Conference 7.286::digital

    
    Workstations sales down 39%.  Hmmm.  Couldn't have anything to do with
    our NT-only strategy, and the shafting of the UNIX, and even bigger
    shafting of the OpenVMS customer base?
    
    

    Or possibly not giving credit to the sales force for actually selling
    workstations???  Can you imagine - our sales force does not get any
    credit for selling a product!  No one should wonder why, or be
    surprised that, sales of these products are down.
    
    When will we come to our senses???

    
    > Workstations sales down 39%.
    
    It is my opinion that since most sales people don't get credit for
    them, they have not been selling them. I support the sales people and
    only a few will still try and close a workstation deal. Many of the
    others will let it go, since they only get $50 for each workstation.
    

	Hey, everyone, look on the bright side.. 


	It's time for another re-org and maybe even some more
	VP promotions!

							mike

Digital Chmn optimistic about future 

Date: Thursday, March 13, 1997 
Source: Reuters 

LOS ANGELES, Reuters via Individual Inc. : Digital Equipment Corp. Chairman 
Robert Palmer on Wednesday said the computer company is healthier than it 
has been in many years and he is optimistic about the future. 

"I'm optimistic about the future of the company over the longer term," Palmer 
said at a news conference at the Spring Internet World conference here. 

Palmer also said the company's expected initial public offering of its 
Internet search engine AltaVista will depend largely on stock market 
conditions for Internet IPO's. 

"Our strategy would be to retain an 80 percent ownership," he said. 

Palmer declined to comment on quarterly results for the Maynard, Mass.-based 
company. 

"We're in a much healthier position today than we have been in years," he 
said. "I couldn't be more optimistic, but in any particular quarter, anything 
could happen." 

According to First Call, analysts expect Digital will earn about $0.27 a 
share in its fiscal third quarter, down from $0.74 a year ago. 

Palmer told reporters that the company's 64-bit technology coupled with the 
growth of the Internet, gives Digital a competitive edge as its competitors 
scramble to develop their own 64-bit technology. 

"There is so much information on the Internet, and it's growing at such an 
exponential rate, that without 64-bit technology you don't have a chance. 

Digital shares closed down 2-1/8 to 29-7/8. 

This is going to be an unpopular stance but someone has to state the obvious...

The internet is absolutely full of horror stories of people who were so fed
up with our sales force that they went elswhere to buy their systems.  If
you don't believe me, just read comp.sys.dec etc. for a few months and you'll
see what I mean.

Since I'm only an engineer I certainly am underqualified to understand
all the intricacies of the sales equation but how does this simplified 
version sound?

   Consumer A tries to buy system from DIGITAL but fails to even get a phone
   call returned from sales person B.

   Consumer A buys system from (your choice) HP, SUN, Compaq, etc. and pays 
   them MONEY!

   DIGITAL doesn't get any money.

   Repeat several times.

   DIGITAL doesn't have enough money to pay the salary for sales person B -
   nor anybody else for that matter.

Our survival is based on our customers paying us money.  We are responsible
to our customers.  Sell the computers and then see what happens.

    You can not believe everything you read.
    Digital has world class sales people...and engineers...
    Remove the chains... remove the blindfolds and maybe they could both
    compete in their respective fields...

  I'm told by some reliable sources in the field that one of
  the reasons the field sales force isn't exactly beating down
  customers' doors to peddle stuff is that, right now, the
  system that PAYS OUR SALES FORCE (OMEGA) is highly broken.

  I'm told, in particular, that one person received a commission
  check for:

    $-4,xxx.xx


  (Note the sign)

  It's hard to feed your family with those negative dollars.

  It looks like we may be in for another quarter where we've
  managed to totally divert the sales force from actually
  selling anything.

  I'm also told, though, that the sales force has been very
  succesfully selling themselves to the competition. Do you
  think this will have an effect on us in the "out" quarters?

                                   Atlant

    The body loss is considerable in both sales and sales support in my
    office.  More poor quarters will likely accelerate the drain as those
    who are left find it harder to remain optimistic and turn down the many
    other offers coming our way.  Good news is lots of available jobs and
    new employess coming into DIGITAL!
    
    ;^)

RE. .6 ..... I hope you're not blaming the sales force for this companies woes!
I'm really tired of hearing this, sure there's probably some bad sales reps, but
I'll also bet you that we also have some bad VP's, some bad engineers, ...
some bad of everything. Don't think that the problem lies with the sales
organization or with the field. If anything, you should be glad that we're here.
We've been decimated enough, we're overworked, frustrated with Corporate
policies, frustrated with a company that "doesn't value our opinion"...
therefore doesn't listen to us (when they should be....we're closest to the
customer). I'm surprised that I'm even putting anything in here, cause I've come
to the conclusion "that mine and others opinions don't matter anymore". The only
reason, I'm in here is to defend the sales organization and sales reps. I'm not
a sales rep myself but, I don't want them to get a bad rap. What you have to
realize is that everything is being run from out east, all of the decisions are
being made there. Corporate policies and decisions, dictate how well we're doing
or not doing in the market place. Pointing the finger at the sales organization
is too simple, too easy to do, and I think that that has been the problem in the
past. Some people in charge have taken the "easy paths" in making their
decisions, your example is a good one, I remember when some VP's were blaming
all the companies woes on our sales force, comments were made our reps just
aren't good enough, they don't know how to sell, their not knowledgable enough,
they just "don't have enough get up and go"....etc. So, the easy target is the
sales organization, humm, let's "DECIMATE"...sorry "RIGHTSIZE" the sales force.  

I think this view is still there (at Corporate). A rep just told me about an
incident where he was out east with some "partners", to do account mapping or
"something like that" and get this .... our own "#####kkkk" (I'm not going to
say which group it was) people were telling the partners that all of their
"LEADS" where going to go directly to the partners, because our "SALES REPS
DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING"! Of course they ("#####kkk") didn't know that he
was in the crowd (their mistake). I asked him, are you sure they weren't just
joking around, he said no, they said it several times and were very serious! 
(you can probably guess what group this was).

How can we do business when we have activity like this going on? Our very own,
cutting down, berating our very own... in front of partners no less? 

Just don't start blaming the sales force, don't make statements that the reps
"dont' know what they're doing" because they do. Sometimes I think comments like
above by the one group (that I didn't name) are made to "JUSTIFY THEIR OWN
EXISTENCE"... maybe that's been the problem all along. Perhaps, we've had too
much of "self preservation taking place out east"... think about it. Oh yea
those reps that were no good, that we laid off, well most of the ones that were
working for us out of our office are now working for our competitors. And they
seem to be doing a good job for them now and are happy doing it.

The realaudio files of Mr. Palmers keynote at Internet World is available 
at:

http://www.pcweek.com/radio/welcome.html

...listening to it now as I write.


						-Paul

    Re: .11
    
    So, what was the answer?
    

