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A DANCE THROUGH THE FIRES OF TIME

9506 IBM – 1970s part 1

The 1970s were a time when, for once, I tried to put my family first; even if I failed! In particular, I chose secure employment in the world’s most admired corporation over a high-flying career in lesser companies. Indeed, although IBM didn't reach its greatest success for another decade, when I joined it was already one of the most successful -- and richest -- companies in the world. Its success had come about largely because it had collected together a quarter million of the most capable staff in the world; of whom, uniquely, more than half had a degree. It was described in more detail in my best selling book about the corporation, and in even more detail in my (unpublished) revision of that book on the accompanying DVD.

Accordingly, when I joined for my basic technical training this was in effect at postgraduate level. Like all of IBM’s marketing entrants, I was due to spend between 18 months and two years in training before I would be let loose on IBM's customers.  This length of training was unique in terms of its length, and (post-graduate) level, for sales and marketing personnel anywhere in the world. 

Consequently, I was to spend my first 18 months more or less evenly spent between Richmond, where I would do my practical consolidation in the branch, and Sudbury Hill (near Greenford), where I would do my classroom training.  Sudbury Hill was where I started.

In this way, my first day started at Sudbury Hill; in classroom with 30 others.  The first thing we ever learnt was the instruction BALR, Branch And Link Register!  This was a strange instruction then, and even later I still thought it a rather weird way to a start course for novices.  But the IBM technical people never made life easy for us. In fact it was a practical way for them to start the course, because programs written in Assembler typically started with this instruction; it set up the first register you were going to use.

Computers ultimately are coded in machine language, made up of noughts and ones, but - even when I joined in 1971 - machine code had long been superseded. Instead programmers made the use of Assembler as the lowest level language; which immediately compiled one on one into machine language.  We spent the best part of half a year becoming fluent in Assembler; since -- as a last resort -- this was a language you then had to understand to get inside programs. Of course, these days few of even the most sophisticated ‘programmers’ understand such low level instructions – even though everything still ultimately reduces to machine code - instead their horizon is limited to the peculiarities of the application packages they specialise in, and the narrowness of their resulting vision poses problems for all of us!

We were taught Assembler, from the bottom up, by two of IBM's systems engineers.  At the time they seemed almost like gods to us, since they understood this strange new language.  Later, I realised that they were just junior SEs (Systems Engineers).  But it was strange, looking back on this, that I had so readily swapped my own position at senior general manager level to become a trainee overawed by junior systems engineers!  This nicely illustrated the power of the pecking order within companies.

Mixed in with the basic language tuition was an introduction to the OCR, the Operational Control Language (sometimes called Job Control Language).  This was the interface with the operating system of the computer; then usually running in batch mode - so the first few cards of the ‘deck’ (which contained the program, say) told the computer what to do with the batch following. As this was taught as we went along, it took a long time for us to realise that this was not actually part of Assembler.  But, in those days you had to know the control language, as well as the basic assembler language, since otherwise you couldn't get your programs compiled. Today, once more, this has been submerged in the secret code underpinning Bill Gates’ operating systems. You have to be an expert to even find your way into the operating language, and even there can get nowhere all the additions Microsoft have made to it. This secrecy is a crucial limitation on computing, and is why open-source (Unix-based) languages have now become fashionable for the systems used by large companies.

A lot of the time was taken up with writing programs and punching them onto eighty column cards.  Indeed, the regular routine was to do this during the day and then, in the evening, hand them in at the main computer rooms -- where they were run as batches on the computers overnight.  In the morning you went and picked up your card deck once more, together with a printout of the programme and its output.  All too often the latter was very short, since the programme was flawed and had aborted after one of two instructions.  You could correct this within a couple of minutes, but you still had to wait for the next overnight run to see what the next problem was!

All in all, I found programming very restful; especially after the stresses at BTR.  I was quite good at it, and in the exam at the end of term I did very well. Mind you I had revised as hard for that exam as I did for my A-levels -- far harder than I did at university. Even so, there is something very soothing about writing computer programs.  Eventually, I wrote them not as an exercise in logic but almost as a foreign language.  I used to pick up the specifications and then simply write. The code flowed from under my pen.

In the second term we went further, to learn high level languages. At that time the main commercial language was: Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL), though a number of organisations -- especially scientific organisations -- wrote in FORTRAN (Formula Translation). We learned these, though, rather perfunctorily and without writing many programs.  Our main effort concentrated on IBM's new language PL1.  This was a merger of the two approaches, with the free-form writing of Fortran combined with the more structured approach of COBOL.  Indeed it could do almost anything you might want it to.  It was a superb language, reportedly developed at Hursley in the United Kingdom, and it also reportedly was the key to putting a man on the moon -- without this language NASA would not been able to undertake its various projects.  At that time, indeed, the language of computing was often dominated by that of NASA.  Thus the main spooling programme, the program which stored the output and then immediately started printed it out whilst the computer got on with other things, was called HASP (Houston Automatic Spooling Program).

We were at last allowed to get our hands on the very large IBM machines, though their size sounds puny these days.  The largest machine I ever ran was an IBM 165 -- the largest in the range -- and it had a main memory of just 256K bytes; little more than that of a calculator a couple of decades later!.  Even then we had difficulty loading the various partitions into main memory, where it was capable of running separate programs in a number of such partitions at the same time.

Finally, we moved onto the smallest IBM machines -- the System/3 (S/3) range – on which I was later to spend most of my time in the field. This used programming language called RPGII. This was in essence a Report Generating Language, hence RPG, with a few additions to handle basic input/output and calculations.  It was the first of IBM’s small commercial machines.  The major difference with these small new machines, the major ‘breakthrough’ at that stage, was the use of smaller cards with 96 columns, rather than the 80 columns used for the previous half century. We were at the stage when such differences were seen as leaps forward. Indeed, earlier in our training, we still had to learn how plug up the boards used on tabulating machines; which IBM still sold, In their case the 'programs' (such as they were) were set up by wires plugged into, and linking, various ‘hubs’ on the back of the machine! Even the S/3 machines really were still very small; the card-based machine, for instance, had a main memory of just 8K!

Although I was no longer on the dole and was now earning a salary, which was not too far different to that had received at BTR, I was still short of money.  Accordingly, for the first six months of my work at IBM, I managed to insinuate myself in with three of the younger SEs on my course and shared their digs.  This was much more like the bottom end of the university digs range, and was a room in the backyard of a pub, but -- with four of us to share - the low rent made up for the inconvenience.  It was in Wembley, and we used to go out of an evening for a meal in the local restaurants which were also cheap.

