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Title: | The Digital way of working |
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Moderator: | QUARK::LIONEL ON |
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Created: | Fri Feb 14 1986 |
Last Modified: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
Last Successful Update: | Fri Jun 06 1997 |
Number of topics: | 5321 |
Total number of notes: | 139771 |
2027.0. "A Salesman's Prayer" by HOTWTR::THOMPSOKR (Kris with a K) Thu Jul 30 1992 03:14
Dear Lord, help me in these troubling times at my company. Help me
see the light and the end of the dark tunnel and help me to remain
positive in a sea of negativity.
Help me find product information so I can respond to my customer's
questions quickly, completely, and competently, rather than the 5 phone
calls and 2 days it typically takes. Keep me from saying "I don't know
but I'll get back to you" no more than 3 times a day. Give me one source
of product and pricing information, Lord, not 12.
Give me competitive products at a fair price to sell and I'll do the
rest. Oh yeah, the products should be easy to understand and sell, too.
Teach management the value of advertising and teach me the proper
response when my customers say, "Digital sure has great products. You
know, if you would just advertise more we could buy more because manage-
ment would then feel more comfortable with a decision to buy DEC."
Leave me alone and let me do the job I was hired for. Put people - heck,
Lord, make it a culture - in place that ask every day, "What can we do
to sell more?" and "What do the customers REALLY want?" Help other
Digital functions understand sales as it is at other companies. (I
realize the word "appreciate" would be too much to ask for, Lord, so I
would settle for an "understanding" instead. After all, I work for
Digital, the company that is embarassed about selling.)
Good God Almighty, please eliminate the systems and the culture that are
counter-productive, redundant, and inefficient.
Teach me patience and understanding in dealing with DECies that are
incompetent and lazy. Show senior management the debilitating effects
these people have on the morale and motivation of others. Teach
management how to discipline - even fire - people who take advantage of
Digital's laissez-faire culture. Help management learn how to give a
real, honest performance reviews.
Help us understand why some people get paid for essentially sitting at
their desks and do nothing to help generate revenue. Help those that
were hired for a job they were not qualified to perform to find work
outside the company and support them, as it was not their fault they were
hired. Stop the departure of the "good" people and expedite the
departure of the "bad" people. You know who they are, Lord, just like we
do.
We pray to eliminate the bickering and politics that exists and help
management see the paralyzing effect this has. If you find management
still bickering and politicking instead of making business decisions to
save Digital, eliminate them, too, oh Lord.
Protect others in Sales from going though what I did, including 5
managers in 18 months and a late-Q3 budget increase of 30%. Help Digital
sales management learn how to properly recognize and reward people. Help
me keep a positive attitude, Lord.
Teach management to make decisions quickly and to communicate with
clarity and vision. Also, please put a sales guy (someone that actually
sold) near the top, if not in charge. Not someone like slick Chick but
someone like our dear departed Dinucci. He was a regular Joe.
Forgive those salespeople that talk too much. Teach them brevity.
May those in product management and marketing that insist on using
DECspeak instead of English have their tongues sandblasted. Teach the
teachers to speak clearly so we can clearly sell.
I don't need to make a ton of money to be happy, Lord, but please pay me
the same as my peers in the industry, or help me understand why I make
60% less than them when they sell fewer products and have an easier time
doing so. Shoot, Lord, there are reps at Sun and Oracle and SGI and
Joe's Computers that aren't as good as me and are making THREE TIMES MORE
than I am. Help right that wrong.
Help me motivate myself when management doesn't know how, which,
unfortunately, is often.
Help Mr. Palmer in his new role and encourage him to move quickly. We
need vision. We need leadership. We need action. And we need it now.
Encourage others to support him or show them the way out.
Please help me fathom a $2.8 billion loss. And guide management to make
the necessary cuts, deep enough to be effective and to be the last time.
Give management the courage and the conviction to eliminate jobs that
don't have any real productive function. Provide guidance to management
to understand that we are running a business and not a socialist state.
Give me tools to help me do my job. (And while you're at it, Lord, give
me a quote system that is *actually* productive and whip the AQS
supporters with Sales Updates until they bloody understand the absolute
nightmare this system puts us through.)
Please help us develop a measurement system that does not lead to
conflicting behaviors across functions.
Above all, help us move forward in a positive, collective spirit.
Lastly, Lord, give me a work environment that is positive and challenging
and filled with bright, motivated people. Help the rest to leave the
company.
Bless the unemployed.
Amen.
T.R | Title | User | Personal Name | Date | Lines |
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2027.1 | Just starting here for FY93... | IW::WARING | Simplicity sells | Thu Jul 30 1992 08:14 | 9 |
2027.2 | what do you want? | AIMHI::BARRY | | Thu Jul 30 1992 12:27 | 5 |
| RE: .0
" Leave me alone and let me do the job I was hired for."
What do you want? Egg in your beer?
