Cultivating sales manager capabilities through coaching

Client need

A leading global media company, serving audiences in 170+ countries, had built its reputation on delivering high-quality content through a vast network of regional operations. With over 20,000 employees, its business relied on leaders at every level making fast, effective decisions in their markets while staying aligned to global strategy.

The company saw an opportunity to better support new leaders joining the organization globally and seasoned leaders seeking additional development opportunities, focusing on those responsible for bringing strategy to life every day.

To bridge that gap, the company set out to pilot a scalable leadership coaching program focused on:

• Building six leadership capabilities critical to business success
• Creating consistency across regions while respecting cultural and language nuance
• Measuring progress at individual, regional, and organizational levels
• Enabling development that lasts beyond the coaching engagement

The goal: strengthen alignment and elevate leadership impact across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia–Pacific region.

Solution

The challenge wasn’t just delivering coaching, it was creating a leadership development system that could work across continents, prove its impact, and adapt to local realities without diluting global priorities.

The company partnered with Sounding Board, a BTS company, to design a pilot that blended human expertise with scaled, tech-enabled insight to meet four imperatives:

• Activating frontline and mid-level leadership – Focused on people leaders who directly shape day-to-day execution and culture.
• Building the capabilities that matter – Six leadership behaviors rooted in the company’s unique culture, values, and strategic operating principles, ensuring development was relevant to how leaders drive success within the organization.
• Ensuring quality at scale – AI-driven matching connected each leader to a coach with relevant industry, regional, and cultural experience.
• Making growth measurable and sustainable – Biweekly coaching reinforced through a digital platform for goal tracking, reflection, and feedback, plus structured manager check-ins to keep progress aligned to business needs.

Scaled coaching gave the company a consistent platform and approach to leadership development, developing leaders in every region to the same leadership expectations and behaviors. Real-time insights surfaced trends in behavior change, engagement, and alignment early enough to adjust the program midstream. The data struck the right balance between consistency and cultural relevance, showing where local adaptations strengthened leadership and where global priorities needed to hold firm.

Results

By the end of the program, leaders across continents were working from the same playbook, speaking a shared leadership language, and working in ways that respected local context and in alignment to how they wanted leaders to show up in the organization. Managers noticed stronger alignment with their direct reports, leaders felt more confident in their roles, and the data showed tangible shifts in the behaviors tied to business success.

Impact at a glance:

• 84% completion rate demonstrated sustained engagement.
• 92% of coachees advanced their development goals, with nearly as many showing measurable improvement in targeted leadership behaviors.
• 84% of coachees and 64% of managers reported stronger alignment in how they approached priorities and collaboration.
• 76% of leaders progressed toward broader career goals, signaling a stronger leadership pipeline.
• 87% satisfaction rate with coaching, reinforced by a 95% coach match success rate.
• 30% of coachees reported increased job satisfaction—critical in a competitive talent market.

What’s next:

The company expanded coaching to 50+ additional team leaders and began planning its rollout to mid-level managers worldwide, confident they have a model that delivers measurable growth, alignment, and cultural agility at scale.

Testimonials

“I have seen [my report] take it to another, more strategic level, particularly as she engages with her senior stakeholder. She spent time reflecting on what she wanted to get out of their first meeting, how to present herself as his new partner, what kind of questions would solicit the most meaningful responses etc.” — Senior Manager

“[My report] increased her capacity to appreciate the views of others and to work to develop them. She expanded her horizons to think outside of her comfort zones and to draw out some fine work from others. She showed improved capacity to help others develop their own ideas, rather than imposing her own on them.” — Senior Manager

“[Coaching] has helped me have a better understanding of where I enjoy working and developing most so I can continue to do so.” — Coachee

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Client need

Nufarm is a global crop protection and seeds technologies company that helps farmers and businesses meet the global challenges of food, feed, fiber and fuel production. Nufarm brings their proven agility, capabilities and partnerships to help customers in a rapidly changing world. Commercial Excellence is recognized as a core lever in driving value for Nufarm’s customers and shareholders and in particular ensuring that their commercial teams develop and foster the capabilities needed today and into the future.

