Mark Boyd - Selling for IBM

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Stories From My Sales Career

When I came home from work one day and told Connie that I was going to go into sales, she asked if we might starve. She knew I don't have the typical salesman personality, and so did I, but that was partly why I wanted to do it. I wanted to see if I could succeed at it.

The Job Interview with "Shoe"

I applied for a sales position in Mansfield, Ohio as part of the redeployment program, and was offered the job the next day, including a raise. The branch manager was so excited to have someone who wanted to move to mansfield instead of away from Mansfield, he offered me the job immediately. I was also offered the opportunity to go to Mansfield on IBM's time and at IBM's expense and check it out. So I did.

I met with Mike Shoemaker, the local sales manager and he asked me lots of questions as if he was interviewing me. I was asking him questions about the job, and to him I guess I seemed a bit tentative about the job. He told me at the end of our meeting, "I want you to call me on Monday and tell me that you want the job." It was his way of saying that he wanted to know that I was positive about taking the job.

So, on Monday, I called him and told him I wanted the job. He said to let him work on it and see if they could make me an offer. I told him I already had and offer from this guy Jerry McKenna (the branch manager, Mike's boss) and he said, "Oh." He wasn't aware that Jerry had already offered me the job. He thought he was interviewing me!

Suiting Up

Of course in 1987 when I started in sales, we wore dark suits, a white shirt, a "sincere" tie and eight pound wing tip shoes. I always said that there was no dress code, but if you broke it they'd sure let you know soon enough.

Working in the plant, we seldom wore ties and never wore a suit. I spent my first month's pay on suits, but on that first day of work in sales, when I put on my suit, I felt like a salesman. I still can remember how that felt. I never resented wearing a suit after that. (I'd hate to go back to it now though)

Training at "Chernoble" Ridge

IBM's sales training was comprised of several weeks of self study in the branch office while you are working, and then you would go to (at that time) Atlanta, Georgia (actually Chamblee, GA) for two or three weeks (no coming home on the weekends) for intense classroom and role playing training. Then you'd go back to the branch for more self study, then back to Atlanta for another two or three week class. That to most of year, and you attended three or four classes in Atlanta.

The first thing you did on the first day of class in Atlanta was take a test on the material you had been studying in the branch. If you failed the test, they sent you back to the branch (very, very bad).

The training in Atlanta was challenging in that you had to do mock sales calls and presentations and be graded on them, and they had just certain things they wanted you to say and a certain way you were to say them, but it was all supposed to sound very natural, not structured or recited. It was frustrating (it simply made most people so mad they could spit).

If you failed the training, and you were a new hire, you lost your job. If you were a redeployed employee, as were many at that time including me, and you failed, you would be sent back to the plant which would be very, very embarrassing. Now new hire employees might have expected to be treated this way, but most of the redeploys had been around IBM long enough that we surely didn't expect to be treated that way, and fairly much resented it. The living arrangements in Atlanta contributed to the negative experience as well.

We were staying in the Noble Ridge apartment complex, four people to an apartment. IBM owned or leased the entire complex and it was full of sales trainees. The apartments were of pretty cheap construction, all looked the same (gray clabber board as I recall) and had two bedrooms, so you had to share a room with someone (again, for someone from the plant, an affront)

One person per apartment would be assigned the "driver" and they would be given a Chevy Caprice from Enterprise Leasing. So each morning, there would be a stream of Chevy Caprices rolling out of Noble Ridge (affectionately known as Chernoble Ridge) with four people in dark suits in them. It looked like something out of a movie. Talk about feeling like a number rather than a person.

As I said, you weren't permitted to go home on the weekend and they always assigned some big project for the weekend so that people would be kept busy over the weekend - no time to party was the theory - again designed for the single new hires right out of college, but for seasoned employees, another affront.