RE: .10

Looking back at my reply I can see how you might have interpreted my 
rantings as blaming the sales force for our down turn.  I certainly
did NOT mean this at all.  If our problems could be blamed on one
particular segment of this company I think even the most inept management
team could figure the problem out.  It's a long hard road and everyone
can seek to improve themselves to varying degrees.

What I was referring to was .2 & .3 which (I am probably reading them
the wrong way) seem to say that there are people on the sales force
who are not trying to sell workstations because they don't get enough
of a reward.  While I can agree that this would pose a motivational
problem I can't rationalize the refusal to do one's job based on a lack
of motivation.

All in all this particular problem (alluded to in .2 & .3)  sounds like
it boils down to a poor reward system combined with some other unfortunate
situations.

If this continues to raise your hackles please respond by email so we don't
rathole this topic.

- Rob

Hey, let's not let sales off the hook just yet.

We may have some reasonable sales folks, but they seem to be the exception.

When close friends have ME call the sales offices to try to get someone
to even return a call, the problem isn't one or two isolated bad apples.

The person (in Burlington, MA) who answered the main phone couldn't tell me
the mail address, direct phone, or even location of the designated sales
person.  And he was rude to me BEFORE he knew I was a Digit.  If sales
were hungry, the rude person would have taken the customer's number and
assured me they would be called.  It didn't happen.


        People WANTED TO BUY HARDWARE.  Sales WOULD NOT SELL IT.


It's not isolated.  It's systemic.  And it's been happening for years.

\john

Could it be that Windows NT is killing all the Unix WS sales?  VMS on the 
desktop is a dead issue.  Sun will also have problems competing against
the NT/Intel combination.  Recently, several large brokerage houses on Wall
Street dumped their SUN WS in favor of NT.  So, if there is no viable market
left for Unix or VMS Alpha WS sales, all that's left is NT/Alpha.  I just
don't see a demand.  That only leaves us the Unix/NT server space.

Of course screwing our sales force helps alot too!

I loved this line in the Globe article:

 Digital [sic], the nation's third-largest computer company [employee
count, not revenue], 

I wonder if a new edge will be put on the 'ole layoff axe...

Brad.

RE: .16

That's interesting...

Especially since we vacated Burlington nearly two years ago!

Get off SALES!!!!!

Tony
An SBU Sales grunt

re.15:

>While I can agree that this would pose a motivational
>problem I can't rationalize the refusal to do one's job based on a lack
>of motivation.

I think you are looking at this from the wrong angle. The going rate for a 
good salesperson is $x but the salesperson does not get $x, they get $y as 
base salary which is a lot less than x. They get the chance to make their 
worth by performing (selling). It's managements job to set the metrics of 
the salesperson to reflect the product mix they need to bring in the 
revenue. The salesperson is doing their job by not selling workstations.

Dave.

    Can we put some of this in perspective please? Or is the US a different
    reality? All of these comments about X-Y-Z calling to buy something,
    are they managed customers? If not - they will not get a sales person
    to respond as said salesperson will get no recognition or reward for
    selling to them. They should be channelled to a business partner.
    
    Over in the bit of the company that our colonial cousins like to blame
    for the company's ills, we have got things working very nicely thank
    you and are talking a large number of significant orders. We managed a
    small select set of accounts directly, focusing on major project sales.
    We manage a wider portfolio of accounts slightly less directly,
    focusing on selling target solutions such as SAP or NT in conjunction
    with partners. Finally we manage the mass market through resellers &
    VARs with a Digital geographic sales presence to pick up out of the
    ordinary opportunities.
    
    There ARE some issues with the activity of elements in our channel who
    still look for a free lunch on the back of direct sales activity but
    they are diminishing.
    
    As for Alpha - NT is the future, certainly in the UK with nearly all
    major procurements for distributed systems going that way. We have an
    unanswerable message with strong offerings on Alpha & Intel. Unix is
    still there for the high end, but, and as a 10 year Digit I am not a
    Johnny come lately, VMS IS A HERITAGE SYSTEM. Yes, there are systems
    out there running it, and being upgraded but we will NOT grow the
    company by refocusing on VMS. Sorry all you engineering folks but that
    is the commercial truth.
    
    Sales sell what is put in front of them. Right now in the UK we are
    providing refresher training on solution selling to the folks and it is
    getting good, positive feedback. What we need to back us up is better
    marketing, more freedom and better internal systems. 
    
    I cannot credit that someone thinks that VMS workstations have a
    future!
    
    We didn't notice the PC creeping up, we spotted Unix way too late, but
    have got it right with NT. We just need to believe in ourselves.
    
    Paul Pateman
    Government Sales Manager, UK

    re .20   
     
    >>We just need to believe in ourselves.
    
    There is a lot in that Paul. But you must ask, where does self belief
    come from ? My answer is that we lack confidence because we have weak
    leadership which has failed. It is time to face up to this. The BOD
    should take the necessary decisions immediately. It is MADNESS to hack
    away at the sales force and engage in botched reorganisation when you
    must go for growth. We have many excellent sales and support people,
    but they need direction. Quick fixes and PR froth are no substitute
    for attention to genuine quality and detail. 
    
    re  the OVMS debate: it is true that a nostalgic yearning for the past
    doesn't help, but must we give our magnificent customer base the
    feeling that we don't care a monkey for them ? Must we chop revenue
    generating employees because they don't fit the new model? By all
    means, let us reorganise for the future, but the quality of the future
    is determined by the quality of how we disengage from the past, because
    our customers WATCH us and JUDGE us every single day.
    
    ..Kevin..

    .15:
    
    Pay someone 100$ to sell an apple and 10cents to sell an orange and you
    do not get fruit salad.
    
    .16:
     
    It is unreasonalble for you to say that WE MIGHT HAVE SOME REASONABLE
    SALES PEOPLE.
    
    We have some of the best and hardest working...  
    

    The problem is with Sales and Marketing.
    
    It is not fair to blame sales people that are most likely working as
    hard as anyone else in the company.
    
    The simple fact is that we are not growing top line revenue in a market
    where just about everyone else is growing robustly.  This is clearly a 
    Sales and Marketing problem.  Sales and Marketing management problem to 
    be precise.
    
    I honestly can't believe we have sales people on commission and won't
    pay them commission for selling workstations.  This is a management
    decision, a stupid one, not a problem with the sales people.  You don't
    pay people commission for selling workstations and, gee, big surprise,
    they don't try very hard to sell them.  I'm sure the manager that made
    the decision is still trying to figure it out.
    
    People are at the mercy of the processes and systems designed by
    management.  The problem is a management problem, but call it what it
    is, a problem with Sales and Marketing.
    
    Ken                                   

    re .17
    The "[sic]" and "[employee count]" were added by me in .0...
    sorry if that wasn't clear.  K

    Well, I'll add a single data point.  Back when I was a customer in
    the early 1980s, the local sales and support people where just awful.
    I actually had a phone call or two asking me for answers on Digital
    products.  I can't remember the number of times I had to correct their
    mistakes from information I picked up at DECUS.
    