Nufarm partnered with BTS to create a Commercial Capability Framework—a comprehensive, global platform designed to support and foster capability development and deepened customer insights. The goal: empower teams to deliver consistent, high-impact results while driving deeper customer engagement.

Solution

The BTS-designed Commercial Capability Framework was delivered through a structured, multi-modular program that engaged approximately 500 commercial professionals across North America, Europe and APAC. Tailored to meet the needs of diverse roles, the program provided learning paths for all Commercial Excellence teams—including leaders and field teams in sales, marketing, and customer service.  

The program featured six core modules—Sales Excellence, Sales Leadership, Business Acumen, Key Account Management (KAM), Campaign Management, and Pricing—each available in multiple languages to deliver global common practices while allowing for adaptation to local market realities. Key elements included:

Key elements included:

• Interactive business simulation:
  A custom Go-To-Market (GTM) simulation where leaders tested strategic and operational decision-making in a risk-free setting. Participants evaluated GTM strategies, analyzed financial metrics, and created actionable, market-specific plans that balanced short-term wins with long-term growth.
• Leadership coaching program:
  Aimed at commercial leaders, this initiative developed coaching and communication skills through workshops, one-on-one, and peer learning sessions. It emphasized active listening, empathy, and strategic dialogue to foster cultural and behavioral change.
• E-learning modules:
  Short, interactive modules reinforced a shared commercial language and provided easy, on-demand access for new and existing employees. Video scenarios and quizzes offered real-time feedback, while participant data informed continuous improvement.
• Strategic conversations program:
  Designed for sales and account managers to elevate customer dialogue quality. Using AI-supported feedback, participants practiced balancing operational discussions with high-value strategic conversations. The program will expand to other commercial roles to increase alignment.

The program rollout was aligned with the fiscal planning cycle, enabling teams to integrate learning into yearly strategic kickoffs. Regional capability leads tailored the delivery to meet local needs, ensuring relevance and engagement at every level.

Results

Each phase of the program was evaluated using Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation—measuring participant satisfaction, learning outcomes, behavioral change, and business impact. Feedback enabled ongoing refinements, ensuring the program remained aligned with the organization’s strategic priorities.

The result:

• Enhanced commercial and leadership capabilities.

• Greater consistency in customer engagement and sales processes.

• Actionable strategies tailored to regional market dynamics.

Through its partnership with BTS, the organization not only improved its commercial excellence but also empowered its teams to deliver on the promise of “Evolving Ag.”

Challenge

Halvor and Line Holter run Holter Consulting, a firm based in Copenhagen renowned for its expertise in executive presence. Working with individuals, groups, and teams, they provide executive coaching services while also facilitating leadership development programs. They are always looking for ways to extend and deepen their expertise, expand their offerings and create more value for their clients.

Solution

The Holters saw the ExPI^TM as an exceptional tool for this purpose. They were among the first to become certified in the Bates ExPI^TM and are among the most active Certified Practitioners. They have deployed the Bates ExPI^TM with well over 100 leaders, reflecting a broad range of industries and organizations.

Experience and Outcomes

What did you see as the value of going through the ExPI^TM Certification program, including working with a partner to practice the process?

Line: “We think that ExPI^TM Certification—getting your assessment beforehand and then going through the program—gave us an in-depth understanding of the model and the background for it… the feeling that you now know what executive presence is. After Certification, you really feel you know how the process works, and you feel ready to go back and give feedback to your clients. It was a very safe learning environment. No matter how much experience you have, this is new for everyone, and the learning atmosphere was great.”

Halvor: “During Certification, having the possibility of practicing working with the tool and also being inspired by a partner was also very valuable—learning tips, tricks, and approaches—and becoming more aware of your own style versus others’ styles.”

