Sales Enablement The Challenge of Global Alignment

Does this scenario sound familiar?

As the new director of global sales learning at for your organization, you are aligning all key stakeholders and global regions to use the same fundamental selling approach. By doing so, your organization’s clients and prospects will receive the same customer-centric, consultative selling experience anytime they encounter someone from your company. What’s more, executive leadership has given all sales leaders a mandate: They must support you in this exciting initiative. The leaders have replied, professing their support, with promises to collaborate and offer their insight.

As the rollout progresses, however, it is fraught with delays, problems, and slights.

• One Regional VP, after offering her initial endorsement, has not returned your last three emails requesting a phone conference with her direct sales leader reports. Communicating through other channels, you discover that she has not followed through on her commitment to support the new program. When you finally have the chance to finally speak with her directly, she kindly but firmly states that she’s in charge of what her people receive, and that there’s “no way” she will sponsor your sales learning program—even though she has yet to see it.

• Another stakeholder, a senior director of brand culture, insists that you work with his chosen vendor—even though their program is contradictory to your own. In a series of communications, you patiently explain the issue to him, mentioning executive leadership’s mandate to get on board with the new program, and point out the benefits of your approach. Now, all communication with him “goes dark.” You’d rather not go “over his head,” feeling that might threaten your future working relationship, but you believe that you may not have another choice.

• A third key stakeholder, who oversees sales for the entire APAC region, is just as excited about this idea as you are. You would love to connect with him and wallow in your collective enthusiasm, but he is nearly impossible to nail down. You’ve scheduled three WebEx calls with him, and he’s been late to two, and no-showed to a third. On the two calls he you do have with him, you must remind him of what the call was about, why you need the call, what his role is, and so forth. Once engaged, his excitement is renewed, but you feel as if you’re starting over with him every time.

What’s a sales enablement professional to do?

Before you develop and customize learning content, schedule roll-out, initiate classes, or collect and analyze impact data, you must ensure that all stakeholders are not only aligned but advocate your program. Multi-region rollouts of any sales initiative are notoriously risky, particularly those involving any sort of change management. Indeed, you must approach each key stakeholder with communications strategies and tactics that really work if you want your initiative to succeed.