Later on, however, they moved to the rent new digs by themselves, and I ended up for a few months in the small hotel in Earls Court which I had found when I was at BTR.  It was nothing special, but it still cost more than the very cheap rates in Wembley.

I think as a kindness to me, Ron Davies the branch manager at Richmond, sent me for my first practical experience to Ipswich.  This might seem perverse, since it was a long drive away from Burton. The experience might been worse if I had not exchanged our car, Pat's mini which is all we had left, for a new Renault 12.  The reason for the choice of Ipswich was that IBM would pay my accommodation costs.  I first started in the local pub, which the customer chose - since it was almost opposite his office, but was not very salubrious even if it was cheaper for IBM.  Eventually I managed insinuate myself into one of the hotels which was much better -- not least because I had en-suite facilities.

In Ipswich I supervised the installation of a new System/3 in a shipper's office.  They previously had a card machine, again from IBM. It was a massive engineering job, built like a battleship, and to get it out of the building it literally had to be cut apart by oxyacetylene burners. The new System/3 came in through the window much more easily.

It was a matter of getting the machine up and running. My job, for six to eight weeks, was to help IBM's local SEs on the project. It was a major step forward for the shippers, and indeed their DP manager was over the moon about it.  I remember him well, since he had a mini Cooper in which he used to drive me at night around the streets of Ipswich at 100 mph and, in the process, used to scare the living daylights out of me.

It was only when we came to process the first major job that I realised the true scale of the problems involved.  The machine, a standard System/3, had been sold on the basis that it was a batch machine. This was a reasonable assumption since all the work was produced in batches, and it seemed there was no time-critical online work.  What we hadn't realised was that the machine was also used to produce bills of lading for the North Sea ferry which departed from Ipswich every day.  Accordingly, when we came to produce this documentation for the first time, all hell broke loose. It turned out it was genuinely time critical, in that if we didn't produced the bills of lading the ferry simply couldn't depart on the tide.  Consequently, it was a horrendous scramble; since it was the first time we had done this and mistakes were sure to be made.  I had a horror of holding up the ship by not getting the bill of lading to it in time.  Fortunately, we made the deadline - albeit by less than five minutes -- but we made it in enough time for the ship to depart with the tide. After all that, when the ship was going down the Channel it slid sideways onto a mudbank -- and never did the make the tide!

My first six months at IBM were great fun. After all I had a job, when I had begun to fear that I would never get one again! Furthermore, the intellectual achievements involved - in learning so much technical data and so many languages - was very stimulating.  In addition, the branch manager, Ron Davies, was very friendly and a great supporter. For once I felt quite secure and happy.

This came to the end when a new branch manager was appointed and turned out to be something of a bastard.  He put a lot of unnecessary pressure on me. Even the best organisations have their quota of such people.

In addition I was then moving onto sales training, and I felt very unsure about this. Not least, I was lacking confidence and didn't really see myself as a salesman. This wasn't helped by the criticism I received in the dummy calls that I made.  The criticism was, I am sure, very well-intentioned; though later on, when I was on the other side of the desk as a sales training instructor in IBM, I thought some of my colleagues got pleasure from destroying the confidence of the people they taught. It was only when I made a really excellent call, almost by mistake - it was the first time I reacted naturally and that was exactly what I needed to do, that I started gaining some confidence. Thus, I progressively gained confidence through all my courses - until I came to Sales School

In this time I went round supporting various salesmen in Richmond branch.  I remember going into British Airways with the IBM salesman for this account.  The British Airways computer operations centre had a number of IBM's largest computers installed. The centre was, though, immediately under the flight path into Heathrow.  Planes thundered overhead, only 50-70 feet above us. As, even by that time, their business depended on the computers driving its network terminals across the world, this seemed to me to be an accident waiting to happen.  Fortunately it never happened before the systems were relocated off the airport.

I wasn't impressed with the IBM salesman, since he knew very little about the technical side of the equipment and seemingly even less about customers business!  He must have done something right, though, since he later became the general manager of the whole of the United Kingdom!  But, perhaps, it was indicative that even within IBM politics got you further than ability!

As the final Sales School - which essentially tested your sales ability - approached, I started getting quite nervous. The sales job is one where you live on your nerves.  Your job is only as safe as your next sale, and -- especially in IBM -- your performance over the year.  Fail and you are shown the door. That was how I felt, anyway, even as a trainee. 

Sales School comprised, in its entirety, a series of the test calls and presentations.  I viewed its approach with terror. Almost immediately before, we had gone down - with Pat's mother - to a static caravan we had hired at Bognor Regis.  It was relaxing, I suppose, but I was aware that overhanging it was the Sales School.  However, I went into the Sales School well prepared. Not least, I had the best set of magic markers you ever saw, and I still have two of these in use after 30 years!

To my surprise, I started to do rather well. Indeed by two-thirds of the way through, when we were coming up to the last presentations, I was doing very well -- as were the other members of my team.  Accordingly, the sales trainers suggested that we took a very risky approach to the final presentations.  I don't know whether this was them being nasty, since I saw similar things happen when I was in the Sales School team later, but whatever the reason the presentation was a disaster.  Accordingly, it really was touch and go when we came to the end of the course. I scraped through, but barely.

Even so, I was now a fully fledged salesman and joined the others at the traditional dinner in the luxurious hotel next door.  It was an interesting meal, not least since Eddy Nixon, the chairman of IBM UK, joined us and let us into some secrets.  I remember that then, at the end of 1972, he described a computer of the future. It would be as powerful as the biggest IBM computers and yet it would fit into a teacup.  We believed him, since IBM's technical expertise then was at its peak.  Even so it was nearly 30 years before it was to happen! But that was an indication of how, uniquely, far ahead IBM management planned.

So, there I was; a fully fledged IBM salesman. I got back to the branch to have the manager greet me with “You only just scraped through, so you had better watch your step!”. This did nothing at all for my confidence.

Upon joining IBM I had, once more, to move; this time down to its Richmond branch -- which was in South West London.  Accordingly, Pat and I had to start house-hunting in that area.  We started, and finished, in Molesey; since this is where her aunt and uncle lived, and where we stayed when house-hunting.