Give me an example of a story of a leader who has gone through the ExPI^TM with you as their coach. What were some insights that you arrived at through use of the report and the process?

Halvor: “I'm thinking of one executive who was part of a team. Initially, he had a tendency to score himself a little higher than others did, and he didn't see the immediate need for development. He had the over-strengths of being self-driven, being a strong thinker and visionary, having an action bias, being assertive and so forth. Understanding the flipsides of those qualities helped him realized the importance of working on the development themes of Resonance and Authenticity, because people saw him as distant and hard to connect with.  So, we worked on the impact of his strengths becoming weaknesses and how that affected his ability to drive performance while being inclusive. This had a big impact for him and even more so with his organization.”

What have you seen as the business impact of the ExPI^TM for leaders who have undergone the process with you?

Halvor: “For the leader that I was just describing, letting go and delegating more opened up his ability to be more visionary and strategic, while empowering the people reporting to him. It helped the unit become what they were aiming for—a more strategic partner for the company. It had quite a huge impact for him and his team. For the enterprise, it decreased the distance between this unit and the rest of the company, opened up trust and created more ways for the unit to contribute to the enterprise rather than being in a silo.

”Line: “We have worked with an executive board for several years. They have been leading through a time of extensive change. We had the team go through the ExPI^TM twice. It wasn't exactly the same team each time, as a couple of years had passed between assessments. Still, we found that the scores had gone up on 11 of the 15 facets on average. They went up for 14 of 15 facets for one person, which was just crazy! They had taken the information and done something about their behaviors to make a positive change. In terms of business impact, it had a lot to do with communicating more effectively and being able to not come across as having all the answers… listening more. Communication was crucial in engaging people and getting the whole organization on board with the change. They also needed to come across as one team to build trust. Because of this work, now they're seen as a team. The board has been able to speed up the process of change because the rest of the organization now believes that they're all in this together. With the ExPI^TM, we were able to help them highlight specific areas that were crucial in how they wanted to come across. Insights from the ExPI^TM helped them have success in those areas.”

Halvor: “And now they have language to use with the ExPI^TM. They can relate facets with leadership behaviors.”

What were some insights you picked up about yourself by going through your own report with your coach on your original insights call?

Line: “What a privilege it was to get feedback as an external consultant, as you so rarely get that in the way that an internal talent development expert does. You're told that you’ve done a good job, and they pay your invoice, but it’s very interesting to learn what they really think of you. I was privileged to have the feedback twice, including last year when I participated in the Bates Executive Presence Mastery open-enrollment program. My Bates coach helped me to realize that maybe I didn't have to put so much effort into my highest-rated facets of my executive presence anymore. They're working fine, so don't put as much as energy in those--focus on other things. With my development areas, my coach gave concrete advice and tips I could use right away—advice I could use myself but also that I could pass along to the leaders I coach.”

Halvor: “It was also interesting to get insight on the intention/perception gap—how one’s own insight compared to others. In my case, I found that I was overrating myself on some facets and underrating myself in other facets. Some were a little surprising! It provided me with increased awareness about certain behaviors that led to behavioral adjustments. Becoming aware was the starting point.”

Client need

A leading global life sciences company was operating at the forefront of scientific innovation, delivering therapies to millions of patients around the world.

The organization's strategy called for Medical to play an increasingly visible and influential role across the enterprise, not as a scientific function operating in parallel with the business, but as a core contributor to strategic decisions spanning pipeline priorities, governance forums, and commercial direction. The ability of medical leaders to operate at that level had become a strategic imperative.

These leaders were not generalists. Many had built careers in academic and research settings, developing deep expertise in science and medicine. In their roles, they operated at the intersection of R&D and commercial, translating scientific insights into strategy, influencing governance forums, and shaping both pipeline and brand decisions. These were among the most complex and high-stakes leadership roles in the organization.