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2027.3 | | ECAD2::SHERMAN | ECADSR::Sherman DTN 223-3326 | Thu Jul 30 1992 14:01 | 6 |
| re: .0
I'm glad to find out that He reads notes! Now, if only a few
upper-management types would every once in a while ... ;^)
Steve
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2027.4 | credited once paid! | ODIXIE::RHARRIS | Bowhunters never hold back! | Thu Jul 30 1992 14:38 | 7 |
| geez, re.1, I don't get credited for a sale until I actually get the
purchase order for it. I think it ought to be that way with everyone.
You don't make money until you get paid for what you sell. You
actually lose money until you get paid.
Bob (going to DEC100 tommorrow) Made my budget of 9.5 million.
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2027.5 | What a PO is and isn't | SDSVAX::SWEENEY | Will I make it to my 18th Anniversary? | Thu Jul 30 1992 15:44 | 11 |
| A purchase order is an order, not a check.
A Digital sales rep get sales credit when a purchase order is received.
An order doesn't have any accounting impact.
Digital records product revenue (in the form a receivable) either when
it is shipped or when it is received by the customer and he is
invoiced for it.
When the customer's check clears, Digital subtracts the receivable and
adds to cash.
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2027.6 | kind of tangential, but if you wouldn't mind ... | VMSSPT::NICHOLS | Conferences are like apples | Thu Jul 30 1992 15:58 | 4 |
| Are sales reps debitted when a sale is cancelled and not paid for?
herb
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2027.7 | | SMAUG::CARROLL | | Thu Jul 30 1992 16:17 | 12 |
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I had a conversation the night before last with a field person from
a large vendor. In that company, each region has, in the region,
a VP of sales. Each of these regional sales VP's report directly to
the CEO of the company and not some other VP at HQ. These VP's can,
on their own authority, fire anyone who stands in the way of
customer satisfaction. They can do this without the approval of
personnel.
Oh, I should mention, even in the "worldwide economic downturn", this
company has never had a quarter where they lost money.
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2027.8 | Pray for mgmt, too. | QETOO::SCARDIGNO | God is my refuge | Thu Jul 30 1992 17:07 | 11 |
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re: .3
> I'm glad to find out that He reads notes! Now, if only a few
> upper-management types would every once in a while ... ;^)
That's because He's omnicient. Managers are not, but I'll
bet some do read notes. Pray for our management, too... they
definitely need it TODAY.
steve
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2027.9 | Cancellations - OUCH! | GLDOA::SCHESKY | Casey Schesky Team Leader DWT | Thu Jul 30 1992 21:41 | 28 |
| Re: .6 < Are sales reps debitted when a sale is cancelled and not paid
for?
The answer is YES!
Sales reps take a debit (or effectively an increase to their sales
budget/quota) for any cancelled order in the year that it is cancelled.
Sooooo, if you take a "bad" order on June 30 and it "de-books" or gets
cancelled on July 1st, you effectively start out that fiscal year "in
the hole" by the value of that order.
This policy is designed to encourage correct behavior and booking only
orders that are real, good orders, that are deliverable and will turn
into revenue. There is a real penalty for booking bad business.
Sometimes you can't help having a good order get cancelled (it happens
sometimes) but that should be the exception.
Hey it's even our responsibility to make sure the company has good
credit and can afford to pay for the product/services we sell!
Don't let anybody kid you - sales reps have complex and difficult jobs,
too.
cs
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2027.10 | Message from the Lord | GRANMA::GHALSTEAD | | Fri Jul 31 1992 15:35 | 42 |
| Dear Kris, (.0) I was talking with the Lord and he said to give you the
following message:
Hang in there and hold your head high because good changes are
coming. He said just look at what happened with HP 5 years ago.
HP sales people were really in bad shape because their company
couldn't successfully get RISC technology to even work. Sales
people were selling 16 bit CPU's, no networking to speak of,
no big install base, not very many software applications available,
etc. The poor sales people were on commision and they almost
starved.
HP finally got RISC working and changed their focus from
propriertary to Open and customers started to buy. Along the
way HP began stream lining their organization and many people
were forced out of the company. Now look where HP is today.
DEC is far ahead of where HP was 5 years ago. Alpha is almost
ready and will exceed performance and price of everything
on the market, we know networking and distributed processing, We
have lots of partners, the worlds largest software company (Microsoft)
is teaming with DEC, we have a growing PC mail order business,
the second largest install base in the industry and a growing systems
integration business.
The Lord said that HP salespeople were happy right now but in
the back of their minds they were worried because all they had
to sell was a hot box. They had no networking exp., no systems
integration, still no significant install base, their PC's were
expensive and the company had no mail order business. What were they
going to sell when Alpha was the hot box and DEC had all the "other
stuff" customers wanted. Hp folks new that sooner or later DEC's
organization would be fixed and once again they would be the toast
of the town.
Kris, hang in there your hey day is coming.
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2027.11 | | EJOVAX::JFLOOD | | Sat Aug 08 1992 03:03 | 4 |
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HP stock dropped 12 5/8 today.
Tough times don's last, only tough people!!!!
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