Unfortunately, the Burton house was, once more, slow to sell. Indeed, we eventually had to advertise it ourselves.  When we did eventually sell, privately, the estate agents boldly claimed their percentage for the sale. When I explained that we had found the buyers through a newspaper advertisement, the estate agents said that didn't matter because they had been on their books anyway.  I then said “...well why didn't you send them to us”.  Their reply was that our house was simply not shown to the couple – but that didn’t affect their claim -- and they still wanted to claim their percentage. It took a personal visit to the head of the estate agency, and threatened legal action by me, before they dropped the claim.

Even then, South West London – where we were moving to - was expensive, certainly for family size homes. Within it, Molesey was just about the best value for money at that time.  In particular, it had a massive new housing estate which had just been completed, controversially built on the land where the Hurst Park Race Course had been.  This sounds horrendous in terms of the damage to the environment, but in fact it had been built by Wates who put in a lot of effort to create communities and in particular into architect designed houses.  As a result it was a middle-class community of families who soon developed very strong links with each other. It was where I was to spend the next 13 years of my life, and ultimately to figure in the local residents association as one of its borough counsellors.

Even though we had decided the general area where we wanted to go -- Hurst Park -- we still hadn't found the house we wanted.  We had, though, discovered one key factor; that the part of the estate to the north of the main road was 10 percent more expensive. This was quite simply because children from there were guaranteed entry to Hurst Park Primary School; which was by a long way the best primary school in the area. Accordingly I concentrated my search there.

To cut a long story short, I eventually found an end of terrace house, where all the houses were in terraces no matter how expensive.  It was a three-bedroom house with two separate living rooms.  Thus, upstairs it had two large bedrooms and a small one (which poor Miles had to live in) and a bathroom. Downstairs it had a large front room and a smaller sized dining room which had a room divider built between this and the galley kitchen.  Out the back it had a garage and a small garden which was nicely walled in.

It was about half the size of our Burton house, but it had a nice feel about it and it served us well for the next 13 years.

I had to buy it without Pat seeing it!  But we had no choice.  I was confident that Pat would like it, since one of the main advantages was that having been recently decorated we would not have to spend time decorating.  I was wrong!  Pat hated the wallpaper and I had to paint the house from top to bottom. In the process I got very trendy and covered the long wall in the main living room in Hessian.  It was, as I said, very trendy -- but it was immensely difficult to stick on the wall!

The nice thing about Hurst Park was that, due to most of its residents starting their family lives there at almost the same time, it was a homogenous community.  We operated as a tight knit community and enjoyed ourselves as community.

We had our own small group of friends particularly Ian and Lil, Moira and Derek, Tricia and James and a few others.  We regularly had parties.  I remember we used to have, as was very fashionable at the time, fondue parties. The form of fondue we used revolved around frying bits of fillet steak in boiling oil on the table.  We also had regular parties at Christmas and New Year and barbecues in the summer.  Indeed, for the only time in my life we regularly got together on a weekly basis.  These bonds were cemented by the fact that our children were friends together.  I guess that was the reason that it happened, since we've never had the same access to such a community since that time.

Our style of entertaining has varied over the years.  When we were first married we used to give dinner parties for two to four friends. I greatly enjoyed this, especially as it allowed me to try out new recipes and new wines. On the other hand, Pat preferred parties which were attended by forty or 50 people, often acquaintances rather than friends; and ones which were punctuated by party games.  I suppose this came from her upbringing, where her extended family joined in such parties and Pat was the centre of attention.  My own family also had such parties on my father’s side, but not my mother's side -- to which we were closer -- where we enjoyed much smaller affairs.

Once the children were old enough, their needs took over.  The children's parties we gave were a riot, and were reputedly some of the best in the neighbourhood.  But even the parties for our adult friends moved in the direction of Pat's ideal; and were relatively large parties with finger food. There were exceptions.  As I mentioned earlier, when fondues became all the rage, in the 1970s, something like ten or twelve of us used to sit around the table and take part in these rituals. Once we moved to Milton Keynes, however, there seemed to the very few parties -- and all these were of Pat's type. In addition, they seem to be given by us alone - and by nobody else.

On the other hand, I have done a significant amount of business entertaining; at a very different level.  This has ranged from lunches at the best restaurants - I once gave a lunch in a private room at the Savoy where there was a waiter for every journalist - to the other end of the scale where I threw a party for the IBM staff working on Exhibit, to which 400 were invited. It was the party to end all parties.  As all the workers were much younger than me, I asked Sarah where we should hold it.  She suggested the London Dungeon.  This had never been used for parties and it meant we had to build three stages for the music; one for the singer who was the British entry in the Eurovision song contest, one for a jazz band, and one for a disco.  In addition we had to import a complete kitchen. This cost something like £30,000, but it was a great success.  Equally, though, it ended with me having to throw all the drunks out - literally into the gutter -- and receiving a formal reprimand for providing a bottle of wine a head instead of the standard half a bottle.

The biggest parties I gave, though, were the American picnic -- celebrating the US bi-centenary -- and the Jubilee party the following year.  Something like 5,000 to 6,000 people turned up to those, though they did have to provide their own food.  The residents association, provided the entertainment; in the form of gymnastics, massed bands, and police dogs. They were a great success, and led on to become an annual event; as the Molesey Carnival.

We also went out together, and I especially remember a number of visits to Leith Hill -- the Surrey beauty spot – with our friends in which we managed to pile four adults and four children into Ian's Renault. It was a wonderfully friendly atmosphere and I get quite nostalgic when I think of it.

Later on we joined a group called Grapevine.  This was supposedly a wine appreciation society.  In fact it was a good excuse to get sociably drunk, though there certainly was a wine appreciation aspect.  The key factor, though, was that everyone was expected to drink glass of each of the wines on offer -- and there were six wines every evening -- which meant they would drink about a bottle of wine.  Those of us on the committee, as I eventually was, were expected to drink about one and a half bottles.  Accordingly everyone was very friendly and everyone was very merry. In particular I remember the lady who was at that time chairwoman of our residents association.  She was a very reserved and proper lady until, each Grapevine, her fourth glass of wine; at which point she came alive to become the heart and soul of the party.  Her husband was a senior civil servant, who was at that time -- much to his surprise -- put in charge of Britain's defence against the Cod War.  He was the only civil servant I know who was given a memorandum budget and told to spend as much as was necessary.  He later went on to become a director-general in the European Commission.