    Now, that may have been the exception.  Things may have changed since
    then.  However, just like a statement 'given statistics, there are
    certainly bad engineers in the company', you'll have to also assume
    there are bad sales and support people in the company.  Its only
    logical.  Can we blame them?  Don't know.  Depends in what position
    those people are in.  I've certainly seen bad engineers single-handedly
    send potentially good software to an early grave.
    
    				-John

>      <<< Note 5187.20 by CHEFS::PATEMAN "Celebreties to the Hebrides" >>>
>                   -< Of course its all their fault....... >-
>
>    Can we put some of this in perspective please? Or is the US a different
>    reality? All of these comments about X-Y-Z calling to buy something,
>    are they managed customers? If not - they will not get a sales person
>    to respond as said salesperson will get no recognition or reward for
>    selling to them. They should be channelled to a business partner.


And the would-be customer is supposed to figure this out by what, telepathy?

EVERYBODY should get a call back from a Digital representative to tell
him that either 1) a salesman will be right over to talk to you, or
2) we have informed our business partner in your {region/market/business}
and you should expect a call from him shortly.

Then make sure that 1) or 2) actually happens.

- tom]

    Re -1
    
    Assuming they call into the central Digital number in the UK their
    enquiry gets routed to the appropriate source - given the trumpeting
    about our call centres on 1-800-digital in the US I hope the same
    happens in the US.
    
    With the best will in the world, a random call into a random office
    will not *necessarily* get the best handling. 
    
    Paul

re: .18 (Tony)

>That's interesting...
>Especially since we vacated Burlington nearly two years ago!
>Get off SALES!!!!!

Yes, this event was about two years ago.  You think it's gotten BETTER?


re: .20 (Paul)

>    Can we put some of this in perspective please? Or is the US a different
>    reality? All of these comments about X-Y-Z calling to buy something,
>    are they managed customers? If not - they will not get a sales person
>    to respond as said salesperson will get no recognition or reward for
>    selling to them. They should be channelled to a business partner.
 
Yes, this was a managed customer.  Several WEEKS of calls went unreturned,
which is why they asked me to find SOMEONE TO SELL THEM STUFF.  I really
can't believe you're defending this insane way of dealing with customers.


re: .22 (RICCARDI)

>    It is unreasonalble for you to say that WE MIGHT HAVE SOME REASONABLE
>    SALES PEOPLE.

You misinterpreted the word "might".  I'm sorry I was unclear.  Now then,
why do we have so many unreasonable sales people?


So here's the dirt.  MIT's Lincoln Laboratory in Bedford/Lexington, MA
is the customer.  Why not find out who was responsible for them, and
kick their butts around?  This was after their salesman "Dave Genie",
so don't blame him.  They have just recently found a new person to sell
to them, but they note, "It took two WEEKS for him to FAX us a quote.
Dave used to email us one the same day."

They have $100K to buy a multiprocessor Alpha to run Laser propogation
code simulations.  Hopefully this new salesperson will make sure we take
their money.  

I thank you.
\john

Regarding calls to the local sales office: To whom did you speak? It may well 
have been the janitor! 

Around here (New York) many sales folks have been moved onto the home program 
and are, therefore, seldom in the office. Moreover, many of the smaller sales 
offices TFSO'd their receptionists about 18 months ago. THIS is the individual 
who had the information and skills to deal with customer calls and to route 
that customer to the appropriate rep or partner.

I'm not at all surprised that a random customer inquiry goes unanswered, just 
disgusted.

\dave

    
    
    Replying to a previous entry, I hope you don't really think somebody
    came up with the idea to take off WS from the SBU sales thinking that
    this action alone would boost WS sales. 
    
    As far as I know about it, It was decided that SBU sales would concentrate
    on growing the servers market, and there would be dedicated sales persons
    for WS sales, as there are dedicated sales persons selling PCs, 
    network products etc...
    
    This is this year's strategy. Another strategy could be to regroup
    everything under a unique sales organisation, and allow all salesmen to
    sell all Digital products. Leaving apart the fact that this kind of
    organisation already existed in Digital a few years ago, who is ready
    to bet that we would sell more WS, PCs, etc... this way ?
    
    I don't think that this is the real problem. IMO the real problem,
    repeated many times in this conference, is that a customer likes to
    spend his money, for example, on Workstations that have the SW he wants
    running on them. Now, in some cases, there are products running on
    Alpha/Unix platforms, but for reasons we all know coming from the past
    (low performing vaxstations, then doubtful DECstations with even more
    doubtful Ultrix) SUN became and still is the leader in the WS segment,
    and a customer will first look at the market leader, and then eventually
    look around. 
    
    Now, if the only added value you can give him is 64bit "powerful" WS
    running 20% faster than SUN, with less SW available, and at a higher
    price, it takes some damn good salespeople to reap a sale in such
    conditions.
    
    I imagine Digital probably has the same percentage of lousy
    sales people, and brilliant ones, than any other company, and if there
    is somebody to blame for the lousy ones, I would say it is the people
    who hired them (sales mgrs and HRO), but please let's stop talking nonsense.
    If WS sales are going down, it is only because we are not
    positionning ourselves in the right way in this market. And this has to
    do more with marketing, our profit metrics, our internal costs. If you
    live in sales, you will find out that even if you don't get any revenue
    for, say, our PCs, you're still happier to know your customer is buying
    Digital PCs than any other company's. And you're not going to dump them
    just because somebody in Digital decided that you're not getting
    revenue for them. On the other hand, you may not want to waste too much
    of your time on that business, but that's OK because there is a
    dedicated salesman to whom you just need to pay a phone call, or even
    just tell him about the opportunity at the coffee machine. BTW, this
    may even trigger the same behavior from the counterpart, to everybody's
    satisfaction. This is how it really happens.
    
    My opinion ? Not very original. If you want to grow in any market, take 
    a good look at the market leader, and work agressively against him.
    You cannot beat him with products which are more expensive than his
    and don't have at least the same advantages (availability of SW in the WS
    example) as the market leader's. You can try to survive, but you can't 
    hope to steal his place at the top. And this is true however your company
    is organised.
    
    In my opinion the 1-3-9 strategy is as good as any other. It can't get in 
    place in a day. You're not going to go out and declaim your strategy and
    expect everybody to come rushing in with their dollars in their hands, 
    tearing their hair off because we've finally decided what were in the
    market for. Let's just stick to the strategy (that has been a real big
    problem at Digital shifting from one strategy to another without ever
    giving time for the market to react), and fight in those markets.
    Perception is the keyword, and we need to work until we are perceived as
    a trusted company in those application/market segments. That's it. In
    my opinion of course.
     
