Jeremy Aston opened his session at ELEVATE 2026, the customer value event Ecosystems co-hosts with TSIA, with a show of hands. Who had tried to sell an outcome or a solution and "ended up either selling a bunch of features or worse, shipped an org chart to their customer"? A hand or two went up. "I have done that many, many times," he said.
Jeremy is Senior Vice President and General Manager of Global Services and Solutions Sales at HP. His job is to move a sales organization built for volume toward solution selling, at a company with about half a billion devices in the field at any one time. HP is about a year and a half into that shift.
Solution Selling Starts With Agreeing on What a Solution Is
HP treats a shared definition as the prerequisite for solution selling: a solution is at least two products sold together that address a specific customer problem. Getting to that took what Jeremy called "a pretty heated conversation with my boss."
A solution should include hardware, has to include services, and should include software. It can also add a third-party capability or a vertical solution wrapper. Leaving room for third parties was deliberate, so HP's partners can take part.
Jeremy called the definition "rudimentary" himself, but it matters because he sells to two audiences: HP's customers, and HP's own generalist account managers, who can choose how they make their quota. When reps can choose, he said, "you get a lot of least common denominator type selling activities." A typical account manager would give up on the bigger conversation and say, "I'm just going to put a break-fix contract on it, we're good, don't bother me anymore." The definition gives those reps "more to go into battle with each day."
HP also places each customer on what it calls its customer value framework, which runs from break-fix support to curated workforce solutions. HP had pushed hard on curated solutions, Jeremy said, but they fit only a small part of its customer base, and customers "move across" the framework over time.
Focus the High-Touch Motion Where the Market Is Real
HP saves its high-touch value motion for accounts where the addressable market justifies the cost. Instead of working from the "huge numbers" teams pull from analyst reports, Jeremy's team went to the people who decide where sellers spend their time. At HP, that's the country managers, so the team asked them to name their biggest customers, then checked which had the services and software potential HP wanted to pursue.
In the UK, only 60% of the country manager's list met that bar. Country managers, Jeremy said, get "caught up with" the hardware market every day, and a big hardware customer isn't always a big services and software opportunity. Because the specialist motion is expensive, HP pursues an account that way only if its gross margin is at least four times the cost of the pursuit. Across HP globally, Jeremy said about 850 customers mattered most at scale.
Few GTM teams have a customer base like HP's, which has "way, way more customers" than those 850. The rule behind the cut applies at any size. "Not all customers are created equal," Jeremy said. "And you can't sell the same level of value to every single customer."
Give Generalists Archetypes and a Playbook
HP sorted its top solutions accounts into four archetypes, each with a simple description and a playbook, so generalist account managers can start a value conversation on their own. Jeremy said "persona" had become an overused word, so the team talked about archetypes instead. His slides showed the four:
- Digital Workplace Transformer (31% of those accounts): a large device fleet with no device visibility or digital employee experience (DEX) tools. Land one DEX tool, then expand.
- Security-led Modernizer (23%): a regulated business with an endpoint mandate and no hardware security. Land security first.
- Vertical Specialist (23%): purpose-built device and workflow needs, as in retail or manufacturing. Land vertical hardware and deployment.
- Multi-Solution Accelerator (23%): HP's highest-value customers, with relationships across several domains. Deepen wallet share.
The playbooks matter because of how much a generalist has to carry. HP itself has 15 business units, each led by a senior vice president, with six to ten technology sub-units beneath each one. An account manager can't make room for all of that, so Jeremy sees his job as making sure value-based offers that drive recurring revenue and profitability get some of the space.
Answering an audience question later that morning, he said HP started with six or eight archetypes and cut to four because the longer list "was too overwhelming."
How Do You Keep a Sales Force Focused on Value?
Keep repeating the value message, more often than feels necessary. When an attendee asked how HP made the move from hardware to solutions, Jeremy said reps who get beaten up on their forecast tend to drop solution and value selling to chase the number. He told his boss, HP's chief commercial officer:
"We can't just tell your team two and three times. We have to tell them six, seven, eight, nine times."
— Jeremy Aston, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Global Services and Solutions Sales at HP
Timing helped too. HP was in the middle of a large coverage change in its sales organization, so enablement was already retraining account executives. "I think we got a little bit lucky," Jeremy said. He doesn't own sales enablement at HP, so he needed that team behind the playbooks: "Sales enablement has to be bought in." And with members of his team in the audience, he was careful about one word: "I won't say transformed, I will say transforming. Because we are on a journey."
Next: Scale Through AI and Partners
HP's next step is to take the motion past its most strategic accounts and into the mid-market, the enterprise, and its partners. The team has mapped its market in its six to eight biggest countries and is rolling out guided selling playbooks there.
HP runs two CRMs, Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, and its specialists were so siloed from account managers that they couldn't tell who was talking to whom inside an account. "Forget MEDDPICC," Jeremy said. "You can't even get there because you don't even know who's being talked to." His team is now using AI that works across both CRMs to share that information.
HP has a long relationship with Ecosystems on business cases and value reviews for its biggest customers. The challenge Jeremy put to Chad Quinn, CEO and Co-Founder of Ecosystems, is to help HP crack the same motion for its channel and its high-volume businesses. In the meantime, HP wants "a very intimate experience for our biggest, most strategic customers."
Watch the Session
Watch Jeremy's full session, From Solutions to Outcomes, to see HP's customer value framework and how the four archetypes map to its market. For the themes that ran through the whole day, read our ELEVATE 2026 recap, Closing the Promise Gap. For more on selling value with partners, see our post on community best practices around value selling with partners.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is solution selling?
Solution selling means selling a combination of products and services that solves a specific customer problem. At HP, a solution is at least two products sold together that address one problem. It should include hardware and software, has to include services, and can add a third-party capability or a vertical solution wrapper, which gives partners a way to take part.
How does HP decide which customers get a high-touch value motion?
HP asks country managers, who decide where sellers spend their time, to name their biggest customers, then checks which have the services and software potential worth pursuing. In the UK, only 60% of that list qualified. HP pursues an account with its high-touch specialist motion only if the gross margin is at least four times the cost of pursuit. Globally, about 850 customers mattered most.
What are customer archetypes in B2B sales?
Customer archetypes group accounts that share a situation and a likely first purchase. HP uses four for its top solutions accounts, such as the Digital Workplace Transformer, a large device fleet with no device visibility, and the Security-led Modernizer, a regulated business with an endpoint mandate. Each comes with a short description and a playbook. HP started with six or eight and cut to four because the longer list was too overwhelming.
How do you keep sellers using value selling under quota pressure?
Repeat the message far more than seems necessary. Jeremy Aston said sellers who are behind on their number tend to drop value selling, so HP tells its teams six to nine times instead of two or three. He also tied the rollout to a broader sales coverage change, when enablement was already retraining account executives.
Keep the Conversation Going
The conversations that started at ELEVATE continue all year with peers who are solving the same problems. Join the Customer Value Community to be part of them. And if you'd like to see how teams use Ecosystems to bring value conversations to more of their accounts, book a demo.