Keith at Chernoble

On my second trip to Chernoble, I was there a day or two and I got a call from Andy Stoy, our SE manager. He says, "Mark I need you to do favor for me." I figured he wanted me to buy something for him or something like that. Then he explained that a colleague, Keith was in his second week at Chernoble and that he called and wanted to quit and come home. He said, "You know if he comes home, he'll loose his job." Now Keith was a really good guy. He and I got along really great and he was an excellent technician too. I sure didn't want to see Keith loose his job, but I sure didn't need to be spending time getting involved in this. I had my own worries. Andy explained that he had called and left a message for Keith's class manager, but that he wanted me to go over and talk to Keith and get him to stay. He said, "Don't let Keith come home." Right, sure Andy.

So I go and find Keith's apartment, knock on the door and when this guy comes to the door, I ask if Keith is there. He says, "Yeh, he's in the bedroom," and points to a door. I go open the door and the room is dark. Then I realize Keith is sitting on the floor on the other side of the bed crying. Oh man, I never bargained for this. Now I don't think a bit less of Keith for this, and I hope you don't either. This training was very, very stressful (explained a little bit above) and Keith had had enough. But I talked with him for a while and he was feeling a little better. I left and not long after I left, his class manager showed up and encouraged him and he made it through the whole training program.

The Picture at Chernoble

When I came back from my last visit at "Chernoble," I went to work on Monday and was feeling pretty good about having completed my sales training and it was good to be back in Mansfield and back to work at the office - an all round good start for a Monday morning. Then "Shoe" called me into his office and asked me what went on at training. This seemed like a rather weird question since he certainly had a pretty good idea and since it was all over, it didn't really matter anyway. I started to answer him, giving him some description of the classes, and he stopped me and said, "No, I mean like in your apartment." Now I was really puzzled. I sat there looking at him, with a puzzled look I guess, and then he explained that the class manager called him and said that my roommates and I had wrecked the apartment. I said they must have something screwed up. We didn't do anything to the apartment, and Mike said, well she says you did, and she wants to have you fired. Now I was stunned.

I assured him that we did not damage anything in the apartment. Mike knew me pretty well by that time and he had already told the manager in Atlanta that he didn't think I'd do such a thing. I asked him what damage specifically they were saying was done. He said that we had drawn on the pictures. I said that there was one picture of a seascape that someone had drawn a naked woman on the beach with a black marker. He said that they were sure it was us who had done it, otherwise we would have reported it. I said, "Heck Mike, this is Chernoble Ridge. We never thought a thing about it." It was sort of like someone saying you defaced the city dump by dropping a candy wrapper.

After a couple of days, I guess everyone's story agreed and they finally let it drop.

Almost Leaving

After I had been in sales for a little more than a year, I was really discouraged with it. I probably would have sited different things as the problem but in retrospect, I think the real problem was having to deal with failure so much. I engineering, you are successful on project the vast majority of the time (or you darned well better be), but in sales, even the best salesman "fails" more then half the time. In computer sales, if you are closing a third of the deals you work on, you are doing very well. So, learning to deal with that "failure" was difficult.

So I went to the library to look for some books on production control. I learned a good bit about production control and had contacts at several manufacturing companies, so I thought I'd see about getting a job in production control. But at the library, I found a bunch of books about sales. I had not even imagined that people had written books about selling and sales techniques, but there they were. I found one by a guy called Zig Ziglar, called "Secrets of Closing the Sale," read that, and ordered a free tape that was offered in the book. I found out that ol' Zig is even better speaking than he is in his books. I bought the tape set of "Secrets of Closing the Sale," started listening to them and it changed my perspective entirely on selling. I know really enjoy selling.

Funny Stories

Mike Broderick - "Between the two of us"

I heard this story about Mike Broderick, who, when I came to Mansfield, had just left IBM to start his own business. The story went that Mike came back from a meeting with this particular customer who was a notorious pain (I called on him for several years and know first hand). Mike had had a particularly frustrating meeting and when he came into the office, he announced, "Between Bill Xxxx and I, we know everything. He knows everything except that he's and axxhole, and I know that."

Of course this was a very funny story, but it also resonated with me because I was working with this particularly frustrating customer at the time.

