We’re gonna miss you…

I recommend Sam Walton’s autobiography, Sam Walton Made in America ©.  I never knew about the history of Walmart.  I love reading about the business titans of our time; I love reading about greatness.  Another one of my favorites is Idea Guy ©; Paul Allen’s account of hiring Bill Gates and how they led the herculean effort to create Microsoft. 

The Google Story © was a different story.  Here were a couple of computer scientists, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who simply wanted to sell their search engine intellectual property for $25 million.  After trying and trying, their Stanford University advisor finally told them if they wanted financial gain they would have to start a company.  Reluctantly - unbelievably reluctantly - they launched Google.  The rest as they say is a history of untold riches!  If you google (verb) google (noun) you’ll get, “The term google itself is a creative spelling of googol, a number equal to 10 to the 100th power, or more colloquially, an unfathomable number.”  Yep – unfathomable! 

Another favorite of mine is Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle ©.  This hit particularly close to home for me because I was there during the depiction of chaos during Oracle’s explosive growth period.  My work as an Oracle Financials Application Sales Rep, literally selling version 1.0, was the most wild ride in my entire career!  

Speaking of version 1.0, I can’t remember what software “version” comes first:  alphaware; betaware; visionware; vaporware; or demoware? 

Without a herculean effort Larry almost lost his company.  The stress almost cost me my marriage.  Thankfully, we both came out successful. 

Some of the books I’ve read address great companies (and great people) failing and then resurrecting themselves.  I particularly liked Who Says Elephants Can't Dance © and IBM’s return to greatness.  I love this quote from their then-CEO: 

There were times when we lost money on every PC we sold, and so we were conflicted - if sales were down, was that bad news or good news? 

Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. 

Back to Walmart.  Sam Walton stated at the start of his book, there are lots of opinions from others about Walmart; mostly negative.  After reading his firsthand account I have a much better appreciation of what he did to build the Walmart empire and why.  The “why” can be summed up simply to sell what the customer wants, at a good price, and stand behind it.  Who doesn’t want a company to do that?

Business success is certainly not limited to the behemoths.  I remember to this day a story one of my clients told me about one of their clients.  I was the Master Sales Enablement Advisor at Oracle/NetSuite and one of my NetSuite resellers in Kentucky (Oasis Solutions) had one of their clients utter the phrase, “We’re gonna miss you”.  You see, their client just bought NetSuite ERP directly from NetSuite.  The client didn’t realize Oasis also sold NetSuite.  No one had informed the client.  Sam Walton would have frowned on that reseller and probably coaxed them to stay closer to the needs of their customers. 

Afterall, who doesn’t want our vendors, stores, advisors, and other providers to stay close enough to us to understand what we need?  As it turns out, many times greatness doesn’t require the herculean feats of a Bill Gates, Paul Allen, or Larry Ellison.  It's less stressful to pay better attention to our clients. 

                                                            GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.

Flexibility & Independence? Security?

You know, it seems to me much is being said and written these days about employee behavior.  Truth be told, most of the commentary I see is more negative than positive.  That negativity takes a turn for the worse when the topic shifts to managers: 

All good work is done in defiance of management. 

Bob Woodward 

OK… maybe it’s me. I mean, are you seeing the dominance of these workplace sound bites? The  “great resignation”; “quiet quitting”; “return to office refusal”; “more work-life balance”; “lack of diversity, equality, and inclusion”?

Yes, I’m old and retired from fulltime work now (but I’m not dead HaHa!).  In 2022, I joined the “gig economy”.  When you Google, “What is a gig economy?” you’ll find: 

A gig economy is a labor market that relies heavily on temporary and part-time positions filled by independent contractors and freelancers rather than full-time permanent employees. Gig workers gain flexibility and independence but little or no job security. 

Whalla!  Flexibility and independence stand apart from job security.  It’s considered either/or. 

