This is a great lesson for hiring mangers.
What you think will work often does not. Like hiring the man who did the same job for the top competitor.
I grew revenue from GE by 242% in just 12 months. This is also a lesson in how to manage a big account.
Now I’m a marketing expert who runs Find New Customers, a Tampa-based demand generation agency and we help companies develop world-class marketing programs. Why don’t you contact Find New Customers to get more Mr. Right Nows your salespeople need?
In the early 1990s, I worked for Business Objects, which was one of the worst experiences of my career, because all they cared about was revenue. Sales was run by an incompetent boob. And they did not care one lick about customer satisfaction, they were in the “Purchase Order extraction business” That was a loser of a business strategy and the company has since been sold to IBM. (IBM is not doing well now either, according the Wall St Journal)
While I was there, I noticed the company was losing ground with General Electric. So I asked if I could handle it. I had never handled GE before, but they said “Yes.” (Note that they gave GE to a rookie salesperson.)
I’m customer centric and I was many years ahead of my time. After all, who was doing content marketing in 1990? No one, except me.
GE was working on a project called Digital Cockpits, dictated by their CEO Jack Welch, which we did not sell. But I won one deal in GE Capital and it was successful, because we had a crack team of programmers from Business Objects and Tata, led by my good friend, Chirag Shah, to modify our product to the customer needs. (Chirag is really good and I highly recommend him.) That team built a great product and it was rolled out to everyone at GE Capital. If memory serves, it was rolled out to 144 instead of 14.
Marketing and I developed some custom marketing materials (content marketing) on Digital Cockpits, using screen shots of what we had developed. Our content did not look like any of the brochures that came from corporate. It really was Content Marketing in the Stone Age.
I was also a realist. I understood that Barbara Buttizi (her actual name) in Italy had 30 accounts, but I wanted to have her call on GE. How do I do that?
I decided the answer was simple. Made GE easy to sell to - easier than her other 29 accounts. That meant I had to educate her on how to sell to GE, so she would know exactly what to say. Using emails and conference calls, I got it done and Barbara learned what she needed to know.
It worked. Barbara sold GE in Italy.
I also got up in the middle of the night for conference calls for people like Barbara and GE Italy.. I supported my global team by doing whatever was needed.
But as I said, Business Objects did not keep customers happy, so I left. It’s hard to sell when GE Card Services says they’re sorry they bought your software.
I’d love to hear from anyone about their experience with that company then.
At the end of the year, Chirag told me the results - GE revenue had grown by 242%!
Sales lesson: The best salespeople are customer-centric and visionary. Almost no one looks for that - when they post sales management jobs on LinkedIn.
What did Business Objects do after I left? They did what almost all companies would do. They turned to the biggest competitor in the business at the time, Cognos, and hired the man who led GE for them.
One problem: He not as visionary or customer centric as me. He didn’t create content or make sales easy for sales reps. And he didn’t last six months. They fired him.
The lesson for hiring managers is clear. Stop hiring just on titles and start looking for processes used by the best, like being customer-centric and visionary.
In fact, my experience with GE got me a job with a company in Atlanta, who turned out to be just as bad as Business Objects. Good riddance.
What do you think? I love comments and those who share on social media.