Bob falling asleep in a meeting.

I was with Bob on a sales call once when he fell asleep while the customer was rattling on about something. Bob's eyes went shut for a long time. I was a rookie sales rep and sort of embarrassed and didn't know what to do. I don't even remember what happened. I know the customer seemed none the wiser, I guess because he was so engrossed in his own speech.

Collecting MRP points for PS/2s

In the 80s, IBM was experiencing a challenge from companies that offered medium sized computer systems, DEC, and Wang for example. In order to incent the sales force to focus on these medium sized (and medium priced) machines, they came up with MRP (mid-range performance) points. We got a quota for MRPs each year. Different mid-sized systems counted different MRP points.
In about 1988, IBM was selling the PS/2 model 70. This was our first 386 processor based PC - a very powerful and expensive PC for that time. It was given 1/2 of an MRP point.

Mike telling the customer to get on the helicopter.

I was making a sales call at Guardian Glass in Upper Sandusky. My manager, Mike Shoemaker was with me. The data processing manager was completely sold on the idea of getting a S/38. There were a couple of DP folks in from the corporate office in Detroit who had flown it that day on the company helicopter. One of the corporate guys was saying, "Oh we could do this job with a PC network." We didn't sell PC networks and wanted to sell the S/38 so we were getting more and more frustrated. Mike asked the guy, "Where did you come from?" The guy said, "Detroit." Mike said, "We'll how did you get here?" The guy said, "We flew in on the helicopter." Of course Mike already knew that, and then he said, "Well why don't you go get on the helicopter?" I about died.

On the way home, I told Mike I couldn't believe he said that to the guy. He said, "What did I say?" He had been so frustrated he didn't even know what he had said to the guy.

We did eventually get the order.

Mike Firing Frank Scoles

Each year in January, each branch office had a kick-off meeting. This was when the accomplishments of the previous year were recounted and the plans for the next year were laid out. The management always tried to make a production out of it to inspire everyone. Of course at the same time there were budget constraints to live up to.

In about 1989 the IBM office got the job of producing the kick-off meeting. We were a part of the Columbus-Suburban branch office so all the people from Columbus (probably three or four other departments) came up to Mansfield and we had the kick-off meeting in the Renaissance Theater. At the time Frank Scoles was very much involved with Ontario Schools (he may have been on the school board at that time as he did a short stint on the board as an appointed replacement). Frank got the idea to have the Ontario grade school choir sing a couple of songs at the kick-off meeting including the IBM Company Song.

Mike Shoemaker, the sales manager in Mansfield was in charge of the whole thing and he decided to have the Cub Scout den that the led do the opening ceremony of presenting the flag and leading the pledge of allegiance, that combined with Frank's Ontario School Choir bit gave it a real family town aspect which everyone in Mansfield was proud of.

Well, as these things often go, by noon time the program was about 45 minutes behind schedule and Mike wanted to scrub the Ontario School Choir. They were already there, waiting in the wings when Mike made the decision to scratch them and told Frank to tell them. Frank refused. He said he couldn't do that to them after they learned the IBM Song just for the program and spent school money to bus the kids over to the program. Mike got really mad and told Frank he was fired. Frank told him he didn't care, he wasn't going to scratch the kids.

They went on, and we eventually got the show somewhat back on schedule and everything turned out alright and Frank got rehired.

The Cookie Monster.

I once had a processor sale pending with the phone company (my only account at the time and the largest in the Mansfield office). It was all approved from a technical standpoint and we were just waiting on the financial guy to approve it. It got to be the very end of the quarter and it hadn't been approved. I didn't know what to do. I asked Frank, a very experienced SE who had been calling on the phone company a long time, what we could do. He said, Randy likes those Chinese cookies from the bakery down the street, let's get a bag of those and go see him. I thought, "Oh man, Randy's going to see right through that," but I also had not better ideas and Frank pretty much knew what he was doing, so off we went. We took the bag of cookies to Randy and told him we needed that process purchase approved. The next day I had the order!

