IBM
0117 IBM Reference Visits
Because of IBM's genuine commitment to support its customers, at least at the time when I was working for it, one of the best ways of selling its products was to take a prospect on a ‘reference visit’.
Ostensibly, the reason for this was to take him to an existing customer who was using a very similar application -- to show that it worked. But it went much further than that. It was also about getting an independent reference, from an independent IBM customer, as to IBM's support and general commitment to customers. It was almost invariably a foolproof approach. In theory you took the prospect to customers where everything had been going very well, but sometimes you didn't even need to do that!
Thus, even though one of my largest accounts was in deep trouble - indeed it was claiming something in excess of £200,000 from IBM for failing to deliver the working product it had paid for - I still took my colleague's prospects into the account, as one of our prime reference sells. For each of these, the customer duly praised IBM to the heavens - then, after they had left, he once more beat me up about his problems!
On several occasions I myself was forced to take my prospects on visits to customers who were completely unknown quantities, simply because they were the only customers using the specialised applications the prospects were interested in - where relevance takes priority over all other factors in a reference visit. Yet on none of these occasions did I find the customers anything other than embarrassingly enthusiastic; although, at least once, I overheard the customer (discreetly out of the prospect's earshot) heavily bending the ear of his account sales professional about all the problems he was having!
At the time of the launch of Biomedical, I especially remember a dinner in Paris attended by a dozen of my leading UK prospects, and also by a reference customer. He was, in fact, one of the leading UK medical consultants, of deservedly high international reputation. It was the first such reference meeting I had arranged in the medical field and, as the dinner drew to its close, I was startled to hear him whisper in my ear: “Have I covered all the points you wanted me to bring out?” I would never, before that, have dared to brief anyone of his stature, but he, better than I, recognised the reality of the situation. In any case, as he definitely would have said nothing that was untrue, and everyone else there knew this, it was the best type of reference.
Just how much I was able to get away with was demonstrated when I took one important prospect several hundred miles to see a demonstration of a very sophisticated application at a customer site in the West Country. My heart sank when we were ushered into the computer room, to be faced by the computer literally in pieces. There were mounds of its innards distributed around the room, since it had been completely dismantled! Fortunately, the customer went on to explain that it had worked so well, and was so important to his business, that he had decided to move it from the computer room (where nobody could see it) to the centre of the main office (where it was to be a feature of the business). He also went on to explain that it was so trouble-free that it didn't need to be molly-coddled in a special computer room like most computers.
We then took the opportunity of a very extended lunch. For three hours solid the customer’s DP manager enthused about our offering and went in detail through every one of the prospect's requirements, proving (from his own experience) that they would work. It won the business, and – despite the prospect never having seen the machine working - was one of the most successful demonstrations I ever ran!
This was, though, one occasion where I used Pat to help with the sale. The prospect was in fact the American DP manager of Meyer. He'd flown all the way across the Atlantic for the reference visit. This made the success -- with the machine in pieces -- even more miraculous. But he had also brought with him his wife, who was at a loose end while we went to the customer’s plant. Accordingly, since the reference account was near Bath, my wife took his wife down with us, on the train, and they spent the day visiting the tourist spots in Bath. I think her enthusiasm, having had a wonderful day, probably contributed as much to the eventual sale.
On the other hand, demonstrations – no matter how successful - did not always make the sale. I once had to arrange for a 200-lb machine to be shipped to Glasgow, where I picked it up and personally drove it in a hired van the 200 miles to Aberdeen. The prospect had been adamant that all he wanted was a demonstration on site, to prove it worked, and then he would immediately place the order. Of course, no such thing happened. He spent about 15 minutes cursorily looking at the machine and I never sold anything to him, even though it took two very gruelling days of my time. This example encapsulates the major problem. If the prospect won't put in the effort to come and see the demonstration at your offices, he can hardly be thought of as a hot prospect. It is debatable whether it is worth running any demonstration for him, let alone all the hassle of taking it to him. I regret to say that I very rarely closed a prospect who insisted that I took the demonstration to him, and I eventually stopped doing this.
The biggest reference visit I got involved with, though, came when I moved to be part of the General Systems Division (GSD) marketing group. This classic demonstration, on the grand scale, was when we took our key prospects across to our factory outside to outside Milan.
Thus, I was part of a team, comprising no less than six expert organisers, that used to take groups of 150 customers and prospects at a time to our Vimercarte plant in Italy. Three of us went on ahead, several days in advance, to prepare the ground in Italy. The other three oversaw the travel arrangements which, as they involved chartering an airliner, were not insubstantial. A further 30 IBM salesmen also travelled with the party as `hosts' looking after the 150 customers and prospects. This part of the event was somewhat similar to organising a package holiday; and absorbed similar resources.
As I say it was on the grand scale. It cost a fortune, but it impressed the pants off the prospects. It was at times a nightmare, shepherding all these people around. Occasionally, it was the IBM salesman who got drunk and caused problems. To ensure that this didn’t happen, our first job was - each having taken one of six buses from the airport to the first restaurant and having shepherded the prospects into the restaurant – to corral the IBMers in the bus and lay down the law about their own behaviour! This usually succeeded.
The prospects were less easy to control. Not least was the problem of them arriving in Milan. We always needed to have one of our number actually in the arrivals hall when the flight arrived, because something nearly always went wrong. It was typical, of such a flight, for at least one of the prospects to have forgotten their passport. God knows how they got past passport control in the UK, but they did. This meant our representative in the baggage hall had to sort out the temporary paperwork with the local consulate!
The prospects also caused chaos everywhere they went. One of my jobs was to ensure that, on leaving the hotel the following morning, the baggage was loaded into the correct buses -- since it was then taken direct to the airport. I discovered to my horror that, having made this arrangement and left everything sorted, one of the prospects had gone out and had arranged for all the bags to be redistributed amongst the six buses. You learn how to cope with emergencies like that!
The plant itself was very impressive. I'm always fascinated by manufacturing plants, but this was a manufacturing plant par excellence. Not least was the testing facility where the CPUs themselves were tested to the ultimate degree by online instructions transferred by satellite from the main plant in Rochester, Minnesota.
The restaurants, as always for IBM, were excellent. But the piece de resistance was that we had the last lunch -- whilst we were visiting the plant -- in the IBM restaurant there. The Vimercarte plant had just about the best restaurant in the IBM, and was one IBM restaurant where wine was served routinely.
Throughout IBM, in general, alcohol on company premises was not just frowned but was a sackable offence. I well remember taking a bottle of duty-free whisky to one of my colleagues in the states. The look at his face was enough to tell me it possibly wasn't the best idea. He then spent ten minutes in absolute panic, running round to find somewhere to hide it so that he couldn't be fired if he was caught with it!
But, returning to the subject of Vimercarte the food was superb; and as it was in an IBM plant it impressed the punters even more.
As well as arranging the six coaches to carry everyone around the Italian countryside, in Italy there were also the logistics of housing 180+ persons for the night, and giving them two lunches, a dinner and breakfast, almost all at different locations . The complications these arrangements caused were why the advance party was necessary. At the plant itself we needed speakers to run the various presentations, and something like 10 guides for the various groups touring the factory. We eased the problem by splitting the overall group into two parts, each of which had a different itinerary and each of which was further split into groups of six for the plant tour.
On all these reference events, though, the great thing was that you arranged to take the punter to and from the reference site. This gave you several hours in the car with him, building a relationship; and doing, very discreetly, the hardest sell you were ever able to do. In the case of Vimercarte, of course, it meant that the salespeople were able to do this for a day and a half.
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