As these leaders took on broader, enterprise-facing responsibilities, the nature of their work shifted. They were expected to work across functions, influence diverse stakeholders, and contribute to decisions that balanced patient, scientific, and commercial priorities in increasingly complex, cross-functional environments.

While highly capable, many had not yet had the opportunity to develop these enterprise leadership skills. With strong competition for talent, the organization recognized the need to accelerate development from within and ensure its leaders could operate as true enterprise contributors.

Solution

BTS partnered with the organization to design and deliver a four-month immersive leadership journey focused on building enterprise leadership capability in some of its most critical roles.

The program engaged 165 leaders across six cohorts, primarily senior leaders in medical affairs, market access, and health economics. Designing an experience that would genuinely resonate with this audience required more than adapting a traditional leadership curriculum. These leaders operated in highly specialized roles, navigating governance forums, balancing scientific and commercial trade-offs, and influencing cross-functional stakeholders without formal authority.

To reflect that complexity, BTS co-created the experience with senior stakeholders across the business, grounding the journey in the actual decisions, stakeholder dynamics, and enterprise challenges participants faced in their day-to-day work. That specificity was essential to making the experience credible, relevant, and immediately applicable.

The program focused on strengthening three capabilities critical to enterprise leadership:

• Enterprise mindset
• Influencing across the organization
• Communication and storytelling

To build these capabilities, the journey combined assessment, practice, and application through a set of integrated experiences:

Enterprise simulation and assessment (in-person)

The journey began with a simulation based on real governance forums and asset-level decisions. Leaders worked through role-based scenarios with assessor-coaches, navigating trade-offs and stakeholder dynamics in a realistic enterprise setting.

Each session included immediate feedback supported by:

• Simulation observations
• 360 executive presence assessment
• Personality insights assessment

This established clear, evidence-based development priorities tied directly to each leader's role and business context.

Experiential workshops (2 x 1.5 days)

Leaders then participated in two immersive workshops focused on decision-making and influence in cross-functional environments.

Using real business scenarios, participants practiced aligning stakeholders, navigating ambiguity, and communicating complex scientific insights with clarity and impact. The workshops emphasized active practice and real-time feedback.

Individual coaching (throughout the journey)

Each participant worked with a dedicated assessor-coach to translate insight into action.

Coaching centered on upcoming business decisions and stakeholder interactions, with manager involvement helping reinforce alignment with enterprise priorities and day-to-day application.

Peer learning and application (ongoing)

Leaders participated in small peer groups that met throughout the journey to reinforce learning and accountability.

These sessions created space to reflect, share experiences, and apply new approaches in real time, helping build consistency across the organization.

Across every element of the journey, the work remained grounded in real business challenges. Leaders built capability by practicing the same decisions, conversations, and trade-offs they faced every day.

Results

The program's success led to continued investment, with new cohorts of more than 200 critical role leaders now underway. Overall, the program strengthened how leaders think, decide, and influence, improving both decision quality and cross-functional execution.

Impact was assessed through:

• Post-program surveys
• End-of-journey evaluations
• 49 structured interviews with participants and their managers

Every manager interviewed reported sustained positive behavior change. The most significant shift was in how leaders approached decision-making. Participants engaged stakeholders earlier, clarified trade-offs more effectively, and showed up with greater confidence in governance discussions. As a result, decisions moved faster and with less friction.

The impact extended beyond the Medical function itself. Colleagues across commercial, R&D, and other functions began noticing a tangible difference. Medical leaders showed up differently in joint forums, communicating complex scientific trade-offs more clearly and building alignment more effectively across competing priorities. Conversations that once required multiple rounds of clarification increasingly moved to alignment more quickly.

Leaders consistently improved in several key areas:

• Earlier alignment before formal decision forums
• Greater confidence navigating ambiguity and enterprise trade-offs
• Stronger influence across cross-functional groups
• Clearer, more concise communication of complex scientific insights

Collectively, these shifts improved cross-functional decision-making and execution across the organization. Leaders were better able to prioritize enterprise value, align diverse perspectives, and ensure medical insights were clearly understood and acted upon.

