Bavarian Nordic Transforms Pharmaceutical Sales Training with Articulate 360

The Challenge

Train a busy, distributed sales force in a complex, highly regulated industry

Bavarian Nordic’s North American Commercial Sales team includes key account managers, national account managers, and frontline reps who work directly with healthcare providers. Their training needs are demanding and broad. In addition to supporting prospects, they must gain expertise in topics ranging from product knowledge to advanced negotiation tactics to FDA-approved prescribing information.

“You want them out in the field as much as possible,” says Kimberly Faith Cagle, Ph.D., Field Force Effectiveness Manager. 

Traditional in-person training required travel and significant expense. Yet the company needed reliable training documentation and analytics to meet regulatory requirements.

The Answer

Flexible, interactive training built with Articulate 360

Over a year ago, Bavarian Nordic switched to Articulate 360 to create and deliver training for the North American Commercial Sales team. Cagle uses Rise to build engaging online courses, Review to collaborate with subject matter experts, and Reach to distribute training and track results. 

In a highly regulated industry like pharmaceuticals, documentation matters. With Reach, Bavarian Nordic can track course completions, maintain clear training records, analyze performance over time, and use these insights to continuously improve its training.

Reps can complete full courses built with Articulate 360, or review key concepts in short bursts. For example, in the 10 minutes before a sales call, they may review a microlearning course to refresh their approach to handling objections. In contrast to in-person learning, participants can pause, review, and move at their own pace—a level of flexibility that keeps them focused on customer conversations.

One of Cagle’s major priorities is helping reps confidently communicate FDA-approved prescribing information. She uses structured, interactive modules to help learners break down complex material and apply it in realistic scenarios. 

Soft skills courses are another key component of Cagle’s program. Though soft skills are critical to sales and pharmaceutical employees, they can be difficult to teach online. Articulate 360’s interactivity changed that. With the platform, Cagle built a comprehensive growth mindset training program to increase teams’ agility and adaptability through organizational change. 

She also developed sales negotiation courses that include foundational negotiation skills, advanced tactics, and high-level C-suite negotiation scenarios. Each course builds on the last and is tailored to specific roles and experience levels.

Recently, Cagle leveraged Articulate 360 to create courses that help reps adapt to the organization’s evolving customer base. “The pharmaceutical industry is an ever-changing market,” says Cagle. Customer expectations shift with each generation, and Sales teams must adapt how they communicate and deliver value. “We needed to retrain our salespeople to actually meet customers where they are.” 

With Articulate 360, Cagle has built interactive scenarios that mimic real sales conversations, so reps can practice their responses, pause, and receive feedback before applying new skills in real conversations. 

Marketing, Pricing and Contracting, and Commercial Operations have also used and benefited from these soft skills courses.

Unlocking Human Potential

Lower costs, greater agility, and stronger field performance

Thanks to scalable online training, Bavarian Nordic has significantly reduced travel expenses, minimized time away from the field, accelerated training timelines, and delivered more personalized learning experiences with Articulate 360. 

This shift has been transformative for Bavarian Nordic’s geographically distributed team. Reps can complete training without boarding a plane or missing out on days of customer interactions.  They can refresh their skills in small chunks of time throughout their day. 

For Cagle, personalization is one of Articulate 360’s greatest strengths. Content can be tailored by team, role, and experience level, and each layer of customization makes training more relevant and effective. 

In fast-moving industries like biotechnology, Sales reps need to go beyond product knowledge to stay ahead. They need emotional intelligence, agility, and the ability to adapt to change.

“If you want to keep your training at the top of its game, I would have to recommend Articulate,” says Cagle. “You have a lot of resources all in one place.”

With Articulate 360, Bavarian Nordic creates interactive, customized product and soft skills training for sales reps, reducing costs and travel time while improving learning experiences.