    Michel (a salesman)
              

    >Well, I'll add a single data point.  Back when I was a customer in
    >    the early 1980s, the local sales and support people where just
    >awful.
    >    I actually had a phone call or two asking me for answers on Digital
    >    products.  I can't remember the number of times I had to correct
    >their
    >    mistakes from information I picked up at DECUS.
    
    
    Maybe these people were promoted in the mid '80s and are now running
    the show.
     

    The sales person's job is to sell what the company wants them to sell.
    
    The company tells the sales person what they want them to sell by
    providing higher rewards for selling those things that are more
    'important'.
    
    Digital now has many sales forces and each one sells what its
    management wants them to sell per the above.
    
    What most people think of as Digital 'sales' is only measured on server
    sales this year (last year it was measured on total revenue with a few
    exceptions e.g. PCs).  Workstations, consulting, PCs and other Digital 
    products have in most cases some reward (e.g. $40 for every $10,000 in 
    consulting) but this is not what is in the 'sales' person's budget.  As 
    has been pointed out there are other sales forces that are supposed to 
    have sales of these items as their primary focus.
    
    There is NO sales entity today in Digital which has the responsibility
    AND is measured on selling DIGITAL'S entire product line.
    
    We are doing a terrible job at insulating the CUSTOMER from these
    internal machinations (and I didn't mention the use of channels).  I 
    believe that the Call Centers are one attempt at doing this.  As long 
    as a customer can look in the Yellow Pages and get a number for a local 
    Digital office and not be auto-magically routed to some central 
    information desk I think we will have this problem.  We will not get 
    to every potential customer having a designated Digital sales person.
    
    Peter Dillard  

    
    	RE: .29
    
    	So you're saying that sales offices could be deserted because the
    	salespeople are working from home?
    
    	And you're also saying that they are so stupid that they have no
    	forwarding setup on their phones so that they can take calls at
    	home?
    
    	I mean, if they're not selling stuff, what are they doing?  Des-
    	igning sales fliers in Powerpoint with their [still useless] work
    	phone number on it?
    

re -1;

Clearly, you have no experience in the field.

1.  Sales people are NEVER supposed to be hanging around the office. They're 
supposed to be out selling!

2.  The home program has eliminated the few reasons (like e-mail, snail mail 
and expense reports) that brought sales folks into the office. Meetings, due 
to the distributed nature of the new organization, tend to be via conference 
call.

3.  People with a home office have NO PHONE at the Digital office to forward. 
Are you suggesting that the main number be forwarded to the various sales reps 
on some sort of rotating basis?

Say, for example, you work for a large corporation with an office in 
Westchester County, N.Y. You look up Digital in the phone book and find a 
listing in Tarrytown. If you call that number you'll probably get the MCS 
branch manager's AA. There are NO sales folks in that office any more, and if 
Colleen is sick (or out getting coffee) there is often NO ONE there except for 
a couple of MCS technicians picking up parts. 

The problem will soon be solved, though. The Tarrytown office (WHO) is being 
closed. If Ciba, Pepsi, Texaco, Kraft and Phillip Morris want to buy 
something, they'll have to call the New York City office. Or IBM. Or H-P.

\dave

       <<< Note 5187.33 by BUSY::SLAB "GTI 16V - dust thy neighbor!!" >>>

>    	And you're also saying that they are so stupid that they have no
>    	forwarding setup on their phones so that they can take calls at
>    	home?

Who says they even have a Digital phone number?  Any manager worth their 
salt will see all those phones for WFH folks as an easy expense to drop.
    
>    	I mean, if they're not selling stuff, what are they doing?  

Sounds like the Server folks are trying to push servers on customers that 
only want to buy workstations and visa-versa.  But hey what do I know :*)

Jilly who_no_longer_has_a_phone_#_in_any_Digital_office

    RE.33
    
    	Global accounts and enterprise accounts have specific sales reps;
    and they better know their account reps phone number and 800 Digital.
    We are not inept that we can't  forward our phones. There are no phones
    to forward.  And we're  doing just fine with PowerPoint
    presentations.  The problem is the small to medium size company that 
    does not have direct Digital field sales account support. If they don't
    know to call 800 DIGITAL we'll probably lose them. But then again
    our great channels strategy with all their demand generation programs
    should take care of the masses.
     
    

    
    
    
    
    Digits:
    
    Two things are impacting my team's performance, and I think we all own
    solving the issue.  Our 1-3-9 strategy is easy to understand and
    comprehend, and yes, like any organization we have warts.  However, our
    sales people are the finest and most dedicated sales professionals
    in the industry.  Every night, I drive by the CT HP District Office and
    there are more people working at our building.  Take a second and review 
    your local SUN sales team, dollars to donuts, a good percentage of them 
    will be ex-Digital and they want more.
    
    In summary, there are two things we all need to help:
    
    	o	ISV applications -- Corporate alone is not going to fix
    		this issue.  Market demand would.  Have your friends, 
    		customers, and you too formally ask ISV partners for a 
    		Digital port.  Work with them to create demand and show
    		them new business that they wouldn't be exposed to on
    		somone else's platform.  Call the Software Partner Group
    		and demand applications.  This is an issue, but 
    		we all own a piece of it.
    
    	o	Negative attitudes -- It's very easy to talk about what's
    		bad.  I would suggest that we all realize what's good, and
    		present solutions to what's bad.  Too many times I see "old
    		tapes" -- (ex. Pratt & Whitney would never consider that; 
    		we have never done that. etc...).  
    
    		Personally, I sugest we all start taking chances; make a
    		suggestion; go up to a sales rep and volunteer to help;
    		call a customer and ask what we could do better or how
    		we could be a larger supplier; and above all start taking 
    		risks
                     
    Sincerely,
    
    Palo Peirce
    UTC CAM
    

re: last several

It's been a pleasure to read all the stories and ideas about making our
sales force a better organization.  It gives one real hope that we can
actually make things better ourselves.

Since some replies were in response to my entries, I'd like to make some
things clear - my "customer" DID have a SPECIFIC salesperson they were to
call.  This was "their salesman."  They called the number countless times,
and left many voicemails.  I called the person myself when no calls were
returned, only to get the same voicemail.  I then used the "insider's trick"
of finding various numbers using the phonebook (when we had such things) to
try to find ANYBODY to take my customer's money at their sales rep's office.

I know some must think I'm making this whole thing up; I assure you this
is entirely factual.  It is, in fact, what shaped my vision of our sales
force.

If we want to survive, the whole company, we can NOT wait around for the
"sale we want."  We, all of us, must be willing to Do The Right Thing, and
take even the calls and customers that aren't part of our budget, or numbers,
or whatever.  Then use these successes to show how the current system is
failing us all.  All the, "nobody gets credit for these sales" answers are
EXCUSES, not reasons.  They're examples of people that aren't hungry enough
to try to make a difference.  It's as simple as that.

