Here was the challenge.

The HP StorageWorks worldwide business development team wanted to equip and motivate HP enterprise sales teams to find and pursue more storage solution opportunities in key industries, horizontal IT solutions, and mission-critical application environments. Pearson & Co. understood what sales reps needed to be successful was richer context about storage solution triggers, competitive sell-against silver bullets, and contextual selling strategies that would help them spot opportunities and spark the right conversations in the customers’ frame.

So how did they address it?

HP engaged Pearson & Co. to discover and recommend the right storage selling strategies and then distill them into actionable, highly visual sales guides to help HP EAMs open more doors. We began by deconstructing the driving factors behind the “big wins” to identify the customers’ burning platforms and business objectives so the generalist reps could quickly understand how to identify and qualify prospects and uncover their needs, exploit competitive vulnerabilities, propose solutions, and overcome obstacles.
And we delivered this contextual selling approach through a series of compelling tools—coupled with live training webcasts—that would drive
rapid adoption among sales teams.

What did Pearson & Co. do for HP?

We conducted extensive 1:1 interviews to identify the patterns of success,
and then talked with sales and other internal stakeholders to determine the most successful selling strategies at that moment in time. We uncovered catalysts and trends fueling customer purchases and mapped out ideal sales plays for that vertical, horizontal, or application context—such as how to pick off low-hanging fruit in the installed base, moves to surround or displace competitors, and paths to penetrate greenfield situations.

We then translated this research into contextual selling strategies built with our
best practices into high-leverage sales plays for reps to run, including scripted conversations and tactics for overcoming common roadblocks and combating competitive moves. These sales plays enable any account manager to conduct a consultative conversation during a meeting early in the sales process to discover and engage in dialogue to match the right solution to the customer’s needs. The guides also visually map the buying process and deliver deep insight about influencers and decision-makers via buying-center profiles that describe typical titles/departments and their roles, goals, and challenges, providing insider perspective to help reps build credibility by speaking the lingo in specialized vertical markets. The guides also include at-a-glance differentiators, solution components, solution ecosystem diagrams, and competitive sell-against tactics.

With these powerful tools in hand, sales teams could now quickly identify
hot prospects and kick off any relationship in context of their customers’
unique IT situation.

What happened?

The tools were met with great enthusiasm by the executive sales team, as well as Channel partners, and have been cited as “the finest selling tools ever seen—in HP or otherwise,” “groundbreaking,” and “the new standard for HP sales guides moving forward.” The Americas region also hosted a monthly training webcast series to train hundreds of reps on the sales guides, spotlighting the plays and featuring key points about customer catalysts, competitive silver bullets, and solution insights. The tools have already helped sales teams:

• Close storage deals worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and leverage
  more attach revenue
• Increase coverage and the size of their pipeline
• Influence target account selling (TAS) plans and selling strategies
• Deliver a more convincing customer conversation that speeds the discovery process and builds competitive advantage
• Accelerate their learning curve on selling storage more quickly and effectively

Now, here's what YOU need to do.

If you need to enable contextual selling across your sales force, call Jenée Difu today at 408-540-5305. Or, if you'd like to explore additional best practices in sales strategy and demand generation, click here.