Having said all that, there was considerable element of wine appreciation. We, on the committee took it in turn to choose the wines and we worked hard to make it very educational.  The idea was to work towards the best wine just after halfway through the evening. By then people's palates had been wakened, but the later rounds would have been ruined by their drunken spirits.  People, under the influence of rather too much drink, always however thought the last wine was best of all!

I did two evenings.  One was Spanish wines. When we went to Spain on holiday, I brought back a vast quantity of local wines and champagne. This was a great success.  My later one was a great success during evening, but was not quite so well received the following morning.  It covered aperitifs, and I went out on way to get some of the most exotic aperitifs I could find.  What I did not allow for was that some were gin based, some whisky based and some wine based.  The net result was, without realising it, everyone thoroughly mixed their drinks and the resulting hangovers were terrible.  However, it wasn't as bad as an evening at the restaurant of one of the members, with six special courses cooked for us, where the seafood course – although delicious like the other parts of the meal - gave everyone violent food poisoning.

This friendliness lasted for a dozen or so years until we were forced to move down to Basingstoke.  We still keep in touch with a handful of those friends.  It was diminished somewhat when Ian, who was my best friend, was forced to take a job in Oman as architects’ jobs were then non-existent in this country.  We bade him in a sad farewell, along with his family, when they departed to Oman. Were astounded when, four months later, we found him back again.  He had been deported.

The story was that he had been getting on well in Oman, reporting to the chief architect who in turn reported to Sultan Kaboosh; who was the ruler there.  Things went wrong when one of their workers, who they recruited from the civil service, had become a persona non grata and Ian's boss was told to get rid of him. When he didn't do this, he was arrested and deported.  Ian took over and when he didn't do this fast enough either, he too was deported.

The reason for this was fairly straightforward.This worker, a very good ‘go-for’, had previously worked for the air force and had discovered that the new anti-aircraft system they were putting in place was the wrong one.  BAe, who had a surplus system on the stocks, had persuaded the sultan's charge d'affaire -- who was in charge of negotiations -- to order the wrong one.  He ordered the mobile one when they really needed the fixed one. He was in this position because he was also the sultan's boyfriend, despite the very elaborate wedding ceremony the sultan had just gone through.  He had been persuaded by BAe adopting the simple expedient of offering him a £1 million bribe.  If this news got out then he would have a very nasty end. Not long before, when there had been a threatened palace coup, the participants had been taken down to the rifle range where they were used for target practice; and, as the soldiers were not very good shots, it had taken a long time for them to die. Accordingly everyone associating with the bribery desperately wanted the story buried.

Ian came back without a job, more important with all his savings frozen him Oman. I eventually persuaded him to make an approach to the Foreign Office.  I thought that he should suggest that the only way that he could recoup his money was to go to the national newspapers with the story. Very quickly he was invited to the Foreign Office itself and put in front of a room full of people who refused to say who they were, but who were fairly obviously members of the intelligence services.  Almost immediately a newspaper article appeared which reported that a member of the military had been arrested for bribery in Saudi Arabia.  Interestingly, this story was never followed up by the newspapers.  At the same time Ian got his money out of Oman and was found a job in Saudi Arabia.  He was in charge of building the Ministry of Youth.

He had some good stories of his time there.  Not all were happy stories.  He had been taking the Swedish managing director, of the multinational which was the building contractor, around the roof of building when this managing director was so deep in conversation that instead of turning left he walked straight on; and fell down 10 stories.  It must have a very embarrassing for the local management to have to report this to its Swedish Head Office. 

He also told stories about the neighbouring site which was subcontracted to the South Koreans.  In particular, the workforce, when they stopped work every night, turned out on the parade ground and proceeded to undertake military drill.  It turned out that they were the backup for the King in case the palace guards didn't defend him as well as they were supposed to.

He then went on to be in charge of building of the most expensive building in the world, which was the Saudi Foreign Ministry.  As it was also the location for the Saudi intelligence services I came to the conclusion that he, by then at least, was in reality working for the CIA.  Surprisingly, I'm not certain that he himself realised this!

When I had 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 eventually 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 in the sales role. 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 those sales 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.

In theory at least, at the beginning of 1973 I went on territory; in my first year as a salesman in IBM. The reality was very different.  Within a couple of days of the start of the year I was lifting a tumble drier in our garage and lost my balance.  I foolishly fought to control the drier’s fall, and this resulted in a slipped disc. For the next three months I was in agony. I tried sleeping on a normal bed. I tried sleeping on the floor, on cushions on the floor and in every position imaginable.  I spent several weeks lying on the lounge floor watching television through a mirror.  I even managed to play bridge with our friends, Moira and Derek, whilst lying on my stomach in bed.

I was treated at Westminster hospital, and it cost the health region a fortune to collect me by ambulance and take me up there. In those three months they did only one thing, but that saved my sanity.  I had had terrible pains in my back for most of the three months.  My GP had eventually given me 16 painkiller pills to be taken every three hours, night and day, but even these didn't really didn't stop the pain.  Eventually I mentioned this to my consultant at Westminster and he said “My God. Doesn't he know?  What you have got is cramp, and what he needs to give you is a muscle relaxant. The best one is Vallium”. That night I took my first Vallium and the pain disappeared almost instantaneously!  Eventually, after the three months, I did get back to work; though I had to go to physiotherapy every morning. In fact, this was quite pleasant, since it involved an agreeable trip through Richmond Park to the Roehampton Hospital, where I had this physiotherapy, and the exercises themselves were a good way to start the day.

On my new territory I was scheduled take over Hitachi as my main customer.  In my absence, the previous salesman had to maintain it; to the extent he chose to, where he understandably was primarily concerned with building his own new territory.  When I got back to work, after three months, to take the account back again, this was just as the account was coming up to its next major change.  It was the time of the introduction of VAT. This meant that almost all our customers, and Hitachi was one of the biggest bureau customers, had to have their accounting suites changed to allow for the new tax. 