The impact extended beyond individual participants. Leaders applied these approaches within their own teams, reinforcing more consistent ways of working across the organization and helping position Medical as a strategic enterprise partner rather than solely a scientific function.

Client challenge

Wellstar Health System, one of Georgia’s largest healthcare systems, had already invested heavily in leadership development for senior leaders. But as the organization navigated rapid growth, a major acquisition, and the demands of a shifting healthcare landscape, it became clear that the greatest leadership challenges were happening at the front and midline.

“Some of the greatest leader challenges are really at the front and midline levels… we’ve invested heavily in leadership development, putting more emphasis on our front line and mid-level leadership in terms of outcomes, said Laura Dannels, Chief Talent Officer at the time.

We’re not an organization who believes in just investing in high performers… you’ve got to invest in your entire workforce.”

Wellstar partnered with Sounding Board to bring a more scalable, flexible coaching solution to leaders across the organization.

The solution

Partnering with Sounding Board, Wellstar designed a scalable, personalized coaching program to extend leadership development across the organization while maintaining the quality of one-on-one coaching.

A proprietary 360 assessment, aligned to Wellstar’s leadership behaviors, served as the foundation for each coaching engagement. This ensured development was directly tied to how leaders show up and lead in practice.

“We really wanted to ground the coaching to a framework that matters to our organization,” said Garry Gross, Executive Director of Leadership Development. ‍

“Helping our leaders create an environment where our mission, vision, and values come to life was paramount.”

Program goals:

• Develop leadership capabilities aligned to Wellstar’s mission, vision, and values
• Deliver personalized, relevant development for leaders at all levels
• Strengthen the leadership bench and support succession planning
• Foster a culture of innovation, learning, and engagement

Program overview:

• Personalized, one-on-one coaching for leaders at all levels
• Capability development aligned to Wellstar’s values
  • Serve with Compassion → Builds relationships
  • Pursue Excellence → Drives results, leads teams, and plans strategically
  • Honor Every Voice → Fosters inclusion and respect for differences
• Scalable delivery across frontline, mid-level, and clinical leaders
• Digital tools to track goals, capture insights, and measure progress

This approach made it possible to deliver consistent, high-quality coaching across roles and locations while keeping development relevant to each leader’s day-to-day work.

Results

As the program unfolded, Wellstar began to see a shift in how frontline and mid-level leaders showed up across the organization. Leaders in these critical roles had more consistent support navigating day-to-day challenges, and managers gained better visibility into how their teams were developing. Coaching became a more practical, embedded part of how Wellstar supports leaders in a complex healthcare environment.

Higher engagement and satisfaction

• 96% of participants said the coaching experience was worth the investment
• 99% said they could immediately apply what they learned to their day-to-day work

Measurable leadership growth

Participants reported double-digit growth across leadership capabilities including:

• Executive presence (+16%)
• Organizational collaboration (+14%)
• Strategic thinking (+13%)
• Time management and prioritization (+13%)
• Communication (+11%)

Stronger retention and mobility

• Coached leaders achieved a 90% one-year retention rate
• Retention for coached leaders was 31% higher than non-coached peers
• 3% of participants were promoted into new roles, exceeding organizational goals and industry benchmarks

Learn more about Wellstar’s leadership coaching journey with Sounding Board in this feature in Becker’s Hospital Review.

Client need

For a 175-year-old technology company, competitive advantage isn’t just built on technical innovation: it’s built on leaders who know how to get the best thinking from every person around them. That culture of drawing out ideas, developing people, and driving innovation through engaged teams had been a defining feature of the organization for generations. And it depended on having the right infrastructure to keep developing frontline leaders at scale.

In 2020, that infrastructure was disrupted. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the organization to pivot its in-person development to virtual almost overnight, risking the erosion of frontline leadership capability while simultaneously needing to navigate the broader shocks of the pandemic: supply chain volatility, shifting materials costs, and a workforce managing profound uncertainty.  

