A former Softcat sales trainer now looking to deploy her skills in the wider channel has revealed the traits of the best and worst salespeople she’s encountered.
Holly Wade last month launched Peak Sales Performance after a 17-year career in sales and sales training at Softcat.
Her goal is to help IT channel sales teams to be more successful, with a focus on adapting the ‘MEDDPICC’ training framework to the reseller world.
“I thought, ‘I could do this for the whole IT channel'”
As Softcat’s sole trainer, everything Wade did was “high impact” and “easy to consume”, an approach she is looking to replicate at Peak Sales Performance.
“Being in-house at Softcat, one thing I noticed was that external sales trainers and coaches all wanted you to fit into how they delivered it,” she told IT Channel Oxygen.
“I can give you an example…
“We were looking for a MEDDPICC trainer, because MEDDPICC is the massive thing in the IT channel everyone wants.
“I spoke to a ridiculous number of providers, and the one closest to what we needed could do it in four days. My sales team didn’t want to give up four days, so I went and got qualified in MEDDPICC myself, and then delivered it internally at Softcat in a two-hour workshop.
“I thought, ‘why am I doing this in house when I could go and do this for the whole IT channel’?”
“It completely works for resellers”
According to Wade, MEDDPICC is used by the majority of enterprise tech vendors, but is ripe for adoption in the reseller world.
“I’m one of the first people that have adapted it for a reseller, because when you’re a vendor, how you sell is very different to how a reseller sells,” she said.
“When you’re a vendor, you’re trying to convince the customer to buy your product and solution. With a reseller, you’re not trying to convince them to buy a particular vendor; you’re trying to find them the right solution based on what their problems are.”
Wade claimed MEDDPICC can help resellers reduce the sales cycle and boost win rates because of its emphasis on qualifying out dud prospects.
“It completely works for resellers,” she said.
“I trained a team in Manchester. The next day, one of the guys had a proof of concept conversation with a vendor and customer. After the call, the vendor called the guy back and said it was the best performance he’d ever seen from a Softcat account manager. The difference was that he asked the right questions that the vendor also needed to know.
He was like, ‘what happened’?, and he said, ‘oh, we’ve had MEDDPICC trainers in’. ‘And he said, ‘oh, okay, that makes sense’. One of the biggest benefits is it means the reseller and vendor talk the same language.”
“The worst salespeople I’ve come across”
Asked about her one personal tip for being good at sales more generally, Wade said it comes down to “being curious”.
“And always ask questions,” she said.
“The worst salespeople I’ve come across don’t ask questions and aren’t curious enough.
“If a customer turns around to you and says, ‘oh, we’re buying this because we want to automate this…’ well, why do they want to automate that? How long is their IT team taking to do that task at the moment? You keep asking questions, keep being curious, and as a result you will sell so much more.
“And probably the third one is do not sell,” Wade quickly added.
Wade claims she is already seeing demand from resellers and vendors because of her track record as a seller, as well as a sales trainer.
“I’m not a theorist, as in I don’t deliver sales training and coaching because I’ve read a really good book about it. It’s because I’ve lived and breathed it,” she concluded