Each bureau customer had a systems analyst assigned, as well as a salesman.  The systems analyst was the expert who specified all the various systems. The IBM programmers then wrote the systems to match this.  Unfortunately, this was one situation where the friendliness of the analyst at IBM got us into trouble.  Hitachi had agreed to a certain specification, and the analyst was supposed to be working to this.  But over the last three months, as they were approaching completion of the final suite of programmes, they kept asking for small changes.  The analyst who was very friendly with them, happily agreed these -- since the stand-in salesman wasn’t closely monitoring what he was doing.  The analyst did this with the best intentions, in terms of giving the customer what he wanted; where the additions were provided for free! But, as a result, it became a much more elaborate system than was originally intended.  The problem was that the very elaboration meant that the programming progressively became more complex and took much more time. Incidentally, a key element of Hitachi's original specification was that it was to be written so that it would use less computer time, since they were charged on the IBM bureau system by the minute.  In fact, all these additions to the system actually increased the amount of computer time used by a factor of two.  I was eternally grateful for this, at the end of the year, since Hitachi made me a fortune by doubling its billing!

But, as I was on my way into the account, taking over again, VAT day inevitably approached.  I started to read the various memos, and – as I read them – I started to get very worried. Although everyone was pretending that there were no problems, it seemed obvious to me that the project was drifting further and further back. Accordingly, I talked with the programming management -- to discover, to my horror, that there was very little chance of the project being completed by the VAT day, our cut off day.

At that stage I was not in charge of the account, the previous salesman still was. When VAT day came, however, I was asked to take back the account; which proved to be dead in the water.  The programs simply weren't ready to run.

The big problem in writing programmes isn't the writing it's the testing.  As this was by now an enormous suite of programmes, the amount of test data needed, which was being punched out by a separate team of programmers, was vast. Despite all their best intentions, and their hard work, it was obvious that it was going to be at least a month before the system was up and running.

This was a disaster, since it meant that Hitachi wouldn't be able to bill any of their sales (to retailers) for at least a month.  When I investigated it proved to be even worse.  They could at least have shipped on the old system, and then billed it when the new one came on stream.  Unfortunately someone in the IBM bureau had taken what seemed, at the time, to be a very sensible step and had destroyed all the pre-VAT programmes. This was so that no one would ever make the mistake of running them instead of the new programmes.  Accordingly, there were no previous programmes -- there was nothing Hitachi could use to ship a single TV set!

Thus Hitachi was left with no ability to send out TV sets to its dealers. As against this, it had thousands of sets arriving each week across the Trans-Siberian railway -- since this was the fastest route from Japan in those days.  To cope with this flood, Hitachi hired more and more warehouses to put the homeless stock into. At one stage they even lost a warehouse, with £1 million worth of stock in it.  Nobody knew where it was.

This was my new account, my inheritance!  As soon as I realised the scale of the disaster, I went to senior management and set off the loudest alarm I could.  The net effect of this was that it landed on the desk of the President of IBM in Armonk within two days.  In those days if a large system was down for more than 24 hours it landed on the desk of the managing director in the United Kingdom.  If it was down for 48 hours -- as in effect Hitachi was -- it landed on the desk of the President of IBM worldwide!  Needless to say all hell broke loose in IBM.  We then had a management programme called ‘CAPS Calls’. This was a programme whereby the salesman took senior management into his accounts.  The major accounts were lucky, if that is the right word, to get one such visit the year. Over the next month Hitachi had at least one per day.  I well remember Fred Clarke, who was the director in charge of the division, saying at a branch meeting “If any of you find me any more slanted eyed gentlemen to visit I will fire you on the spot!”

Under the spotlight, my immediate reaction, supported by IBM management, was to throw money at the account.  Thus, instead of the team of one analyst and half a dozen programmers working eight hours a day, I put in place three teams (each with an analyst and half a dozen programmers) working in shifts all round-the-clock.  In this way the programmes were being written that such a speed that I could see that we might be ready within a couple of weeks.

This still left the problem of testing the system.  That was still likely to take something like a month.  Instead, what I did was use the accurate data from the previous system, which had been kept on the mainframes. Once-a-day I ran that as the test data against the new programmes.  The problem was that, to do this, I had shut down the bureau - without telling the teleprocessing customers who were dependent on it - for an hour every day at lunch.  I managed to persuade management to do this, destroying customer good will across the country, but getting Hitachi's system up and running in just two weeks.

All this made my name well known throughout IBM, in the UK and at Armonk!  I don't know if they appreciated my many miracles. More likely they thought that I was the problem. But, at the end the year, I was moved across to education - which usually represented a promotion - so maybe they did appreciate my work!

Once everything bedded down, Hitachi proved to be a lovely account to run. They were duly grateful that I had sorted matters out for them They were even more grateful when I negotiated a massive settlement, of something like a quarter of a million pounds, for the problems that had been caused.  It was my first big negotiation. In it I learned the lesson that the best approach always is to be generous in the beginning; before the customer realises what the problems really cost them.  In this case IBM management was so grateful to see the back of Hitachi that they would have signed a cheque for almost any amount of money.

As I said it was a lovely account and I got on incredibly well with the finance director who was in charge of the DP side.  I think it came to head when, after I had negotiated the settlement, he said “Why did you put so much effort into doing this for us?” and I replied, genuinely, “You are not merely a customer but your are now a great friend of mine and I was determined to do the best for you”.  I could do no wrong with the account after that.  It was true that I treated him like a friend and he treated me the same, but that is the secret to maintaining an account over the long term.  It doesn't mean that you have to be obsequious; it just means that you have to be trusted by them to do what is best for them.

It worked both ways.  It was the time of the petrol shortage when everyone was queuing half the day to get a gallon or so of petrol.  Hitachi had an arrangement with their local garage and they put me on their list, so I never had any problem. They also sold me one of their first colour televisions very cheaply - at half price - when they were being rationed to everyone else.  Their justification for this was that it was second-hand, they had taken it apart in the laboratory. The reality was it was worked on in the laboratory, especially for me, to make certain that everything was tuned perfectly.  That TV lasted me for the best part of two decades

On the other hand at Christmas they gave me a bottle of wine.  This caused ructions in IBM, since salesman were banned from receiving presents from customers.  I had to go to the main board to get permission to receive it, on the basis that Hitachi management would lose face if I refused.  I used to break not a few IBM rules!

In eventually 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. 

There were other indirect benefits to selling to 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 lost 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.

At IBM I learned that the best way to sell was to enthuse about what I was selling. Everyone is a sucker for an enthusiast, particularly where they are probably one themselves. This is a great start, where most of the other salesmen have long since made their boredom obvious. I regularly asked customers, on the other hand, for their opinions. This was ostensibly so I could learn about the market - but it was also so that I could learn more about the prospect himself! Above all, I stressed that I was not selling but learning.

