Something felt different at the LTEN 2025 conference in Aurora, Colorado.
Maybe it was the concerns related to Medicare Part D changes, or the dawning realization that traditional training methods simply aren’t cutting it anymore. Whatever the cause, the usual conference cheerleading and buzzwords gave way to refreshingly honest conversations about what’s genuinely broken.
From July 28-31, training leaders from 142 pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies gathered to confront a harsh reality: the market has changed faster than their teams can adapt. Between sessions on brain science and negotiation tactics, a consensus emerged—payers now drive the conversation, while most sales teams are operating with outdated tactics.
Here’s what went down.
Conference Overview: A Global Reckoning
You could feel the weight of the moment just walking through the lobby. Industry leaders had flown in from Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, and all converged around the same urgent mission: figuring out how to rebuild their training programs from the ground up.
Who Showed Up and Why That Tells You Everything
The conference drew a unique crowd that shows exactly who’s driving training decisions in life sciences.
Training managers and supervisors made up 34% of attendees, with another 29% being directors, VPs, or heads of training. The remaining mix included 22% trainers and learning professionals, 5% field trainers, and 6% training suppliers and consultants.
What’s also interesting is that 17% came from medical device and diagnostics firms, while 8% worked in non-commercial areas like clinical, quality, research, and medical affairs. These aren’t junior employees figuring things out. These are movers and shakers responsible for preparing entire teams to handle payer negotiations that have gotten significantly more complex thanks to new Medicare regulations.
The Medicare Part D Situation That Changed Everything
The Inflation Reduction Act and Medicare Part D redesign took center stage at every session, and for good reason. Starting this year, 2025, patient out-of-pocket costs cap at $2,000 annually, and the coverage gap is all but gone.
But here’s where it gets complicated for everyone else in the system.
Payers now carry heavier financial liability in the catastrophic phase. Manufacturers have to provide 10% discounts in the initial phase and 20% in the catastrophic phase for negotiated drugs. Come 2026, Medicare can negotiate prices for select high-spend drugs. And if manufacturers raise prices faster than inflation, they pay rebates to Medicare.
Payers, as a result, now scrutinize every formulary decision like never before. They want real value propositions backed by clinical outcomes and cost-effectiveness data. Market access teams who used to succeed by highlighting product features now need completely different conversation skills.
Jeff Cochran’s Take on Why Teams Keep Missing the Mark
SNI’s Jeff Cochran delivered a session called “Negotiating with Purpose: Getting to the Real Why Behind Stakeholder Requests” that hit on a universal frustration. Teams approach training like ordering from a menu, asking for negotiation workshops to help close more deals without first identifying what specific behaviors need to change or what their actual goals are.
Cochran’s main point was that stakeholders rarely share their true motivations upfront. In other words, that first objection or request you hear is usually just the surface. There are deeper concerns underneath and multiple catalysts driving their decisions.
That’s why sales and market access teams need to probe further and ask better questions. All while building enough trust and credibility to uncover what matters most to clinicians versus payers versus institutions.
Each group has different priorities, and if you can’t identify and address those specific concerns, you’ll lose in this new environment.
Lauren Waldman’s Brain Science Approach to Making Training Stick
The keynote from Lauren Waldman, founder of Learning Pirate Inc., challenged how most companies think about training design.
Her core argument was straightforward: if your team can’t remember and use what they learned three months later, the training failed. Memory equals learning, and most programs focus on delivering information rather than ensuring retention.
Waldman pushed for combining storytelling with retrieval practice and spaced learning intervals. Instead of cramming everything into intensive workshops, she advocated for designing programs that align with how brains actually process and store information.
She called it training the brain, not just the task.
County Fair Night With a Purpose
A Tuesday night county fair-themed reception was also a conference highlight that came at the perfect time.
After days of intense sessions, something was refreshing about playing carnival games against the backdrop of the Rockies. People loosened up, let their guards down, and had candid conversations as people instead of just exchanging business cards.
What made the evening special, though, was how it put everything back into perspective. We spent time making personalized cards for families at Ronald McDonald House Charities of Denver. After spending the conference talking about market access strategies and payer negotiations, sitting down to write encouraging notes to families going through medical crises put everything in perspective.
It was one of those moments that reminded us why this work matters. All the policy debates and business strategies we’d been discussing suddenly felt very real and very human.