Me?  As an engineer, I just directly answered questions for a customer
about some new system services, and some software he was writing for
customers of HIS.  Could I have said, RTFM?  Of course.  Could I have
ignored the sales person's request for information for this customer?  Of
course.  Should I have cut him off after his second round of questions?
Maybe.  But I didn't.  Until this note, nobody but the salesman and the
customer knew I did this.  It's called Whatever It Takes.

Sorry to sound like a walking clich�.

If sales doesn't like their reputation, they are the ones to fix it.

\john
    OpenVMS Security Engineering

    Re .37
    
    "above all .....take risks." or some such...
    
    Today...this is a very high wire to walk....succeed and your okay... 
    fail and you get fired....
             

    Well...
    
    - Sales does *NOT* get credit for everything, only what they're
      targeted to sell.  The Alfer rep only gets credit for large 
      boxes, not workstations and only network gear if it's part of
      the system sale.  We have instances of that rep WALKING AWAY
      from about $100-150K of network gear or telling the customer
      "I don't want to sell it to you, go elsewhere..."
    
    - The sales compensation system, Omega, is broken.  It does not
      accurately count dollars earned.  In Q1, for example, we were
      at 99% of goal, which changed to 96%, which changed to 107% etc.
      Nobody could tell us if we were or were not at goal and they would
      *NOT* pay us any bonus/incentive, even though we were at 99%.  
      That was a real morale boost.
    
    - If you make budget, goals, etc. the corporation thinks that you're
      earning too much money so they raise your targets so you can not
      overachieve.  Folks at competing network companies easily make
      over 100K because of the tremendous upside of competitive bonus
      programs.
    
    - Because of the above, unless you're  a loyal Digit, you come into
      Digital, get tired of all the broken infrastructure and leave.
    
    - The above causes people like me to travel 2,500 miles/week to fill
      in, I have over 25 VOICEmails tat I need to take care of on 
      Monday and - I'm on a plane at 8pm Sunday night...sigh.
    
    - The corporation views marketing spending as 'discressionary',
      so Sales is saddled with generating market presence AS WELL AS
      just doing sales.
    
    - The corporation is so accounting intense (with so many broken
      accounting systems in place) that it keeps driving to making
      the numbers INSTEAD OF doing the business.  They don't seem
      to realize that business is a PROCESS and not a number
      in a spreadsheet.  (Yes, they are doing the Ken Olsen
      nightmare - manage the numbers and not the business)
    
    - And, engineering keeps giving us stuff which doesn't meet the
      mark - and, with no marketing and targeting, we have to build
      bridges and spins around it ourselves.  On the average, the
      field has been cut by 70-80% - so we don't have a lot of time
      to do this etc.
    
    - Given the above, we get calls by customers cursing us out for
      lack of attention.
    
    - Our partner strategy is sound - it is GREAT - but it suffers from
      the same level of field support that Digital has always provided
      the field.  Engineering is NOT connected to the field and Marketing
      is non-existent.  So our partners have the SAME problem with 
      Digital products that the field has always had. (sigh)
    
    Aside from that, it's easy to sell Digital.
    
    

re 38:	Hi John,

	You need to realize that Digital has completely *screwed* the sales
force at least 2 or 3 times since I have been in the field the last 6+ years.
And I say this being an SI consultant, have never been part of sales, except
to help close some technical questions here or there.

	As a result, many things have fallen through the cracks.  Is it some
sales rep fault your 'customer' got the run around?  I think I would like to 
lay the blame at the feet of management.  I can tell you that Ed Lucenti (sp)
was no prize of a VP, he was one of several that crushed whatever morale
that sales ever had.  It amazes me sometimes that we have much of sales 
staff at all.

	Laying off sales support, game playing commissions, re-applying for
your job all the time, 7500 accounts to 1000, oops, back to 2500 accounts.
Incentives for consulting, then none, then incentives, then none...  You get
the picture.   Sales and marketing have been horribly mis-managed in this 
company.  In Harvey Mackey's book, "How to Swim with the Sharks without
getting Eaten Alive", he states that if you ever want to trully know what
is going on (wrong) with your company, spend a month in a sales office.

Truer words were never spoken.

Regards,
Brad.

>     - And, engineering keeps giving us stuff which doesn't meet the
>       mark - and, with no marketing and targeting, we have to build
>       bridges and spins around it ourselves.  On the average, the
>       field has been cut by 70-80% - so we don't have a lot of time
>       to do this etc.

	We should take a closer look at Microsoft, they're able to
	sell beta quality or less software.  Is it their sales force,
	their marketing, or both?

> ... we spotted Unix way too late, ...

	Which reminds me of some DEClore I've never seen confirmed.
	I was told quite a while back (when Sun and AT&T were kicking
	our butt on the UNIX front, and KO was calling UNIX snake-oil)
	that way back when Digital was offered by Bell labs (AT&T)
	the rights to Unix for only $20,000 but Digital declined.

	Any truth to this piece of folklore?

    .43
    In 1983 ANY commmercial vendor could buy the UNIX source license for
    20K. Bell Labs gave it away to schools and Unversities for $200. It was
    much less expensive to put UNIX on a VAX than pay for one month of VMS
    maintenance. So that is what the University community did. And that is
    how UNIX proliferated.
    
    

>     .43
>     In 1983 ANY commmercial vendor could buy the UNIX source license for
>     20K. Bell Labs gave it away to schools and Unversities for $200. It was
>     much less expensive to put UNIX on a VAX than pay for one month of VMS
>     maintenance. So that is what the University community did. And that is
>     how UNIX proliferated.

	sorry I wasn't clear, I did not mean they offered Digital a
	source license, I meant the offer was they offered Digital
	*ownership*.  Ie. Digital had the opportunity to prevent
	that proliferation of UNIX.

	Personally I'm glad they didn't, as UNIX wouldn't even exist
	today, at least not as we know it, and heaven forbid, I'd be
	a VMS-weiny or some other proprietary OS right now :-)

re .43, rights to unix offered to dec by at&t.

i have no first hand info, but back about 83 i heard of the offer.
the offer had happened years earlier.
it was reported as fact, not rumor, by a "usually reliable source".

i do not recall if a price was mentioned, but i recall the impression
of "not much".

if the report is just a rumor, it is an unusually persistent one,
like Craig, the poor kid that is dying of cancer and wants to
collect as many pings as possible so he can get in the ...

   RE: .43, et.al.  Further to Chuck's response ...
  
   Yes, the story was that AT&T had offered DEC the sources and the
   rights to "market and sell" UNIX, but DEC had declined due to some
   perceived/advised potential for Sherman Anti-trust action by the U.S.
   Justice Department ...

    Actually it was a bit earlier. about 1976-77, digital - specifically
    the manager of the telco product line, was offered the rights to unix
    by the unix development team (the guys in the 'skunk works' at Bell
    Labs, Murray Hill - people with very famous Unix names like Ken
    Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Steve Bourne, et al).
     Digital declined. At that time, digital had the
    following operating systems:
    RSTS
    RSX11-M
    RSX11-D
    IAS
    TOPS
    and I think another variant of rsx11. Digital's response was something
    like 'We have plenty of operating systems'.
    