In reality I was never selling harder. It was a heaven sent opportunity to get the customer to drop his guard. Most prospects automatically raise their defences as soon as they meet a salesman, and the better they think the salesman is the higher they raise their defences. The trick, always, is to find some way to duck under their defences; and what better opportunity than this? In telling me all about his business he also told me how to sell to him. As the attentive pupil, I was automatically transmitting all the right signals that a good sales professional should. He remembered my call with pleasure - it is the ideal environment to develop empathy. Indeed it is such a powerful selling environment that it is arguable that you should plead such ignorance with every new prospect, even when you know more than him.

The selling style I eventually developed, having safely passed IBM sales school, was – to say the very least - idiosyncratic. It was almost the reverse of what sales trainers would insist on; and even quite far from IBM’s ideal. Thus, I well remember one call with my branch manager, in fact on Meyer, after which he lectured me: “You should not slump in your chair, and you should not address a managing director by his first name” I discreetly pointed out to him that I had just persuaded the managing director to place an order when he didn't have to, and - in fact - had put his job on the line for me. The order had been placed three months early, before he had received formal approval from his company's US parent . In return all I had been able to offer was a vague suggestion that IBM would be grateful, and indeed my branch manager was there precisely to add some weight to this rather nebulous claim.

From our point of view, it was also the order that was needed to get me and the branch into the Hundred Per Cent Club. It was a classic sale. I had walked on water to win it - and all that my branch manager had noticed was that my shoes were wet!

Indeed, I always taught the systems engineers (SEs) that they were IBM's most powerful salesmen. The salesman, before he could even start his main sell, had to break down the barriers raised by his prospects. Everyone knew that the IBM salesman, coming from a sales force with such a formidable reputation, was bound to sell them something they didn't want; so their defences were raised every time he hove into view. When the salesman walked out of the door and the systems engineer walked in, however, the prospect would greet him like a long-lost brother. This was someone he could trust, an expert whose only role was to help the prospect. The systems engineer then proceeded to say exactly the same as the salesman. But he was gratefully believed and the sale was made, although formalities required that the order was still placed with the salesman.

I learned to look below the surface when, as a trainee, I had to take over a demonstration from a sales professional who was ill. It was not clear just why the customer had asked for this, since he had recently ordered a small system and the presentation was on a much larger system; costing four to five times as much. I, however, accepted the sales professional's bed-ridden explanation that it was just curiosity about the new equipment that prompted this. From my point of view, as a trainee, any demonstration was valuable experience for me. In the event it went well.

It so happened that I gave him a lift back to his office, since this was not too far out of my way. In the intimacy of the car, among the social chit-chat, I went on to ask him some more questions. Eventually it dawned on me that his interest was rather more than everyone else was allowing for. So very daringly, remembering that I was a mere trainee, I asked him just why he wanted to see the new equipment. His answer was, for the first time, forthright: “It’s because we are reorganising our business and have decided we need a much larger computer system to cope with this.” Within the next five minutes I closed an order for the first UK System/3 mainframe to be used for teleprocessing,.

Out of interest, I asked him why he hadn't mentioned this before. His answer was blunt, but illuminating: “It's for you, as the salesman, to find out!” I have never forgotten that lesson. Now I always do find out.

It is a fact of life that, if you are a salesman, perhaps 80 per cent of your accounts will absorb close to 80 per cent of your effort, and return just 20 per cent of your income. This was certainly true of my own experience. It would, therefore, have been nice to be able to select the most productive 20 per cent and then go on holiday for the remaining nine months. But that is not usually possible, because it is normally not possible to see which will be the most productive 20 per cent which will place the 80 per cent of the busienss. In addition, you will always need far more cover; in case your `bankers' don't actually live up to your expectations – a fear that always dogged me and other salesmen.

On the other hand, I am certain that most sales professionals should at least be able to identify the 10 per cent of prospects which will be unproductive. I certainly could. Even so, to abandon these is, however, a brave decision, especially when you are low on sales. I well remember when I was an IBM trainee, and had been given my first patch to develop. I spent an inordinate amount of my time on a small food wholesaler which had been foolish enough to admit that it wanted to improve its financial systems. Over seven or eight extended calls I eventually developed a 50-page proposal; which just about managed to justify the £50,000 or so I was asking them to invest in the smallest mainframe computer IBM could offer. Of course, I ultimately lost the order. They actually bought a new electric typewriter and a desktop electronic calculator (this was in the days before the universal pocket calculator appeared); at a total cost of less than £1,000!

As a trainee, the whole episode was excellent experience and I suppose I should be grateful for the valuable management time they gave up for me. The main lesson I learnt, though, was to husband my resources and not fritter them away on obvious losers and unproductive accounts. Such an attitude may not appeal to your management, who are greedy for any business - and are not too worried about the long hours you work. But it will help your own productivity quite significantly. If nothing else, the time you save can be very profitably used to add extra effort to the 20 per cent of key prospects that will be highly productive.

On the other hand, there are limits. Whilst working in Biomedical, I found out that one health authority was reviewing its computing requirements; potentially a massive order. Accordingly I took the IBM DP salesman in to meet the management, who I had carefully cultivated. The salesman was in there for less than a quarter of an hour and the key question he asked was “Will you be ordering this year”. When they said “No”, for such contacts take many months to finalise, he left. His sole selling activity was to hand them his business card, with the comment as he went through the door “Contact me when you are ready to order”. Outside I found he was furious with me for wasting his time, where he was only looking for business he could close before year end! IBM lost the next massive order, but got the one after that – only to run into a public cause celebre when the specification was wrong, since the salesman (once more?) hadn’t put in the effort to understand what was needed!

Having determined your outline account plan, you will need to reallocate your resources to match this. You may be lucky and have external resources to deploy, you may have a support team, or you may have budgets for promotional activities. These will need to be realigned to match your newly optimised plans. For example, one year I discovered that running stands at exhibitions generated less than 5 per cent of my sales, but absorbed 30 per cent of my budget and 20 per cent of my time; so I dropped them as a promotional tool. Having said that, I was forced to reinstate them the following year when I found that my customers (whose business I obtained almost exclusively from face-to-face contact) objected to not seeing us at these exhibitions. We had to return to them as a necessary image exercise. The moral of this tale is that not all apparently unproductive activities can be discarded with impunity - you must be aware of the wider implications.

