Capability Development
Graphic Facilitation
Role: As Senior Leader of the Creative Community of Practice, I identified a capability with the power to define and sell solutions that was not in our wheelhouse, ahead of industry trends.
Identified gap in offerings around responsive visual explanatory graphics
Closed gap in creating solution: No trained Graphic Facilitators available
Closed gap to selling solution: educate Business Development to offering and how we communicate capability value
Methods: Stand-up the Graphic Facilitation capability.
Develop PoV / Value propositions
Business development toolkit: value proposition, methodologies, selling best practices, case studies, service level offerings, and leveled pricing
Series of four academy workshops
Sustainment plan: mentorship program, network of business development evangelists, Teams hub, and innovation allies
Results: Indisputable success. Within a month of completion of the four sessions, TiER1 was completing an average of two client Graphic Facilitations per week, two Academy participants were moved into the mentorship program, and one additional person moved to full Graphic Facilitator.
Awareness within the company went from zero to a high-demand differentiator capability.
Engagement for the development workshops was high, the cap of 15 attendees was reached within hours of release for each of the four sessions. Additional value was gained by selling our solutions; the curriculum to train graphic facilitators was designed to be repurposed as a client workshop offering, giving TiER1 an additional revenue stream.
Graphic Facilitation is the little knock that opens big doors. After years of trying to work with Astellas, a 30-minute call about Graphic Facilitation landed us our first deal there. Within weeks, we had a multi-year contract with our largest client to date.
The four workshops did more than train new Graphic Facilitators. They were also an engagement tool to create a growth-centered community within our widely dispersed (ten locations nationwide, all largely or fully-remote) Creative Team. Attendees excitedly praised the courses on Yammer, SharePoint, and to clients.
Graphic Facilitations became standard for big pitches. Our sales team would invite a graphic facilitator to the initial sales meeting to develop a sub-category I called, “plan on a page.” These drawings would describe the work to be done at-a-glance, breaking through the clutter to describe our strategy.