    

    Sorry that sales is poorly incented which they are. I had a customer
    wanting to purchase 350K in NPB gear, two problems however, sales
    receives no budget releif and they were 4 hours away from a DEC office
    and the rep(s) dont go further than an hour away from thier (home)
    office. The customer wanted to by from DEC (yes thats DEC to the
    newbee's) and DEC and Digital or DIGITAL simply did not want to bother.
    
    Sorry sales folks, but I have noticed that if it an hour or more away
    you simply do not respond. Flame me if you want but it is true. But it
    has been that way for years! Enough on that they are taxed.
    
    I escaluated this to the gods in Mass. and received a most professional
    butt kicking from the top down, took about a month for that butt whipping
    to run its course and I was in contact with alot of highly educated
    well spoken leaders of this company who all had good reasons to kick me
    in the groin and tell me to use the channel which the customer did not
    want to use.
    
    When the local sales manager contacted me to offer a spot in the
    parking lot to solve this issue I gave up and thought to offer the
    customer the Cisco 1-800 number and solve their problem.
    
    I have never been treated so poorly as I was when I asked DEC to sell
    to a long time customer some of our stuff.
    
    Up until this point I have been used to being kicked by customers for
    not having the products they needed or being quick enough with the
    response, the normal customer kick the vendor stuff.
    
    Hell, they train us for that. But where do I go tho get trained at
    ignoring someone, my ex- wife?
    
    Needless to say I was glad when it was over. My buddy the Pittsburgher
    told me how to sell it through DEC after my knee caps were gone. I have
    found that by using duct tape and hockey pucks one can replace knee
    caps. ( An old Chicago trick ) 
    
    Anyway the system could use some fixing, Credit ANY sales rep for
    selling ANYTHING we sell and THEY SHOULD SELL SOMETHING TO SOMEBODY
    EVERYDAY. PERIOD!! 
    
    But that is not the model we live under. We have alot of problems but
    we have good products that our own sales force is not welcome to sell
    and this is not fair to them.
    
    They receive credit for selling Cicso and 3-COM through NSIS because it
    a service and  a simple SPIF for my products NPB which we build. Makes
    no sence at all.
    
    I hope no own respondes with a reasonable reason for this but they
    will.
    
    We are telling the customers and the industry we do not care what you
    think and damn the torpedos.
    
    The torpedos always win. 

>    Sorry sales folks, but I have noticed that if it an hour or more
>    away you simply do not respond. Flame me if you want but it is 
>    true. 

I travel over an hour each way _every day_ to my customer, except for the 
day every week that I have to drive to the airport for 45 minutes to get 
on a two hour flight, and fly back the same day.  My guess is that you 
have more of a metrics issue, where a customer doesn't have an assigned 
account manager, and is supposed to be handled by a partner.

Everyone who generalizes like you doesn't know what they are talking 
about.   

Bruce

    
    I have a hard time understanding where we are headed, and why the
    business practice does not make sense here at Digital.
    
    I have been with Digital (DEC) for 13 years now. I have seen many
    programs come and go. I have never really bothered if I get credit
    for my work in any particular business situation, but rather taken 
    the simplistic view that if I help shifting Digital Products or 
    improve customer satisfaction or solve customers problems I am doing
    the right thing.
    
    Since three years I work for the SBU with network issues. Since the SBU
    does NOT sell network products I focus on helping getting the best 
    high performance and ease-of-use solution to make our servers and 
    workstations look as good as possible.
    
    I frequently get into difficult sales situations. I might have a
    longtime customer who knows what he wants, and discussing tech and
    operational topics with him/her I get a close on a particular deal
    or path of development.
    
    At this point, whether the customer is a true SBU customer or someone
    I'm NOT supposed to waste Digital's precious time with, the actual
    business deal is handed of to a suitable partner that is either the
    customers contact or somebody choosen by us. For the NON-SBU customer
    maybee this is rational, I still feel bad about letting him go.
    For the SBU customer handing him of is just incurring additional risk.
    
    Very often the customer want's to do business directly with us, but
    I have to decline, or else I upset our partner relationships or waste
    resources on nitty gritty $ 100K business.
    
    Not wanting to spoil Digital's business model, I try as best to comply,
    while not making the customer angry, and convincing the partner that
    what the customer wants ( maybe after discussion/persuasion from me)
    is the thing the partner should try to sell.
    
    None of the two distributors that we (Digital) have choosen really
    wants to sell Digital products. They very much want's the deal, but
    feel they have products or solutions from other vendors that better
    fit (THEIR) bill.
    
    I find that our business model very often results in lot's of time
    spent with customers branding Digital, convincing about function,
    performance and utility, leading to a desicion that later is reversed
    by the partner.
    
    When working with the true SBU direct customers, the vendor-customer
    relationship works.
    
    When working with partners we typicly tend to favor a few unfaithful
    ones we want sooooo... hard to favor, but who let us and sometimes
    the customer down whenever they get a chance. 
    
    I see lot's of money slipping through our fingers while we rigidly
    try to maintain a business model that is supposed to tie partners
    to us for a win-win. Problem is the partners are not interested in
    this form of bondage, and the situation becomes a loss for us.
    
    Maybee it's time to reevaluate our way's of doing business.
    
    Or, maybee keeping to the strategy will work in the end. The problem
    could be that we actually get it to work the day we file chapter-11.
    
    Gullik
    
    P.S.	I frequently work WITH the partners too. When that happens
    		things work out better. It's the random favoring of someone
    		we want to 'build a partner relationship with' that does
    		not.
    
    

Re .-1

    Our customer (Ford) has been telling us this for years. They don't like
    dealing with 3rd parties. They've had bad experiences in the past and have
    found that they lose "something" very precious and important to them ----
    LEVERAGE and INFLUENCE. When they deal and purchase products directly
    from a company, they (the customer) has confidence that they'll be able 
    to get problems resolved quickly. Ford even purchases their PC's directly 
    from DELL and IBM. (Dell's CEO came out to Ford to ink the deal ---- that's 
    how badly he wanted to do business with them). Last year alone, Ford spent
    120 million dollars on just PC's.

    Take for example the middleware "selloff" that just took place recently.
    I know the folks at Corporate think that they have answers to everything
    and that this selloff would be a clean break. They've told us in the field
    that we can continue to sell these products and that our customers should
    keep buying from us ----- wrong. First things first, our customer was  
    very upset at "DIGITAL THE CORPORATION" for selling off the middleware. I 
    believe that they were very justified in their feelings. Once again,
    we (Digital) have proven to them that we are "unreliable"..."not true to our
    word"....etc...etc..etc. Why do I say this, because about 6-7 months ago,
    Ford requested that we give them assurances that we were not going to 
    sell off these products. We proceeded to parade VP's in front of them,
    that were making assurances to Ford that this would not happen. Based on
    those reassurances, Ford then picked DECMESSAGEQ for deployment in all
    of their manufacturing facilities --- worldwide. This was a big win for the
    account team, big morale booster, we were on the move. Winning this deal,
    began to slowly open up other opportunities (that were previously shut) 
    .  Other groups within Ford had
    heard of DMQ being picked and started working with us on looking at 
    Obectbroker for solving other problems they were trying to address. 

