Jeremy Pollard, Business Growth ConsultantIn today’s APAC organisations, engineers, consultants, project managers, and bid writers are increasingly asked to influence clients, shape opportunities, and help win work, often without formal training.
For HR and L&D leaders, this shift creates both a challenge and an opportunity.
Traditional sales training misses the mark, while technical skills alone aren’t enough.
What works is helping people grow into trusted advisors: professionals who combine their expertise with the ability to collaborate, influence, and contribute to winning strategies.
What’s changing in workplace learning
Across APAC, training is evolving fast:
• Bite-sized and on-demand short, practical modules enable people to apply immediately to live opportunities and proposals.
• Culturally relevant and collaborative frameworks that align multinational teams and reduce wasted effort by giving everyone a common language.
• Human-centred mentoring, coaching, and peer learning that turn knowledge into sustained behaviour change under real-world deadlines.
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What works is helping people grow into trusted advisors: professionals who combine their expertise with the ability to collaborate, influence, and contribute to winning strategies.
Why HR & L&D should care
Supporting sales, BD, and bid teams isn’t just about helping them win contracts, it’s about helping the whole organisation grow.
When HR/L&D leaders back this capability uplift, they:
• Increase employee engagement by giving technical experts new career pathways.
• Improve retention by building confidence and reducing the frustration of sink-or-swim client interactions.
• Strengthen their influence as strategic partners who help the business compete and win.
A Proven Method
For over 50 years, the Shipley Method has been the global standard for business development training, used by leading organisations across APAC to raise capability, improve collaboration, and win more business. BD Plus, Shipley’s APAC partner, delivers these programs in formats designed for today’s workforce: modular, contextualised, and supported with mentoring to embed skills.
The result? Non-sales people who can act as trusted advisors, and sales/BD/bid teams who work together more effectively to win.
