IBM
0143 IBM The Advantages of Working There
When I packed my bags and went as a sales professional to IBM - a choice which most would see as perverse - I was understandably anxious about my new future. But, in the event, I enjoyed myself immensely. I had a sort of compact with IBM management that I would not ask for promotion - something I think they would, in any case, have viewed with alarm - but that I would be allowed to choose the job that I found interesting, and wanted to do. To the great credit of IBM, I was allowed to do just that, to choose a string of fascinating jobs, for more than 15 years until I finally chose to set up my own business.
Thus, about every three years when my current job came to an end I used to sit down in front of John Steel, who was the main board Personnel Director, and ask What do you have for me? He would produce a list of the jobs he thought suitable and I would peruse them. I would usually reject them, but after several such meetings we would agree on one and I would move on to my next job.
In about half the cases I insisted on my choice and in the other half John eventually persuaded me of his choice. Of the resulting jobs half were good and half not so good; but the good ones were the ones John chose and the bad ones my choice!
It is also to the great credit of IBM that it recognised that non-managers, such as I was at times, could be as important and valuable to it as managers. It created a role that it called a `professional' for staff jobs, whose holders could have as high a status, and certainly as high a salary, as managers - without having to take on the role of manager.
For some of us, maybe most of us if the truth were known, the prime objective is the satisfaction of a job well done. Even so, it would be wrong to describe selling as a vocation. It is perhaps too worldly for that, and nobody would believe me if I made such a claim for it. But there is a significant element of vocation in the role that the sales professional eventually assumes. Certainly, for such people, it is the job itself that matters. For many others, with the prime objectives of money or promotion, the sales professional's job is a way of earning these. To them it may even be seen as a necessary evil.
But for the true professional it is the job itself that is the reward. He takes the view that it is foolish to spend more than half one's waking time in a role that is not satisfying; and accordingly tailors his plans to maximise his satisfaction.
Having said that, there are many routes to satisfaction. Some, such as myself, obtain satisfaction from solving the customers' problems; it is an intellectual exercise as stimulating as many in academia.
On the other hand, my most difficult sales jobs were nearly always those on my own manager. These were also my most important sales campaigns. A prospect won will result in an order. A manager won over could result in a year of enjoyment on the job, and might even be the start of a lifetime career.
The reason for this was that it was always my claim, based on considerable experience and even greater observation, that the key ingredients of a professional's success, in decreasing order of importance, were:
1. A favourable target and a good territory.
2. Hard work.
3. Luck.
4. Sales ability.
It may surprise some of you that I would rate sales ability last. This not to say that it is unimportant; clearly it isn't. But I always believed that a sales professional should recognise that much of his performance depends on luck. He needs the right product at the right time and can be destroyed if he has the wrong one at the wrong time. Above all, in terms of what the sales professional can control, it is sheer hard work that is his main contribution.
But all of that is of less importance than ensuring, as far as you can, that you have been given a good territory and an achievable set of targets.
Once these have been set, you have to get on with the job and make the best of them. But it is well worthwhile attempting to sway the odds when these crucial factors are being decided. It was amazing how the value of IBM sales professionals' territories suddenly diminished, at least according to their those professionals, when the annual review of targets came around. There was even discussion among IBM sales professionals as to whether it was worth holding business back to the New Year, so that lower targets would be the order of the day. The reason for this was that the inevitable reward for success in IBM was an increased target - so that you had to run even harder to achieve the same level of success in the following year.
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