Five Core Insights from LTEN 2025
And maybe that’s why the conversations throughout LTEN 2025 felt different this year. Whether it was during formal sessions or those crucial hallway chats, people seemed ready to drop the usual conference speak. Instead of the predictable talk about “driving innovation” and “achieving excellence,” teams were admitting their training programs weren’t delivering results. People were openly worried about Medicare changes. The conversations got real fast.
Five themes kept surfacing over and over, and they paint a picture of an industry at a crossroads:
1. Training Without a “Why” Is Just Expensive Hope
Jeff Cochran called out what everyone’s been doing wrong: treating training like a drive-through order. Teams request negotiation training, expecting it to boost close rates magically. Yet, they haven’t defined what success looks like or mapped out how to get there.
The solution starts with working backwards. First, identify 3-5 quantifiable KPIs to achieve in the next 12 months. Keep it focused—too many metrics and nobody knows what matters. Next, determine the three key activities that will drive those goals. Finally, map out the specific on-the-job behaviors your team needs to master to execute those activities.
Without this foundation, you’re basically throwing money at workshops and hoping something sticks.
2. Behavioral Change Needs a Blueprint, Not a Workshop
Another hard truth from the conference: you can’t workshop your way to transformation. Real behavioral change only happens when you connect the dots between KPIs, sales strategies, and what people do every day.
Let’s say you want to boost market access success rates by 15%. Great. Your strategy might be engaging payers earlier in the process. But that only works if your team learns to dig beneath surface objections, adapt their message for different stakeholders, and stop pitching long enough actually to hear what payers need.
Most companies book a negotiation seminar and call it done, then act surprised when everyone goes back to their old habits by Thursday.
3. Market Access Teams Need Combat Training for the New Reality
Here’s the reality: you can’t bury your heads in the sand and hope you can magically use the old way of doing things with these policy updates.
Truth is, the Medicare Part D redesign and IRA changes have fundamentally changed what payers care about and how they make decisions.
Payers don’t want to hear about your drug’s mechanism of action anymore—they want proof it works in the real world and saves them money. They’re asking more challenging questions earlier in conversations, and they’re not buying generic value propositions. Teams that haven’t figured out how to lead with clinical outcomes, real-world evidence, and solid cost-effectiveness data are struggling.
The successful teams are completely rethinking how they operate. Market Access, HEOR, Pricing, and Medical Affairs are finally talking to each other instead of working in separate bubbles. They’re engaging with payers much earlier in the drug development process, and they’re building value stories that hold up under scrutiny.
The gap between teams that have adapted and those that haven’t is getting wider by the day.
4. Brains Don’t Work the Way Training Departments Think They Do
Lauren Waldman’s keynote was essentially a science-backed roast of traditional pharma training.
Her point was simple: cramming information into people’s heads for two days straight doesn’t create lasting change. Brains need stories, practice, and time between sessions to build new capabilities.
Think about it—can your team remember and use what they learned in that workshop six months ago? If not, you lit that money on fire. Waldman pushed for spaced learning with retrieval practice, which sounds academic and complicated but means giving people time to practice, forget a little, then practice again.
SNI’s scenario-based approach fits this model because it gives teams multiple chances to work through real situations, not just memorize talking points they’ll forget next week.
5. Nobody Cares About Your Pitch Until You Understand Their Problem
Jeff Cochran’s session also hit a nerve because everyone knows their teams talk too much and listen too little. A payer pushes back on formulary placement, and your rep immediately launches into clinical trial data. But that first objection? It’s seldom the real issue.
Maybe the payer’s worried about their budget getting blown up by the new liability structure. Perhaps they’re concerned about patient adherence. Or, possibly, they’ve been burned by similar drugs before. You won’t know unless you probe deeper, ask better questions, and actively listen long enough to hear the answers.
The SNI approach that got people excited focused on teaching teams to uncover these hidden concerns and adapt their message accordingly. A cookie-cutter pitch that works for clinicians will bomb with payers, and vice versa. Yet most teams keep using the same script for everyone and wonder why they’re struggling.
What Happens Next
LTEN 2025 is over, and training leaders are flying home with a sobering reality check in their carry-on bags.
The message was clear: quick-fix training won’t solve this. You need to figure out what you’re trying to achieve before booking another workshop. Your teams need to learn how to have different conversations—ones where they ask questions and listen instead of reciting clinical trial data. Otherwise, that expensive two-day intensive that everyone forgets by Friday is money down the drain.
The companies that get it are already mapping KPIs to specific behaviors and rebuilding their training from scratch. The ones still searching for a magic workshop will learn the hard way when their market access numbers start sliding.
The real work starts now.
