IBM - Sales Enablement Program of the Year

Company: IBM, Armonk, NY
Company Description: IBM is a values-based enterprise of individuals who create & apply technology to make the world work better. Today, more than 400,000 IBM employees around the world invent and integrate hardware, software and services to help forward-thinking enterprises, institutions and people succeed on a smarter planet.
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Sales Enablement Program of the Year

Nomination Title: Driving Awareness, Adoption, and Advocacy with Client-centric Enablement

IBM CPQ Central Enablement & Adoption (E&A) team launched in 2017 to enable IBM Direct Sellers on IBM’s first instance of Salesforce CRM + CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) named “Gaia”. This initiative introduced a modernized, integrated, easy-to-use tool for XaaS subscription quoting. The team drove onboarding, training, and user support.

In 2020, with IBM declaring Salesforce as its “One CRM”, the CPQ portion of Gaia was re-positioned as “IBM CPQ Central” (ICPQC) and expanded for quoting new Cloud consumption offerings along with XaaS subscriptions. E&A’s 2021 program focused on enabling sellers worldwide who had varying levels of knowledge and skill in both the offerings and the repositioned tool.

The team took this opportunity to advance a client-centric approach. We looked deeply into metrics, lessons learned, and best practices. We then designed and delivered an enablement program that would meet the needs of our constituency and effectively drive awareness, adoption, and advocacy.

The E&A team’s current mission is to empower sellers and partners to sell Cloud and XaaS, through strategic, relevant, timely, and connected enablement content and experiences.

We execute on the following key activities:

Voice of the Seller
Enablement Planning
Marketing & Communications
Education & Training
User Support
Success Measures

The IBM CPQ Central E&A team leveraged data, lessons learned, and industry best practices to develop a client-centric sales enablement strategy supported by an effective execution program addressing engagement, communications, education and training, marketing and change management.

The E&A team started by examining metrics and listening to users to gain insights into:

Education and training activities that would provide the greatest value,
Communication approaches that would be most effective for the users,
Approach and the ways to build advocacy.

With the end-user in mind, the team took several steps:
Implemented a more formal, ongoing approach to obtaining the Voice of the Seller feedback data to generate insights
Re-branded “IBM CPQ Central” and formulated compelling value propositions

Introduced a set of initiatives and improvements to address seller enablement needs such as:
IBM CPQ Central Seismic landing page with sales information and links
First Line Manager Outreach for dedicated, customized team training
Open access to live virtual training and hypercare
Simplified, targeted self-serv education with consumable content
Enhanced communications via multiple channels
Easy access, always on, user support via Slack
Curated Seller Success Stories

With these efforts the team has achieved the following results:
Improved 87% seller quoting cycle time
Increased 22% YtY Revenue
Awareness: 100% Engagement with the target audience through onboarding, communications, and outreach
>55% participation in Live Virtual Training
Adoption: 114% increase in user adoption of ICPQC vs Gaia
Advocacy: ICPQC 2021 NPS = 63

CPQ Central Enablement & Adoption Overview package: https://ibm.box.com/s/yn7gegpsa3w4oe4yvrkn9t47rk7mee81

The attachment shares visuals of several of the items mentioned in this write up including:

IBM CPQ Central Enablement & Adoption Team’s Mission and Approach (page 2)
2021 Accomplishments and Metrics (page 3 & 4)
Voice of the Seller Program (page 5 & 6)
IBM CPQC Enablement Planning Template (page 7)
IBM Tools and Repositories leveraged for IBM CPQ Central Seller Enablement (page 8)
IBM CPQ Central Communications Examples (page 9)
Seller Success Stories – “Home Runs” Examples (page 10)
Reporting Dashboards & Metrics (page 11)

Enabling seller tools is often deemed as a simple process of providing tool access, education, training, and support. This program goes further, following an end-to-end, strategic enablement program to build awareness, increase adoption, and advocacy for a repositioned tool with expanded offerings.

To increase awareness, adoption, and advocacy, which in-turn drives revenue, we had to know our audience and be strategic and creative in our enablement. By employing a client-centric approach, best practice learning methods, and marketing & communications methods, the E&A team was able to effectively engage sellers in adopting ICPQC for their XaaS subscription and Cloud consumption quoting.

Reimaging seller enablement from our end-users’ perspective was the critical foundation.
We focused on client-centricity e.g., accurately identified the IBM Sellers to onboard and enable, launched a Voice of the Seller program to obtain feedback and insights, and implemented processes to analyze and report on findings from multiple sources of seller input.

Next we “up’d our game” in enablement activities.
We implemented a strategic planning process and template to prepare for launches (e.g., new users, new capabilities), thinking through the end-to-end enablement experience for our sellers based on their needs.

Finally, we implemented innovative marketing and communications tactics to keep our sellers aware and informed, and to build momentum.
We implemented a communications drumbeat sharing important announcements, Tips & FAQs, advice for Quarter Close quoting, and Peer-to-Peer Success Stories.