HP looks to go bespoke in UK sales training revamp

Vendor plots wide-scale rollout after conducting successful pilot

HP is looking to revamp its UK partner sales training with a move to a bespoke approach focused on business issues and strategy.

The vendor giant recently piloted a tailored training programme around its converged infrastructure technology, with 80 staff across two partners taking part. The scheme is now being rolled out to about six VARs, who will all benefit from courses aligned to their own skills and core markets.

Kevin Matthews, UK and Ireland channel manager of HP's Enterprise Storage, Servers and Networking division, claimed many vendors' programmes are seen merely as "a tick in a box" by partners.

"One of the challenges as a vendor is, if you go to a partner, they will have many vendor relationships and we are all trying to get in front of them," he added. "We need resellers' salespeople and techies taking on board our strategies. We want to bring more value to the partner."

Matthews claimed partners addressing the SMB, mid-market and enterprise arenas are all keen to take part. The vendor hopes to roll out the programme more widely in due course.

Softcat was one of the partners to take part in the initial pilot. Managing director Martin Hellawell (pictured) welcomed the training's focus on solution selling and business issues, rather than the standard "speeds and feeds" approach.

"Sales guys have to do a lot of training and generally do it very reluctantly, but we had a lot of people volunteering to do this," he added. "HP took the time to understand our business; for example: we are particularly strong in security, so they worked a strong security message into the whole converged infrastructure piece."