Enablement Program of the Year: Thunder in the Cloud Live Quiz

Virtual learning is the new norm, and enablement programs need to continually evolve to meet both the learners and business changing needs. In our world of TikTok and a global pandemic, the same old approaches, content or long learning roadmaps do not deliver learning experiences that drive business results. In partnership with IBM's MEA Automation and Data &AI leaders, team and members of IBM's global enablement team, we created the Stevie Award-winning Thunder in the Cloud Live quiz. An innovative, lively and engaging virtual format that delivered learning and results.

“In the toughest working environment in memory for most organizations, 2021 Stevie Award winners still found ways to innovate, grow sales, please their customers, and secure new business,” said Stevie Awards president Maggie Gallagher. “The judges have recognized and rewarded this, and we join them in applauding this year's winners for their continued success.”

IBM Thunder in the Cloud Summary

As COVID-19 spread, Georgia Watson — IBM’s enablement specialist for the Middle East and Africa — understood her team’s stress. “They were under significant pressure,” she says.

The usual enablement approach and focus on selling would increase that pressure, so Watson’s new goal became renewing engagement and inspired by her role as a pandemic homeschool teacher, bringing fun back into learning became her driver. Collaborating with her business stakeholders and US based IBM enablement team, Watson pioneered an interactive quiz-show enablement program and concentrated on fun, fun, fun instead of sell, sell, sell, “to get sellers' minds off the challenges of the pandemic while boosting their expertise.”

Called Thunder in the Cloud, the three-month program focused on increasing knowledge about the company’s latest Cloud & Cognitive software. The virtual program had four 30-minute rounds of ten questions. Each round had a skills-based theme, and participants received enablement materials for advanced study.

Watson knew that the novel format would bring out the competitive spirit of her IBM Automation team and invited IBM’s Data and AI team, to battle everyone’s isolation and boost engagement and collaboration. The teams learned more about their own and each other’s portfolios through topics from Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to IBM's Hybrid Cloud.

Each question included a poll so everyone viewing could also participate live. Players had multiple-choice questions and those representing their teams could go with the group’s answer — or provide their own.

Watson’s program received Net Promoter Scores (measuring participant perception) of 94.5, when the norm is far lower in sales enablement. The teams' knowledge was boosted and new sales pipeline generated.

(https://stevieawards.com/sales/)