Jill's Blog

Getting a Squirrel to Focus
Dr. Patricia Scott reminds us that no matter how brilliant we are, if we can’t get our message across, we won’t lead, sell, educate, persuade, advocate or help. In Getting a Squirrel to Focus, she provides an easy and practical way to make our messages much more efficient and effective. Masterful communicators may appear to have commonsensical

Gas Money for pharma folks
No matter how bad an experience, we can always make it better when we choose to learn something from it. That’s what Troy Lewis, author of Gas Money did. I met Troy at a conference for pharma trainers. We happened to sit at the same breakfast table and he soon had me mesmerized with his stories. Troy

LTEN reveals winners from pharma training excellence awards
LTEN did a great job summarizing all the winners and finalists from the 2015 LTEN Excellence Awards. As I always say “Ideas in = Ideas Out”! What ideas can you learn from these award-winning ones. EngageRx is honored to be featured as the winner of the Learning Content Excellence award for the work we’ve been

3 Simple Ways for Pharma to be more Patient-Focused. What are you waiting for?
I met Dawn Richards and Anne Marie Wright at a recent pharma conference. I was impressed by how they are serving pharma and healthcare and invited them to publish a guest blog here. Enjoy. Have you ever stepped back and thought about why the pharmaceutical industry does not engage its end user until so late
Great Leaders in Pharma Series: UCB’s Chief Patient Affairs Officer, Lode DeWulf, talks with Jill Donahue about patient-centered growth
At eyeforpharma Barcelona I had many great discussions with pharma leaders. Dr. Lode Dewulf has led UCB into some truly uncharted territory with his passion for patient-centricity. Watch this interview to hear more about what he has learned on their journey!

Growing our Business Faster with One Big Idea
Our second article in our Serve Differently Column on the eyeforpharma blog. Read it here!
Our poster we presented at LTEN to showcase our award-winning pharma program
As finalists for the LTEN Learning Content Excellence award, we were invited to submit a poster. Since we won, I’m so glad we put the effort in to create the poster. Here it is. Our best attempt to summarize LEO’s experience creating growth in a patient-focused way. Enjoy!

Book of the Month – The Leadership Handbook
If you are reading this, you likely are a great leader. It is the great leaders who continually learn and grow to be even better leaders. We are never done. John C. Maxwell is a shining example. He wasn’t done after writing one book, he’s written over 30 books and sold more than 24 million

Excellerate Announces EngageRx as Winner of LTEN Excellence Award for Learning Content
Toronto, Canada – June 3, 2015 – Excellerate announced today that EngageRx: The 3 Keys to Patient-focused Growth (www.engagerx.org), won the LTEN Excellence Award for Learning Content at the 44th LTEN Annual Conference (www.LTENconference.com), the largest gathering of life science trainers and educators in the US. The LTEN Excellence Awards is the premier awards program in the

The Purpose Economy – Summary of excellent book and implications for pharma sales
I’ve been working for the last decade trying to help the pharma industry grow faster by serving differently. Having more purpose, focusing on the patient is key to this change. Aaron Hurst’s insights in The Purpose Economy show me that the people in our industry are not only ready to be purpose driven, but if

What’s the BIG idea? 3 tips for pharma sales training professionals to help reps open doors
Focus Magazine Summer edition just published my story as a feature article. I hope it helps pharma sales trainers help the reps open doors! You can read it here.

Excellerate Announced as a Finalist in Learning Content in 2015 LTEN Excellence Awards
Toronto, Canada – April 24, 2015 – Excellerate (www.engagerx.org) has been named a finalist in LTEN Excellence Awards in the category Learning Content for its mobile learning program EngageRx: The 3 Keys to Patient-focused Growth. LTEN is honoring best-in-class learning and development initiatives within the life sciences. The 2015 award winners will be announced during the June

Pharma sales training – a gift for you!
If you missed out on my LTEN pharmaceutical sales training webinar, you have a second chance to watch and learn! Click here if you’d like to learn the biggest mistake we make in pharma training. Skip to min 4 to hear my story about doctors sneaking around with reps…. Yikes!
Patient-focused movement for pharma emerges
What did Paul and I talk about when the crowds left efpBarcelona? Well, we were both elated. We had never felt so proud to be working in pharma. Why? After three days at one of the largest gatherings of pharmaceutical executives – eyeforpharma Barcelona 2015 – we felt that the idea of pharma being patient-focused was

Invisible Influence
“Because people are constantly trying to find the right words to say to someone, they ignore something that is 100 times bigger than the exact words: they ignore the context.” You will only want to read this post if you need to influence people around you. If anyone just excused him/herself, let me know. I’m curious
Wow! She’s impressive! My interview with LEO CEO Gitte Aabo
Gitte Aabo is leading the way! She has set a clear direction for LEO pharma. She strongly believes that “When we focus on the patient, business will follow.” She said “Our philosophy at LEO is that we run a profitable business so that we can provide better solutions for patients not the other way around.” In

Where is the puck going in pharma? Reflections from the chair of eyeforpharma Philadelphia 2015
From the podium I looked around the room at 400+ commercial pharma leaders from the US and wondered; will they be as advanced as their peers in Europe? I had just returned from the eyeforpharma conference in Barcelona where I was downright impressed by pharma’s progress. We had meaningfully shifted from a focus on the product

Wish you were there! eyeforpharma Barcelona 2015
There were 15 minutes left. There was only one thing left to do. Paul Simms, the mastermind behind eyeforpharma, had the difficult job of summarizing the past three days in Barcelona. Nearly 900 senior pharma leaders, patients and service partners had gathered for the pre-eminent, largest attended pharma conference of the year. We enjoyed awesome