In my (GSD) part of IBM, selling pressure was brought to a head by an ill-advised management campaign for a 'three-call sell'. In the name of efficiency, field management had decided that it should be possible to sell the smaller systems using no more than three calls, spread over less than three months. This was despite the realities of the market place. The result was a great deal of unproductive thrashing around, and a steadily deteriorating morale. My own analysis at the time suggested that less than 5 per cent of the business fell into this category, where more than 70 per cent took over six months - with an extended call pattern. At that time I was running IBM's business school, through which passed most of its best sales professionals, so I was able effectively to counter these simplistic views of field management. The following year (having returned to longer, more realistic, time horizons) the morale of the whole sales force was dramatically better, and productivity correspondingly improved (and indeed sales eventually almost tripled).

In my time running a territory in London, on examining the prospect list which fortunately was comprehensive, covering all business of any size on my patch, I identified six key accounts (my A list), a further 12 likely prospects (my B list) and something like 100 other runners. As it was early in my career I still chased all of the latter aggressively, although I was not able to devote much time beyond the initial cold calling on the 100. As I was selling mainframe computers, it was very obvious that very few of these were in my market. At the end of the year I had closed, or was about to close, five out of the six A prospects. Of the B prospects I had closed none, but four were lined up to be closed within the next few months. Of the remaining 100 prospects just one was in line for closing in the next year. My nose had been remarkably accurate.

Losers have to be treated as outcasts. No matter how much they plead, you have to be ruthless and refuse to fritter away your resources on unproductive areas. I learnt this lesson very early in life, working (just 15 years old) as a bar waiter, where a substantial part of my income came from tips. I earned, on average, twice as much as my colleagues. The key to my success was quite simply that I only served those customers that experience had told me would be good tippers. If they didn't look like tippers they didn't get served by me. I always managed to be too busy with my `bankers' to serve those I judged were time wasters. They had to use one of the other waiters, and waste their time instead of mine! Of course you may be wrong - everyone makes mistakes - and what you have previously considered a loser may still turn out to be a winner. In this special (if unlikely) case you will have to provide resource quickly.

In the early 1980s I worked in an advisory capacity with the IBM team trying to sell a large mainframe to a health board. Some six or seven years previously the team had been in the same position, and had been promised the business by the DP manager. Unfortunately that earlier business went to Honeywell. The DP manager apologised profusely that he had been overruled. On the latest campaign, the same DP manager was once more promising that IBM had the business. I, being a professional cynic on such matters, enquired of the team what the DP manager's superiors thought. I was firmly told that they did not deal with his superiors since, as the DP manager was the key to the sale and was in their pocket, the team weren't going to rock the boat. I was not surprised, therefore, when once more the business was lost (this time to DEC); with the DP manager yet again apologising profusely. I don't know whether the DP manager was playing games, or whether he genuinely misjudged his influence. But, whichever, making the mistake once was bad enough. To repeat it was grossly unprofessional.

Understanding, for a sales professional, comes about essentially as a result of being able to link together the jigsaw pieces of detailed knowledge into an overall picture that is meaningful; and is recognisably the same perspective as that of the customer. This process has more to do with acquiring a language than learning a science. Indeed the most important aspect of it is often the vocabulary.

Each trade has its own language which is subtly different from other trades. Occasionally the differences can be quite marked. Thus, in my career I learnt at least four separate languages (as well as several dozen `dialects'), all of which were significantly different from each other and from normal English, with several thousand words unique (or at least unique in the sense that they were used) to each of their vocabularies. In chronological order they were: physics, marketing (including the sub-language of advertising), computing (including the major sub-language of IBMese) and medicine. We took great pains to teach new entrants to IBM the special language of computing; and then took even greater pains to force them to unlearn it - so that they would use plain and understandable English with their customers!

As soon as the sales process starts many of the challenges and emotions of the hunt are there for the aficionado to savour; the adrenalin starts to pump even as you enter the first meeting with the prospect.

Once through the door I have found that many of my calls have turned into feats of detection that would have done Sherlock Holmes proud. Like many sales professionals I am not really a natural listener, no matter how important I recognise this is - for such listening is at the heart of the sales professional's job. So I have compensated for this shortcoming by treating the whole process as a piece of detective work. Finding out what the prospect's real needs are and following the clues through to their logical conclusion can be as satisfying as solving a good Agatha Christie whodunit.

I personally got much of my own satisfaction from getting to know my customers' businesses in depth, and from solving their complex problems. As a result, this was the slant that I gave my work. Perhaps fortunately, this was also the area where most of the business came from, and it was a `technique' that was very effective. I don't know how I would have coped if this hadn't been required but, then, that was why I chose the job in the first place.

Perhaps the greatest satisfaction of all comes from knowing that you have done a good job. Almost everyone wants to do a good job (even if many don't succeed). What aspects of the job you consider most worth doing well is, of course, a purely individual choice. I once worked for a manager who had, for various odd reasons, apparently been friendly with the heads of the Genovese family when they were the most feared godfathers in the Cosa Nostra. His experience was, surprisingly, that they had just about the highest developed moral sense of any group he knew. The problem, for the rest of society, was simply that the Cosa Nostra's morality was some distance removed from that adopted by the remainder of us. But even the Cosa Nostra wanted to do a good job - and the Genovese family clearly displayed their satisfaction, reportedly over a quiet Saturday tea, as they discussed whose body they had dropped in Long Island Sound that week!

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 his wife’s enthusiasm, having had a wonderful day, probably contributed as much to the eventual sale.

That was, though, just about the only time – in the early days at IBM that Pat got involved. Indeed, at our new home in Molesey the main source of our new friends, with whom we quickly got involved, was the school.  My wife met other wives outside the school, when she went down to collect the children. We were soon in the middle of a small group of friends based on our children.  In this way we met Lil and Ian Donaldson, and Moira and Derek Payne, two couples who became our firm friends. They lived a few houses away from ourselves, and their children were the same age as ours.

A second group of our friends came when Pat got involved with a women's group - Lively Minds – which was a more intellectual form of WI (Women’s Institute).  She was eventually chair of the group, for a year or so.  From this group we became especially friendly with the Donaldsons. Ian Donaldson was an architect at that time, working on the development of Great Yarmouth's new shopping centre.  I remember his great problem was that, having put in place the multi-storey car park over the centre and having sealed the roof with asphalt, it rained. Unfortunately, this rain showed up as leaks – throughout the upper parts of the garage.  It was a massive job to correct the problem. He had in previous years been architect on the scheme in Chester which I so much admired. Lil was a housewife, as were all the wives in the group, but Lil was different in as much as she was Swedish -- very Swedish indeed.