Stalling frontline leadership development meant risking productivity, employee engagement, talent retention, job performance, and downstream impacts on quality and operating margin, at a moment when the organization could least afford it.

The question now was how to reimagine frontline leader development to equip thousands of global leaders to continue supporting their teams through disruption, and to ensure the next generation of managers could help their people do their best work under any conditions.

Solution

The client partnered with BTS to reimagine frontline leader development from the ground up, equipping leaders globally with the practical skills, tools, and mindset shifts needed to support their teams in doing great, innovative work.

The partnership began in 2019, and over five years has reached over 1,600 frontline leaders capturing 700+ documented behavior change actions. In 2022, BTS collaborated with the organization to refresh the program to reflect their evolving strategy and develop a sharper focus on supporting a culture of continuous improvement and innovation with coaching and feedback.  

The blended program experience combined the following elements:

• Immersive leadership simulations: Scenario-based experiences placing leaders in realistic situations, surfacing Multiplier and Diminisher tendencies in real time and making the learning immediately personal and actionable

• Multipliers and Diminishers framework: A structured exploration of how leaders either amplify or diminish the intelligence of those around them, including specific “experiments” leaders could use to better understand their own leadership approaches

• Custom leadership frameworks: Including a structured, step-by-step process for having significant feedback conversations, a tool to understand and flex to communication preferences, and a coaching approach designed to help leaders guide team members toward their own solutions, building capability and long-term ownership.

• Structured application sessions — on-the-job practice components designed to bridge the gap between the program experience and day-to-day behavior, giving participants specific frameworks to apply immediately with their teams

• Peer networking and breakout groups — cohort-based learning that participants identified as a standout feature, both for deepening the learning and for building cross-functional relationships that extended beyond the program

• A commitment-capture platform integrated into the program to log participant actions and reinforce behavior change after the program ended; over 670 participant actions were captured across the program’s delivery

Throughout the program, leaders examined the impact of their own behaviors, recognizing where they were unintentionally diminishing their teams, and built new habits around challenging, creating space for mistakes and learning, listening, questioning, giving developmental feedback, and creating ownership. The feedback model gave participants a practical process for the positive and constructive conversations that actually change performance.

Results

More than 1,600 frontline leaders and individual contributors have participated in the program—the population closest to daily execution, quality, and operations. A recent impact study told a clear story about the effects of the program across participants:  

100% of participants reported actively applying what they learned. 59% reported producing significant, measurable business impact, with concrete evidence to describe it.

The results weren’t theoretical. One engineering leader restructured how his team developed project plans, creating space for debate and ownership instead of coming in with the answer. His team exceeded their quality target by 10 percentage points and accelerated the project timeline by +4 months.

One production leader used the feedback model to coach a struggling supervisor and cascade the process across his entire leadership layer. His unit reached #1 performance in its division, improving a key quality KPI by more than 18% year-over-year. A department head with over a decade in leadership set new production records after learning to flex his communication style and draw out quieter team members. And a development lab supervisor used the program to clarify her leadership identity, earn a promotion, and coach her direct report to one as well.

The study also confirmed that when managers actively supported participants post-program, the likelihood of significant business impact increased substantially, shaping the organization’s next phase of reinforcement and cohort follow-up.

For an organization whose competitive advantage rests on the innovation and intelligence of its people, the program gave its leaders something technical training rarely delivers: the confidence, the tools, and the self-awareness to make everyone around them better.

Testimonials

“The program gave me greater confidence to try new things as a leader. It helped me realize what I do and what I don’t do.”  - HR Leader

“The skills I learned in the training helped me be more efficient. It helped me do the right thing, right away.” - Production Manager

“Feedback is very important to create a positive environment; and how to [give] feedback is a specific skill I learned from this training and how to share constructive feedback.” - Production Leader