Driving sales transformation through enabling relationship managers

Engineering and entertainment software increases productivity by redefining what’s possible in designing, manufacturing and building. It also generates the same spectacularly realistic effects that animate movies and video games. And its widespread application has made Autodesk, a worldleader in 2D and 3D design, engineering and entertainment software, the fifth-largest software company in the world.

Despite Autodesk’s history of rapid growth and its current enviable market position, the company perceived tough challenges ahead, particularly in strengthening its sales force. To build on its success, Autodesk’s top management recognized that a profound shift in its sales approach was necessary. The company partnered with BTS to accelerate the sales transformation.

The Challenge: A New Way of Selling

Selling Autodesk’s high-tech, feature-rich products are a job for experts. 1,900 ValueAdded Resellers (VARs) are responsible for 90 percent of the company’s $1.6 billion in sales, but they are not company employees. At home in a world of complex programs and specialized users, VARs had historically sold Autodesk applications based on their product features and benefits.

Going forward, Autodesk’s executives understood that the company needed to replace this traditional brand of pitching with a more customer-oriented sales technique for the future. “The objective was to transform our sales channel by having them define the value of Autodesk through business results rather than feature sets,” says Tom Kopinski, Director of Competitive and Technical Marketing for Manufacturing at Autodesk. This strategic change demanded a significant shift in the experienced, skilled sales force’s most basic instincts. Instead of focusing on product performance, VARs would instead focus on the customer’s needs—imagining themselves in the customer’s shoes and then walking a mile in those shoes.

The Transformation: A Quiet Revolution

To accomplish this shift, Autodesk’s deep commitment was key. “We certainly haven’t seen many companies willing to invest in training outside traditional employee channels,” reflected BTS Executive Vice President Dan Parisi. But Autodesk understood that only truly transformational measures would produce the kind of change the company desired. With this strong management mandate, BTS developed an intense, customized business simulation that immersed VARs in the customer’s business. “We wanted participants to increase their confidence, competence, and mindset by creating an easy-to use model to expand ‘the sale’,” says Kopinski.

In the high-impact experience, VARs assumed the role of the senior management at an industrial machinery manufacturing company, running the business over three simulated years. Participants were challenged to deal with major businesses challenges, recognize trends and identify opportunities. After experiencing the business from the customer’s point of view, they switched roles, created an account expansion strategy, and made sales calls on the executives they had just played in the simulation. As a result of their increased understanding of the client’s strategic issues, participants dramatically improved the way they positioned Autodesk’s software solutions, leading to equally dramatic improvements in sales outcomes. “It’s practical learning,” says Ken Bado, Executive Vice President of Sales for Autodesk. “You’re putting emotional energy into it—it’s not just pure intellect.” The customized approach to learning is now being extended to simulate another typical client’s business, a construction company.

The objective was to transform our sales channel by having them define the value of Autodesk through business results rather than feature setsTom Kopinski, Director of Competitive and Technical Marketing, Manufacturing, Autodesk

The Future of Autodesk: On Track

In today’s global economy, change is a constant for every company, but for technology-based firms, it is especially difficult for leaders to stay in front. The marketplace is on permanent fast-forward. Autodesk’s work with BTS is the kind of bold innovation that today’s business environment demands. “Autodesk is at the leading edge, along with companies such as Humana and Symbiocity” says BTS’s Parisi. “It’s just as important for the sales channel to have an in-depth understanding of the challenges, key business drivers, and capabilities required for success, as it is for Autodesk’s own employees.”

Client need

A multinational beverage corporation embarked on an ambitious strategy to drive revenue and brand growth by fostering cross-functional Revenue Growth Management (RGM) collaboration at scale. Traditionally, revenue and brand growth strategies were crafted by experts within individual functions. This shift to shared responsibility demanded a transformative change in leaders' mindsets, knowledge, and behaviors. By embracing this collaborative approach, the organization aimed to significantly enhance global efficiency, effectiveness, and value creation.

To achieve this, the corporation partnered with BTS to design a comprehensive RGM development program tailored for global and regional leaders across functions. This program was designed to deepen these leaders' understanding of the global revenue growth strategy, strengthen their acumen for integrating consumer/shopper and customer insights across RGM levers, and empower them to identify and seize profitable growth opportunities.