Derek Payne, on the other hand, was in DP with the Midland Bank; where he was a systems programmer.  Both he and Moira were very intelligent, and were very proud of this.  In particular they played bridge at a very high level.  We sometimes played with them, but were always trounced.

James was a civil servant in the DTI's think tank which was located in the Millbank Tower. He again was very bright, and was able to take on Derek at bridge more or less as an equal. Tricia, though, was in the same – lower – league as Pat and myself!  We were later invited by them to watch the (1977) Jubilee firework show on the Thames, and had a wonderful view from the Millbank Tower of this.

In terms of the children, the Donaldson's had a son Andrew, who was about Sarah's age, and a much younger daughter Genevieve who - being so young - was very spoiled. James and Tricia had no children at that time; though they did adopt a boy and a girl later on, and - having done that - had daughter of their own. Tricia was hardly a natural mother and her trials and tribulations feature in other sections.  Moira and Derek had two of their own children, both girls, and they also adopted a boy.  Their two girls were tested at the same time as Sarah was, for the educationally gifted children society, and recorded high scores like Sarah.  Elizabeth, the younger daughter, in particular was very good with her hands and was filmed for television as part of a programme on the society.  Later on, having flunked out of medical school, she found a job – as a dental technician - where she could make the best use of her hands. Accordingly, it was a terrible shame when she developed multiple sclerosis and this meant that she had to give the job up.

With these friends came some others.  With Lil came a friend of hers, Marie Louise, who was also Swedish, and her husband John, who was English and worked as a leading chemist for a brewery.  They just had one son, who was the same age as Sarah and Andrew.

On the fringes there were Veronica and Tony Bata, whose daughter Anthea was the same age as Sarah and was a school-friend of hers.  Sarah also had another school-friend, Sophia, who was her best friend; but we didn't see much of her parents .  Miles also had another friend Remy, who lived just across the road, whose main claim to fame was that his uncle (who was also of the Iranian descent), owned the shop Bijan in Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles -- then possibly the most exclusive shop in the world.

As I said earlier, the reason for choosing our particular house, on the Hurst Park estate, was that it guaranteed places for our children at Hurst Park primary school.  This school was acknowledged to be the best in the district, and it proved indeed to be an excellent school.  Sarah and Miles started there one year apart, despite the two year gap in their ages; a feature of the education system that aided Sarah and impeded Miles throughout their education. The only slight hiccup was the way that they were taught arithmetic. The school used the Cusenier method (using different length blocks of wood), and - whilst this was not a problem for Miles since he had not done arithmetic before - it confused Sarah who had been taught the traditional way.  Accordingly they set up a special programme for Sarah.  It really was an excellent school with, in particular, an excellent headmistress.  It is often is said, with considerable justification, that it is the teachers who make a school; and it was they, especially the headmistress, who made this particular school.

Both children very rapidly merged into the group of schoolchildren, and made friends. Very soon our garden was full of children playing together.

It was probably a year or two later that we got a big shock. We attended one of the open days at the school and, as we were wandering around Sarah's classroom -- looking at the art pinned to the wall, we came upon one set of pictures which stood out head and shoulders above the rest. We were amazed, for the child had real talent.  We asked the teacher who the artist was and were astounded to be told that it was Sarah!  It was at this stage we began to suspect that Sarah, at least, had higher level of intelligence than we had been allowing for.

I am sorry to say that Miles' equivalent was a scrawled mess.   I don't think he ever developed artistic skills in his life; but, to be fair, he probably he inherited his lack of such skills from me! Just as important, though, it was a happy school for both of them.  Even Miles made considerable progress. 

Like all of us in our middle-class, and in our generation, our approach to children was covered by the new rules posited in the 1960s by Doctor Spock. Accordingly, children were fragile beings whose life could be blighted if you handled them the wrong way. 

In my youth children had done what they were told.  The classic saying was children should be seen but not heard. There was no easy equivalent to this in the 1960s. At that time, bringing up children demanded totally new skills.  I'm sure that Doctor Spock's ideas resulted in many better experiences for children, but it was very difficult trying to live up to his demands. When they were babies Pat was always rushing to our copy of Doctor Spock’s book to see what she should do next. However, such anxieties were not new, in my mother’s time she too was much the same; timing my feed to the second. Dr Spock's new impact, on us at least, was that our children had to develop themselves without any guidance. I now suspect this was a mistake.  Miles later said the he thought we were idiots for not telling him what do

In the early stages there really wasn't much of problem. It only emerged when children were getting towards school-age, and in particular once they moved into secondary schools.

At that time Pat and I used to have massive rows about our children.  I would want to be much stricter with them, not because I thought they were behaving badly, but because I desperately wanted them to fulfil their potential.  Pat on the other hand wanted to ‘let them express themselves’ -- which I took as meaning to allow them to behave badly: and in particular not to fulfil their potential in terms of studying. This was particularly true of Miles, who showed every sign of being lazy: though he later explained it was that he knew he could get away with doing what he wanted and kept from us from finding out what he was really doing.

I suspect the rows we had, which were quite spectacular at times, had a bad impact of the children -- not least because they must have realised they were about them. Above all, since I always had to give in (since she would never be defeated) it lowered their estimation of me as a father. Miles certainly thought that I was not a good father figure.  For a while, in their early teens, Sarah did admire me as a father figure, as girls do at that time, but she later violently rejected me as such.  Life was made very difficult for fathers by Doctor Spock, and our generation produced children who probably had more problems than they should have done.

These days parents are loath to let their children out of the house.  Scare stories abound and parents expect their children to be run down by cars speeding through their roads or be picked up by paedophiles. I don't think the reality was much different in the days of our children's childhood. The real difference now is our expectations and attitudes.  Then children went out for almost all day, and we scarcely knew where they were -- save that they were almost certainly with one of their small group of friends.

Sarah made her first close friends at Hurst Park School. Of these, Anthea went on to Tiffin Girls School with Sarah and also went to university. Thereafter, however, she bounced around a variety jobs, seeming to be able to settle down to a steady life - but this was perhaps typical of a growing group of the young.