    The objectbroker piece would have been much larger than DMQ, over 200,000+
    licenses. So, before we can move forward with Objectbroker, Corporate with
    one stroke of the  pen has potentially closed the door on us.  
    BEA now has a very large customer, that is theirs to lose. Our customer has 
    told us that all the reasons they had chosen DMQ were now gone, they will   
    probably stick with the product or (if BEA falters) may choose to move to 
    MQSeries (IBM --- and they are dying to get this opportunity), who knows? 
    The account team is now faced with trying to position ourselves to continue
    selling the product into Ford ----- But, Ford has already told us ----
    quite honestly ---- THEY DON'T LIKE DEALING WITH 3RD PARTIES --- which you
    are now Digital. BEA owns the product, so eventually they (Ford) may decide
    to start dealing directly with BEA and not us. 

     We have a great account manager and great sales reps, they're all working
     hard with what Corporate has given them to succeed. But, Corporate at times
     seems to be working against us and is doing everything they can to 
     "alienate" our customer. 

     One question that I ask  myself now, is what value does it bring to the 
     table, when you can't even trust the word of your Corporate VP's? 
     How can anyone at Ford (or any other large Corporation) trust what 
     'DIGITAL THE CORPORATION' has to say? How's that going to impact future 
     business? 

     I have 
     no doubts that this was good for the middleware groups, because Digital
     really didn't know what/how to market these products. But I think it did
     more damage than good to ----- 'DIGITAL AS A WHOLE' ---- whatever money
     this managed to save, will probably amount to peanuts --- when compared 
     to fewer business opportunities in the future.  OK...OK... enough is
     enough. I'm done... sorry about rambling on.

Rick

    >nitty-gritty $100K deals
    
    	Let's see, 3500 sales reps * $100K deal/quarter * 4 quarters...
    isn't that $1.4B or so?
    
    

    RE: .53
    
    Leo,
    
    It might even be more dramatic than you think.  Throughout my sales
    career at Digital I have heard the litany - "that account is too small,
    let some non-committal partner handle them, go after the BIG deal." 
    Fortunately for myself (and Digital) I have oftentimes not done what
    the company said to do, but rather what was the right thing to do.  I
    have opened up accounts such as a small hospital in a backwoods area (2-1/2
    hours from my home, in response to the earlier message that says
    salespeople don't venture further than 1 hour from their homes - some
    putz engineer sitting on his dead butt pontificating about what is
    wrong with the sales force), which resulting in millions to me the
    first year, and millions more to my successors in the account.  This
    year I am working with a prime contractor (only 1 hour from my home - a
    bone thrown to the aforementioned putz) that has 4 people in the
    office.  That prime has won a radar program that will buy one full-up
    8200 system from us as fast as they can get the paperwork through, and
    three more through a prime contractor partner.  Total value to Digital
    - about $2M.
    
    The aforementioned is not given to pat myself on the back, or to attack
    someone who doesn't know jack about sales.  It is to point out that we
    can all blindly follow corporate edicts on who we can or cannot call on
    (which in many cases were drawn up by people who have never sold a day
    in their lives, or they would know better), or we can do what we in the
    field know is right to maintain and grow the business.  No one has
    ever been fired for bringing in business, but you can be fired for
    following a ridiculous company line, and bringing in none.  DO THE
    RIGHT THING!  Work with your sales management and reach agreement on
    this area; they likely will understand and agree with your assessment. 
    Escalate it higher and you hit the tree huggers who toe the corporate
    line du jour.  Good luck.
    
    Chuck                    

RE: .0

Sorry this is late, I have been a little busy selling lots of AlphaServers...

Over in KACIE::SBU I complained about the new metrics for the Sales force
back in September, and Harry Copperman was kind enough to respond.  As I
said then (quoting from my note in 19.7):

>Excluding segments of our product set from counting against budget will
>guarantee that no Sales Rep will sell those products.  It is really very
>simple: be careful what you ask for, because you may get it.  Expect the 
>behavior you reward, not the behavior you say you want.  Follow the money.
>
>[some text ommitted]
>
>So every Sales Rep I know is walking away from the desktop, the network, 
>Intel systems and all services.  I predict that Digital will *seriously* 
>miss their revenue and volume goals in these areas.  You can track those 
>numbers much better than I can, but when we do miss these numbers in Q1 
>and Q2, at least you will know why.

So I am gratified and depressed to read in .0:

>  Total Alpha sales probably will fall about 7.5 percent this quarter,
>Conigliaro said,.  Alpha workstations alone will fall 39 percent, she said, 
>with Alpha server sales rising 3 percent.

-- Ken Moreau
   extremely sad about getting this prediction right :-(

    r.e .52 by JALOPY::CUTLER
    
    >Our customer has told us that all the reasons they had chosen DMQ were 
    >now gone, they will probably stick with the product or (if BEA
    >falters) may choose to move to MQSeries (IBM --- and they are dying to
    >get this opportunity)
    
    My customer is also going through similar anxiety attacks. BEA are a
    small shop in this country and uses a partner to deliver to a very
    small base. That partner (and BEA) have NO offices in the National
    Capital where I work. So, the potential outcome of this decision means
    they potentially have to deal with three companies instead of one,
    Digital, for add-on software (IMS/MSG+), BEA and its partner for
    DECmessageQ (not in this town). They use smalltalk, ParcPlace just 
    decommitted from VMS as a development environment, so they are considering 
    using IBM's visualage and moving to NT Intel (because the software isnt on 
    Alphas)  backends. Truth is, they can get most everything they need by 
    dealing with one vendor, and it isnt us.
    
    IBM won the Byte COMDEX best connectivity software with MQSeries. It is
    inferior to DECMessageQ in all ways except one, committment. I find it
    interesting to compare 2 companies that were in a kamikaze dive for so
    long. I can still only see ground in front of us. 
    
    The difference:   
    	1. Services
    	2. Software
    	3. Committment to 1 and 2
    For heavens sake, its NOT silicon.
    
    IBM executed to a plan and have been very consistent in their
    middleware messages, for DSOM, for DCE, for MQSeries. And no one
    expects them to sell them off next month. They actively promote links
    to their groupware offering. I cant think of the time and
    energy wasted in this office each quarter as the threat of removal of
    one product or the other surfaces. Like it or not, large customers
    expect their hardware provider to also provide key computing
    infrastructure AND THAT MEANS SOFTWARE AND SERVICES. 
    
