical teams. That means our methodologies are battle-tested in one of the most complex coaching environments out there. But here's what we've learned: the fundamentals of great coaching don't change by industry. The research on how people learn, change behavior, and develop new skills applies whether you're in pharma, biotech, medical devices, or beyond. What does change is the context: the specific challenges leaders face, the language that resonates, the examples that land. That's where En Fuego's expertise becomes invaluable. They can help a clinical operations leader navigate matrix complexity, then turn around and help a commercial team build coaching into their culture. Same evidence-based foundation, different application. That's the kind of flexibility that makes coaching programs actually work in the real world. What industry are you in, and what's the biggest coaching challenge your leaders face? Learn more: https://hubs.li/Q044rnkk0 #LeadershipDevelopment #LifeSciences #CoachingInContext #Pharma #Biotech

Early in his career, Ed had a rep who was exceptional. Hitting every number. Running herself. So self-sufficient he barely needed to manage her. So he didn't. She resigned. Not because of the role or the money. Because in all that time, he'd never once coached her. Never invested in her development. She was excellent — so he assumed she was fine. She wasn't fine. She was invisible. That moment is why Echelon Performance exists. The realization that coaching isn't just for the people who are struggling — it's for everyone. Especially the ones who look like they don't need it. ON APRIL 15TH. WE TURN 20! Swipe through for a look at twenty years of asking one question: what is actually happening when a manager coaches a rep in the field? (Includes: a condemned office, a snow squall, sixty jet-lagged managers and an unexpected round of champagne, and an involuntary glasses club.) →

Most sales leaders coach the top and manage the bottom. The middle gets a field ride and a “keep pushing.” That’s where the biggest growth opportunity often sits. Reps delivering 80–95% usually aren’t struggling. But without a development plan, they stay flat for years while leaders wonder why team performance won’t move. The middle of the curve needs development, not just coaching. • Bottom performers get urgency • Top performers get collaboration • Middle performers get feedback without direction • And their trajectory never changes In specialty pharma teams, that plateau shows up directly in territory performance. High-performing organizations create deliberate development plans for capable reps and coach the behaviors that actually move performance. https://hubs.li/Q048Wydc0

Last month, we had the privilege of training and certifying the entire En Fuego Leadership team in our Evidence-Based Coaching Program. Watching experienced L&D professionals, most with deep life sciences backgrounds, dig into the research, practice new techniques, and challenge each other to go deeper was exactly what certification should be. The En Fuego team didn't just complete the program. They engaged with it, questioned it, and made it their own. That's what we look for in our licensed partners: people who understand that evidence-based coaching isn't about following a script. It's about understanding the why behind the techniques (backed by 75,000+ real coaching conversations) so you can adapt them thoughtfully to each unique situation. The result? En Fuego is now equipped to bring this transformative approach to organizations across industries, with particular strength in life sciences where they already have deep credibility and relationships. As a licensed partner, they're also offering the full suite of Echelon coaching services, from the core program to one-on-one coaching, coaching analysis, and custom workshops. Curious about what the certification process involves or what makes someone an Echelon Certified Coach? Drop a question in the comments. Explore the program: https://hubs.li/Q044rfrG0 #Certification #CoachingTraining #ProfessionalDevelopment #LifeSciences