Commercial methodology bootcamp

As part of a wider change in strategy, the company had created a new operating methodology for commercializing products and services, with an associated set of new ways of working. The methodology was sound and it was documented.

The problem was the one every methodology rollout has: key account management teams had to adjust their actual behavior and apply the method in everyday work, and reading about a method is not how anyone learns to use one under pressure in front of a customer.

We built the program in two deliberately different parts.

First, an online e-learning course delivered the knowledge and introduced the principles of the new methodology in a simplified, easy-to-learn format — getting the cohort to a common baseline before anyone spent a day in a room.

Second, together with the client, we convened and delivered a three-day in-person bootcamp series that integrated that knowledge into practice. The bootcamp was experiential rather than instructional: the point of putting 120 people in a room for three days is the rehearsal, and the discussion between peers about what actually happens when the method meets a real account.

120 employees came through the program, prepared with the skills to collaborate and contribute to delivering the new commercial model — in a setting that was experiential and, by the client’s own account, genuinely enjoyable, which matters more than it sounds for a cohort that had been through several previous methodology launches.