    
    Another site here, a major military facility, has just
    finished an evaluation recommending a shift to UNIX, due to a lack of
    ADA9x  support for VMS. This is one of the last bastions of VMS in Defence
    here, where the UNIX is dictated largely from the Defence software
    delivered from the USA (usually HP/UX or Solaris based) and the only
    penetration we get is where VMS uniquely meets the need. With the
    decline in software committment for our platforms, this gets harder
    every day.
    
    Again, I'll repeat. None of these issues are concerns about the quality
    of OUR software. The concerns are about lack of presence, marketplace 
    committment from us and third party developers for our platforms.
    
    - John
    
    
    
    
    
    

     >>because about 6-7 months ago,
     >> Ford requested that we give them assurances that we were not going
    >>to sell off these products. We proceeded to parade VP's in front of
    >>them, that were making assurances to Ford that this would not happen.
    >>Based on those reassurances, Ford then picked DECMESSAGEQ 
    
    Um, I'm sure they are impressed by our monkey on your back ads. They
    must really be able to identify with them. The one with the FAILURE
    message maybe, where the chimp has his hand over his eyes. 
    
    This is not a problem of sales and marketing, it is a problem of
    bad leadership.
    
    ..Kevin.. 

    
    You all are failing to realize one thing. We have the best management
    leadership in the computer industry, bar none. In fact, other computer
    companies are just salivating over our management team and trying
    desperately to woo most of them away from us. Fear not, management
    will lead us back into the upper echelon of the industry.

 .58  You forgot your :-).   This great management team got straight F's.  They have flunked.

    	I had to laugh yesterday when I heard someone say that after our Q3
    results go public, we'll be abandoning the 1-3-9 strategy in favor of
    the new "911" strategy!

    Re .60
    
    9 person SLT
    1 MCS Engineer
    1 advertising agency
    

re: .28, .38 (My own notes re: an unhappy customer)

Somebody in Sales is hungry.  The customer was called yesterday, to be
sure they're happy, being sold what they want, etc.

Thank you!  Oh, THANK YOU!

\john

re:  "911"  

	The CSCs have been working a "911" plan for the last six months.  It's 
supports the Corporate "1-3-9" and is meant to emphasize that "we're in trouble and 
this is how it's going to get fixed!"

Dennis 

    The cover story of the 3/24/97 issue is the "Business Week 50" - a
    ranking of the S & P 500.  Here's how DIGITAL did:
    
    	Highlighted in a side bar of "Bottom Ten/Earnings Decline" with a
    	12-mo. loss of $ -342.8 mil.  We were sixth from the bottom; Apple was
    	ninth.
    
    	Ranked #485 overall (of 500).  Apple was #489.
    
    	Ranked 32nd of 34 in "Office Equip & Computers"  Others in our
    	group:
    
    		Microsoft	#1
    		Dell		 2
    		Cisco		 3
    		Sun		 6
    		HP		 9
    		IBM		10
    		DG		21
    		SGI		22
    		Amdahl		27
    		Tandem		30
    		Unisys		31
    		Apple		33
    		Integraph	34
    
    	We got all "F's" for scores in the following areas:  total return;
    	sales growth; profit growth; net margin; and return on equity. 
    	Apple had all "F's" and 1 "D" in 3 yr. sales growth.
    
    	HP was #51 overall and got 2 A's, 3 B's, and 3 C's.
    
    	IBM was #71 overall and got 4 A's and 4 C's.
    
    The good news?  There was one of our two-page ads a few pages before the
    story.
    
    
    This is embarassing.

    re: .63
    
    Part of our problem is that it takes 6 months to fix SIMPLE problems -
    like getting people to answer the phones!  (And, then, after getting
    customers upset with us for six months - we wonder why they don't buy
    from us.)
    
    If our own internal bureaucracy ran as fast as our chips, we would be
    flying much higher.
    
    Perhaps it's time to "question authority"?  Start asking "how is what I
    doing touching the customer?"  If we can't answer it, why are we doing
    it?
    

     >>Perhaps it's time to "question authority"?  Start asking "how is what
     >>I doing touching the customer?"  If we can't answer it, why are we
     >>doing it?
    
    Well, I crossed that bridge in 1993  when we were firing people with
    enormous packages up to .25 million dollars, and hiring them for more
    pay and less work the next day as contractors.
    
    Yesterday I happened to read again the leaflet which the European Works
    Council and supporters put out at the Annual General Meeting in
    Boston, as well as the press coverage of the AGM and the joyfully
    optimistic statements made by Mr Palmer. 
    
    It was very instructive. The fact is that those who were questioning
    authority were absolutely right, and those burying their heads in the
    sand and saying we are doing fine were plain wrong, loosers, whose time
    is up.
    
    ..Kevin..
    

    Let's assume the world goes NT+Alpha and we are basically replacing
    Intel. Have you looked recently how many people work for Intel? And how
    many people DIGITAL has?
    
    With that strategy 2-out-of-3 of us will not be here when NT on Alpha
    becomes successful.
    
    Guenther

>    Let's assume the world goes NT+Alpha and we are basically replacing
>    Intel. Have you looked recently how many people work for Intel? And how
>    many people DIGITAL has?

Part of Digital does semiconductors, which is the part that "corresponds to"
Intel.  There are a lot of other things (entire systems, services, various
software) that don't correspond to things that Intel does, but that should
be viable in their own right even if Alpha NT were to take off.

(Whether it makes sense for those functions to be housed in a single
company when each piece has different direct competitors causing various
conflicts like those that occurred in software areas is a different
question...)
    
Digital is in a very uncomfortable position being a vertically integrated
supplier in a horizontal world, and is having trouble coping.  You can
sometimes use "re-integration" to out-maneuver your competitors (e.g.
Microsoft re-integrating applications), but that doesn't happen when
you're on the defensive, rather than the offensive.

--------

There's a bit of a paradox here, because one can argue that the only
type of company that can really successfully prime the market for a new
architecture like Alpha is in fact a vertically integrated one, or
potentially in the case of MS/Intel [IA64], ones that are closely
associated, so that all the pieces in the vertical "stack" can be
put into place.  But at the same time, vertical companies that try
to do this will meet resistance to acceptance from the horizontal
companies that view the other parts of the "stack" done by the same
company as unfair competitors (take Digital and databases vs. the database
vendors, for example.)

If one were to split Digital into a semi manufacturer and a systems business
more like Compaq, one would have to time things well on the ramp curve
(providing there is any "window" at all, which might be an optimistic
assumption) so that the split happened early enough that other horizontal
companies would see the split as creating a level playing field
in the horizontal area, while late enough that the artifact that was
created [e.g. Alpha] would in fact survive the transition and help
the split pieces survive and prosper.

Getting from a "stable" vertical configuration to a "stable" horizontal
configuration isn't necessarily a nice "smooth" transition...

    Last I saw Intel had 41.6K (1995 annual report).  Their facilities
    around here have been in an aggressive hiring mode too.  I'd be
    surprised if DEC had >12K more employees than Intel now.