Three Beers for a Dollar

When Mike Shoemaker moved on to another job, Ed Peet became our manager. Ed had worked in the Columbus office and we all knew him but didn't know him very well. It was probably in the first or second week that we was the manager in Mansfield, we were all going out to lunch, and someone got the idea to take Ed to Fritz's Cafe. Fritz's was this hole-in-the-wall place over on the poor side of town. I don't think any of the tables matches or any two of the chairs matched. But they had good food. The had a spaghetti special on Wednesdays. The spaghetti was spicy and plentiful. They would get a pretty good crowd.

So we all loaded up in a couple of cars and headed to Fritz's. Before we left, Frank Scoles or Bob Guisinger made some comment about he hoped we'd be able to get a seat as you never knew when they might be having a wedding reception or bar-mitzfa. I think Ed suspected we were up to something but didn't say anything.

So we got to Fritz's and Ed never hesitated, he went right in and wanted to know what the special was and then ordered the spaghetti. The joke was on us. Ed felt right at home at Fritz's.

When we were all done eating and of course we'd been joking and having a good time, the cook whow was about a 70 year old woman, came out to the table and asked how are lunch was. Everyone said it was great and then Ed chimed in, "What's for desert?" The grandma cook replied without hesitation, "Three beers for a dollar." Ed just roared with laughter. We all had a great time going to Fritz's.

Due to the major reorganization in 1990, I changed jobs and began working out of my home. In the process, I was actually without a job for 3 months.

Paul Astounds All.

This was no doubt the most astounding sales call I've even been involved in. IBM had just been in the networking hardware business (NHD) for a year or two. Paul Southerly had been a NHD rep for that period. I had just become an NHD rep. We were meeting with two guys from Longaberger Baskets, one was an employee, the other was a consultant who was an ex-IBM employee who I knew when he was at IBM. Paul was convinced that the consultant was not at all in favor of IBM, and that these two guys were not seriously considering IBM, but rather simply using us as what we called cannon fodder. Paul was also convinced that our competitors told lies about us and our product all the time.

I didn't have a conference room reserved so we were meeting in a vacant office. We scrounged up some chairs to sit in and we were sitting in a circle, no table between us. Paul wound up on a stool, and so was half standing. The customers started describing what their interests were, and seemed pretty sincere to me. Paul continued to see them as completely biased and stood up and launched into a dissertation about how our competitors were all a bunch of liars and referring to them as f***ers. He had a habit of grabbing his crotch as if to adjust the location of his equipment (probably left over from his baseball playing days), and so was hoisting his crotch and berating our competition and telling these guys that our competitors were all a bunch of f***ers that were lying about us and that they (the customers) were f***ing with us. The customers and I sat there with our mouths open I'm sure. I figured that was the last we'd hear from them, and scratched that deal from having a chance.

Eventually the meeting ended, and the guys left. Later, when I talked with them, they expressed how astounded they were in Paul's behavior. I told them that I was shocked too and that he was pretty radical, but that he had obviously had some bad experiences with our competitors. It turned out to be a "good cop - bad cop" kind of deal, and they eventually bought our stuff. I was amazed.

Arnie's Faux pau

Arnie Witzoric & I were in Charleston, WV, calling on state government. We had met with the folks and were getting ready to leave. I went to the men's room and when I came out and was waiting around in the lobby for Arnie, all of a sudden he came around the corner and was looking strange and he walked up to me and said was half laughing and half crying.. he said he had just asked one of the receptionists when her baby was due and she said she wasn't pregnant. Probably the greatest social error that can be made. There is no recovery from it. If you say, "Oh, I"m sorry," then the implication is, "Oh I'm sorry your fat," or "Oh, I'm sorry you're not pregnant." There's just no way to recover. You just have to stand there and be a dummy.

The vast majority of funning things happened when I working in the IBM office. Once I started working at home, funny things didn't seem to happen as often, or at least they didn't make an impression on me.