Medical device reps live in their cars, in hospitals, and on their phones — not inside an LMS or a training app. Here is how a $2B Philips sales education team delivered training via text and QR instead, and lifted adoption to 99%.
The reach problem in medical device sales enablement
Philips Healthcare's patient monitoring business is a $2B unit inside a global health-technology company. Its account executives, associate account managers, and specialists are in customer meetings at least four days a week. They already live inside a CRM and a stack of customer-facing apps. Asking them to open one more app to complete training is the fastest way to lose them. Kristy Rosano, who runs sales education for the business, inherited a microlearning vendor that made that problem worse, not better.
"We had a previous vendor that we were using that was taking a big chunk of budget for microlearning. … one of the other challenges we have is user acceptance. Here's a new widget, here's a new gadget, here's a new thing. Let's use this sales rep. Well, the sales rep's got tons of things they're using every day"
Kristy RosanoDirector of Sales EducationPhilips
Deliver training where reps already are: their company phone
Instead of pushing reps into another app, Kristy's team started pushing training out — as a text message to the company phone every rep already carries. For a sales kickoff and a sales intensive, prework arrived as a 7taps link over SMS, wrapped in memes, animations, and a Mission Impossible theme. Reps tapped through in minutes. By the end of the year, user adoption was up 99%.
"Instead of an app within the app for the SKO, right? Or within the app for the sales intensive event, we're just text messaging them. Well, they all have a company phone, right? And all these outside sales reps. And so we were able to use 7taps just to text message them. And so they weren't opening an app and they're all on their phones. Me and my phone are besties, right?"Kristy RosanoDirector of Sales EducationPhilips
Cut the preload so a campaign ships the same week
The previous vendor demanded questions, quizzes, Excel user lists, and rounds of review before anything went out. Kristy needed something a two-person sales education team with no instructional designer could actually ship. Using the 7taps AI, she briefed it in a few sentences on a Challenger-style constructive tension exercise and had a full game built and ready to send.
"I was amazed the amount of intelligence that 7taps AI had in it. … I didn't give it any intellectual property. I just told it a few sentences and it pulled from the worldwide web of information and it created this from its AI engine. … Took me maybe five to 10 minutes to create this entire game."Kristy RosanoDirector of Sales EducationPhilips
Extend the last mile into the physical space: QR in the learning lab
Philips runs a mini-hospital learning lab in its Nashville hub — real monitors, real anesthesia machines, real ORs. The sales education team can't be in the room every hour of every day. So each room is getting its own QR code that opens a 7taps walk-through with voice, video, and cards. A rep between meetings can walk in, scan, and learn the room on their own.
"What we're going to do is we're starting to develop QR codes that go to each room in the OR, right? What's the OR? How do I act? What do I do? What about the monitoring solutions in this area? And so the QR code will take them to a 7taps, they'll open that and then it'll really walk them through it with voice and video and cards to to walk them through that room so that if we're not there, they still learn in the lab."Kristy RosanoDirector of Sales EducationPhilips
Why this matters for a regulated sales org
Field reps in FDA-regulated categories have to be trained and certified, on the record, on every new product introduction. When training is assigned into an LMS and no one opens it, that is not just a completion problem — it is an audit problem. Delivering training over SMS and QR, in formats reps will actually finish, closes the gap between assigned and done in a way a compliance team can defend.
Results for L&D
- Field sales reps completed prework at 99% adoption when training arrived by text to their company phone instead of inside another app.
- A two-person team with no instructional designer built a full Challenger-selling game in five to ten minutes using 7taps AI.
- QR codes on each room in the Nashville learning lab let reps self-serve product training when the sales education team isn't on site.
- Replacing a heavier microlearning vendor freed budget and cut the preload/afterload cycle for every new product introduction.
If your reps live on their phone and in customer sites — not in your LMS — 7taps delivers training to them there and proves who completed. Book a demo to see how.
Book a demo · Start a free trial
Philips Healthcare's Kristy Rosano shared this at MicrolearningCONF. Quotes are Kristy Rosano's own words, lightly trimmed for length.
