This article comes from Tim Littlejohn’s insightful talk, ‘Enabling leaders to drive enablement adoption across your organization’, at our 2023 Sydney Sales Enablement Summit, check out his full presentation here. 

Have you ever been tasked with transforming an entire region's sales leadership overnight? 

That's exactly the challenge I faced last year at IBM, and it taught me some truly invaluable lessons about driving sales enablement adoption across a large organization.

As a sales enablement and learning specialist, I've worn many hats throughout my career but this particular challenge pushed me to new limits - and led to some exciting discoveries.

Picture this: I'm in the middle of coaching a sales conversation when my phone pings with a Slack from one of our executives:

"Got a moment? We've got a bigger problem, and it's all about sales enablement."

Little did I know that this message would kick off a whirlwind journey to revolutionize our sales leadership across the Asia-Pacific region. 

In this article, I'll share the story of how we planned and executed IBM's First Line Managers Sales Academy, the challenges we faced, and the key insights we gained along the way.

Whether you're a seasoned sales enablement pro or new to the field, I hope I can provide you with some valuable insights and practical strategies for driving adoption in your own organization. 

So, let's dive in!

The challenge: Enabling sales managers to drive growth

So, back to this problem, our executive explained to me that IBM had changed its business model, and our first-line sales managers were struggling to adapt. 

He wanted to know how we could help the entire APAC sales profession evolve. It was a tall order, but I was intrigued.

The idea was simple yet powerful: make people more competent, help them win more, and they'll be prouder of their work and perform better.

We had the data to back up the need for change, our first-line managers across APAC had identified three key areas for improvement: