Conference ilbbak::us_sales_service

200.0. "Lucente's View of Digital Sales" by POCUS::OHARA (Reverend Middleware) Tue Dec 07 1993 17:01

The following is extracted from the Digital notes conference.  I find Mr.
Lucente's comments, uh..., interesting.  

I'm currently reading Paul Carroll's "Big Blues - the unmaking of IBM".  This
is a fascinating perspective into the psyche of the IBM executive, and makes
several references to Mr. Lucente himself.

This reinforces my belief that the Digital sales force, as we now know it, will
be totally re-invented over the next 2-3 years.

           <<< HUMANE::DISK$DIGITAL:[NOTES$LIBRARY]DIGITAL.NOTE;1 >>>
                        -< The Digital way of working >-
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Note 2811.29                   Ed Lucente and Limo                      29 of 35
ROMEOS::ROCH_VI                                      35 lines   6-DEC-1993 19:56
                            -< Some of his talk... >-
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    What did he say....
    
    The audience was mostly Sales and Sales Support...I'll paraphrase as
    much as I can remember.  
    
    He said ....
    
    ...Digital Consulting is to leverage DIGITAL products...(that's funny,
    huh?  I've been telling customers the opposite for a couple years!)
    
    ...Our company products are not complicated...all we have are three
    operating systems, a couple of databases and some client/server
    applications...Kids out of college could do your job.... (This was, of
    course, in reference to a more technical sales force....being in Sales
    Support, this definitely boost my ego!)  (He basically was telling the
    Sales Force to quit whining about their jobs...)
    
    Question:  What are you doing about multiple sales rep on the account
    and competing (ie. Digital Consulting and MCS)...
    Response: I don't care if there are 15 sales reps on the account, as
    long as they listen to the Account Manager....
    
    ...Our systems administratively are terrible...we know they are
    terrible and they will be fixed...but, don't expect to see any improvement
    before calendar year 1995....
    
    ...We (the SLT) have a list of 52 top projects in this company...(he
    didn't express what they were, just that the list exists)...that are
    top priorities to the SLT....
    
    ...We will be hiring 10-30% more sales folks....
    
    Quality of products was discussed.
    Our poor numbers were discussed.