Solution

The resulting program was customized to align with the organization's RGM framework, fostering consistency and cohesion while simultaneously building RGM capabilities. The initiative was launched both in-person and virtually, reaching 679 leaders and RGM practitioners across 24 countries. Participants were organized into cross-functional teams, immersing them in collaboration, skill-building, practice, and discussion through a tailored business simulation.

‍The objectives of the program include:

• Developing a common understanding of the revenue growth framework and recognizing the significant contributions of each function.
• Achieving sustainable revenue growth through holistic decision-making and the establishment of a robust governance model.
• Identifying profitable growth opportunities in the face of evolving market conditions.
• Comparing and contrasting strategies to better discern where and how to invest for long-term growth.
• Sharing and experimenting with best practices across regions.

To achieve these objectives, leaders and key account managers were asked to:

• Prepare for the experience by engaging with RGM modules and a simulation case study.
• Engage in team competition within a dynamic and fictional, yet realistic market – setting strategies and making hundreds of decisions to achieve the highest revenue growth and profitability across three simulated years.
• Participate in facilitated debrief sessions, where they share and receive feedback and coaching, identify key learnings, and discuss how to integrate these insights into their roles.

• Absorb new concepts, knowledge, and perspectives through knowledge-sharing and best practice sessions.
• Translate their learnings into reality by committing to concrete on-the-job actions during an application session.

Though the simulation aspect was largely consistent worldwide, learning paths varied in purpose, level, and sophistication based on the local needs of each region, which accounted for differences in customary channel partners, trade spend, and more.

Results

Global roll-out is still underway. However, evaluation of the program’s effectiveness to this point demonstrates that:  

• 92% of participants rated the program Good or Very Good.
• 65% of participants agreed that they better understood the organization’s RGM framework.
• 78% of participants reported that the program improved their RGM knowledge.
• 85% of participants stated that they would recommend the program to a colleague.

Six months after the first initiative, three-fourths of the top leaders who participated agreed that they had achieved business results made possible by the program.

Testimonials

“Now, when colleagues from channel development are asking for initiatives, they are not only looking for volume and value share, but consider impact in terms of revenue, shopper, and consumer lens.” – German participant

“Impressed by the professionalism of the session and how close to reality the simulation was.” – Flemish/Luxembourgian participant

“Superb course, brilliantly facilitated. Really enjoyed the mix of experience, capability, and the roles — so much value to be had running this as a system and with representatives from teams that aren’t always close to the commercial agenda or the strategy.” – British participant

"Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to stop and think and look at strategies.” – Spanish participant

Necesidad del cliente

Frente a las desafiantes expectativas de los clientes, una organización multinacional líder en servicios financieros necesitaba transformar su modelo comercial, adoptando un enfoque más centrado en el cliente y basado en la venta consultiva. También necesitaban trasladar este cambio a una red nacional, desarrollando la mentalidad y las capacidades necesarias para ejecutar esta transformación.Para dotar a sus banqueros de las herramientas necesarias para prosperar en un entorno cada vez más complejo, dinámico y digital, la organización se asoció con BTS para diseñar un programa de aprendizaje personalizado.

Solución

El viaje resultante combinó evaluaciones, formación en ventas, formación en productos y actividades en las sucursales. Durante nueve meses, 3,025 banqueros comerciales participaron en un viaje digital autodirigido. Estos líderes financieros adoptaron una mentalidad más centrada en el cliente:

• Someterse a una evaluación inicial en línea, que se utilizó para dividir a los participantes en grupos por nivel de rendimiento.
• Completar los conocimientos prácticos, o tres módulos virtuales guiados que permitieron comprender los motivos de la transformación.
• Poner a prueba los nuevos comportamientos en dos simulaciones sin riesgo, completando los conocimientos adicionales que fueran necesarios.
• Completar tres de los siete sprints diferentes, cada uno de los cuales contiene un Go-Do, que es un elemento de acción para aplicar en el trabajo
• Participar en una evaluación final que determine los planes de mantenimiento.

Resultados

Los participantes informaron de lo siguiente como resultado del programa:

• 215 renovaciones como resultado de los Go-Dos
• El 84% utilizó argumentos racionales para cuantificar el valor de su oferta
• El 88% fue capaz de cerrar la siguiente reunión
• El 90% fue eficaz en la renovación de las ventas de productos
• El 91% cerró acuerdos más rápidamente

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 mindet
• 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