IBM
0144 George Meyer and other accounts
In taking over my first IBM territory, I looked down my prospect listings and my nose twitched over a handful of them; over one in particular, which I believed had all the signs of being a hot prospect. Thus, where Hitachi was my main bureau account, my main General Systems Division account - and at that a new account - was to become George Meyer. This was a manufacturer of large machines for production line processes, such as bottle washing in dairies. As such, it should have been a clear prospect for the stock control (BOMP) type of application where IBM was so expert.
It was one of the few potential accounts I found on my trawl of my new area in 1973. It was on a light industrial estate but, where most of the other operations there were subsidiaries of British companies, this was a subsidiary of an American corporation. Unusually, on my patch at least, it was responsible its own DP requirements.
Surprisingly, I found it quite easy to get in to see the DP manager, and (having asked all the usual questions about his existing computer) I spent a good hour introducing him to IBM. My spiel about IBM was designed for potential new customers. He let me finish it all before he commented, at the end of the call: “But obviously nobody has told you we are already an IBM customer!” Even worse, he went on to describe, in graphic detail, all the problems he had recently experienced with his IBM equipment. He didn't have an IBM mainframe (my questioning had revealed that at the beginning of the interview), but had a room full of IBM data preparation equipment. Being (as I later found out) a customer who liked to manipulate salesmen, he had carefully omitted to tell me about this. “I gather you haven't seen our file of complaints” was just the start of is diatribe. I was taken aback, and understandably asked what he was talking about. “Well” he said “We have some of your 80 column card punches, and we've had terrible problems getting them maintained. I would have thought they should have told you about that!”
Of course, nobody had told me anything whatsoever about it. I didn't know we had any such machines on the patch at all. Despite all its great boast about the values of DP, IBM was often one of the worse users of it.
Having recovered my nerve, I went into customer apology mode. It should have mollified him, but I got the impression that he was looking for any excuse to hammer IBM. Later on, I found out that they had a Honeywell mainframe and were just about to replace this with another Honeywell machine. Accordingly, he was well and truly in the pocket of Honeywell, and was happy to do anything which undermined IBM. I suspect he was very unhappy when I turned upon his doorstep -- since we had to be the main competition for the account.
All of this I learned over the next two to three weeks, as I sorted out problems on his punches. This is one advantage to be gained from providing excellent customer service, even to the smallest accounts. The punters quite often don't tell you what's going on. You have to work it out by talking to the various employees. This I did, and realised that this was the potential big winner to get me in the 100 percent club.
This account was one of the toughest campaigns I remember. I did what we had been taught to, and conducted a survey and produced a proposal. This was full of detailed understanding of their DP needs. I suspect this wouldn't have got me anywhere, but the great advantage of such a survey is it entitles you to meet everyone in the company. The DP manager was still in Honeywell's pocket, but I persuaded not a few of the other managers -- key managers at that -- to support me. In particular I got in to see the managing director, and established a very good relationship with him. Indeed, he soon took over the project himself -- when he realised that the DP manager was giving him the bums-rush to Honeywell
It's the campaign which contained a classical form of escalation. In essence, I was greeted by the DP manager who said “I will recommend Honeywell”. I then went to the managing director who said “Well, I will support IBM”. The DP manager then got the US head office involved, and came back to tell me that the DP manager in charge of their installations worldwide was supporting Honeywell. I then set up contact with my counterpart, the IBM salesman in the US who was responsible for Meyer worldwide. He obviously had an interest in keeping competitors out of his account, though he wouldn't receive direct credit for any sale I made.
The net result of this, since IBM were well entrenched in the company in the US (and it had an IBM installation), was that the DP manager in the United States was fired. I said it was a tough campaign, and - before it finished - there was quite a lot of blood on the walls in one way or another.
To cut a long story short the UK DP manager then came back and said the vice president of DP in the US was in favour of Honeywell -- the UK DP manager had been told this by Honeywell -- and my response (having contacted the US) was “That may be so, but the IBM branch manager is currently out on a golfing weekend with the president of the whole company”. At that point the escalation ended!
It was at this point that the DP manager sprang on me an unexpected question “You think I've been bribed by Honeywell don't you”. For once in my life I actually was able to come back with the best answer. Usually, like most people, I only think of the correct answer a few hours later -- when it is no use to anyone. But in this case I came back immediately. “Of course not” I said “No reputable company would offer bribe. And if they did you wouldn't trust them. You wouldn’t be sure that they would be offering you the best deal - if they needed to give a bribe. In any case what would be the point. You would gain nothing from the bribe. You'd put your job on the line just as much as they would. Then, having got the business, it would be much easier - and safer - for them not to pay you the bribe. They could always deny that it had ever happened, rather than actually paying up”. His face turned almost white and, as I went on, Honeywell receded into the distance.
The clinching argument was when he and I went in to see the managing director. The managing director said to the DP manager “Look, I want you to be very thorough about this. I want you to check everything and make certain that we get the right machine”. There was then a long pause before he said '”And either way it will be an IBM machine!” It was a nice way to win an account.
I had a few other accounts at that time. One of these illustrated the problems of a sales system based on existing customers. In general providing by far the best customer service was a great way to run our business. It was indeed then at the heart of the IBM sales operation, and IBM went downhill when it abandoned it in the later1980s. But it was not without its problems. The customer in this case was Ascot water heaters. When I went in, again thinking it was a potential new account, I was once more told that they had equipment installed. I was then shown the equipment which was, yet again a card punch – just one this time. I was rubbing my hands with glee when it was pointed out to me, however, that this single punch was connected to terminals all round the factory. It was indeed one of the earliest versions of data capture in a factory situation.
Even so I thought I could do very well. The problem which emerged, when I went back to the ranch and managed to get the account records, was that I found that this old equipment was being rented at a very high price. Even if I put in a new system with all bells and whistles, which would given them the far more than they currently had, I would take net debit; in as much as the rental value of the new equipment would be quite a bit less than the old equipment which it replaced. This put me in something of a quandary. To do the best for the customer, and I suppose in the long-term for IBM, I had to sell a new machine. On the other hand that would mean I would lose a lot of money in commission because it would show up as a net debit to my commission account. Having said that, as someone who still values their ethical position, I started to make the sales pitch for the new computer. I'm glad to say, however, that the business was not concluded at the end the year when I switched to my new job in education. It must have been a very unwelcome present for the salesman who took over.
There were other indirect benefits to selling to these various customers. Thus, I was selling a system -- also not completed when I left territory -- to the financial director of a machine engineering company. This company had been in some difficulty, but I got insider information from the financial director that the upcoming annual results would be much better than everyone expected. I rushed off to my friendly stockbroker. In those days it was unusual to have a stockbroker, but one of guys with whom I trained in IBM had gone off to join the family stockbroking firm and he allowed me to open an account. I put my money on the nose of this company. The problem was that the stock market collapsed over the next couple of years. It was a major collapse taking the stock market down by something like a factor of five or more. My insider information was useful, but the end result was that after two years of struggling I managed only to end up on even keel. That was a major achievement and when everyone else had loss four fifths of the value of their shares; but it wasn't an experience I relished. I never bought any shares again after that -- I didn't know what about the market was about. Maynard Keynes talked about it as ‘animal spirits’ and I guess he was right.
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