When I was an employee I wanted security; a regular paycheck; benefits; training; a career path; etc.  I hoped for a manager with people skills but when I worked for one of those managers, I tried to hang-in. 

Of course, I had the option of flexibility and independence available - freelancing; independent contracting; “consulting” (God forbid!): 

A consultant is someone who saves his client almost enough to pay his fee. 

Arnold H. Glasgow 

I selected the consulting option a couple of times (at the expense of security).  Those experiences helped me understand that fulltime employment better fit my disposition.  All along, I wasn’t conscious of why I wanted to be a good employee. 

I was also a manager for several years in my career.  I wanted “good employees” working for me, but what do they look like? 

Employers are looking for people who can do more than follow procedures competently or respond to requests, who have a strong, intrinsic desire to learn, solve problems, and ask penetrating questions.  They may be difficult to manager at times, these individuals, for their interests and enthusiasms can take them along unpredictable paths, and they don't respond well to being told what to think.  But for the most part, they will be worth the difficulty. 

                   Ian Leslie 

My team was definitely “worth the difficulty” for me.  (Not sure how they felt about their manager LOL!) 

It all came together recently when I read Undaunted: overcoming doubts + doubters © by Kara Goldin: 

… I still tell new recruits at Hint that the number one thing they need to do is make sure their boss and their team are successful.  I run into so many people who make the mistake of worrying about how they look and concentrating on their own feelings to the extent that they don't appreciate what's going on around them.  Focusing outward on those who depend on you and the rest of the team makes you a valuable person, gets you more responsibility, and ultimately gives you a chance to not just look like, but also to be, a superstar. 

Bingo!  Make your manager and your team successful first, and your own look and feelings will take care of themselves.  Become more valuable; take on more responsibility (e.g. get promoted, make more money).  Yep. I like that from both the employee and the manager side, you? 

Nothing spells “security” better than “Superstar”. 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.

Engaged…

I was exchanging emails with one of my clients the other day.  He’s new to selling our type of applications and has taken me up on my offer of sales enablement.  As he was sharing a few examples of his prospecting campaigns he became a little self-conscious.  He said he didn’t want me to think he was just trying to stand out as a “class favorite” when he related he was incorporating my suggestions – and they were actually working - LOL! 

I paused to tell him not to worry about being my class favorite – I said I thought he is engaged, and I LOVE ENGAGEMENT!  Anyone I work with who is engaged is definitely a class favorite. 

For some reason, this email exchange reminded me of an encounter I had many years ago when I was a Sales Director for the Major Accounts segment of ADP’s Employer Services.  I worked under Marty Birk, Division Vice President of Sales, for a time.  Marty had the reputation of being one nasty son-of-a-bitch (please pardon the profanity).  Many Sales Managers and Sales Directors felt the wrath of Marty’s temperament during their “ops reviews”, especially if their teams were below quota.  Some swore Marty actually enjoyed eviscerating managers and directors. 

During this era, ADP’s sales culture was known as being … well … let’s just say “demanding”.  The gladiator culture finally reached a point where ADP executives implemented a leadership training program to “take the edges off”.  Management as Quality Leaders ™ (aka MQL) was an intensive, one-week, training course mandatory for every leader and manager at every level in the organization.  Including Marty. 

I don’t think the training did much for Marty though.  When he was about to launch into one of his infamous tirades, he issued this advanced warning, “Coming out of MQL now…”  And then he’d blast the person who had crossed one of his lines. 

Although I was in the room during many of these outbursts, I was never the target of a Marty Birk blast.  Thankfully, my salespeople were among the best in the country and they ensured my team lived up to Marty’s tough standards.  Instead, I saw a completely different side of Marty Birk – and I very much enjoyed his coaching.  Dare I say, I may have even been one of Marty’s “class favorites”. 

He was going through my sales team, person by person, during an ops review once and I will always remember how he tested my commitment to my people’s commitment to getting the job done.  If he thought I wavered even the slightest bit when he was drilling down on the performance and skill of my reps, he would look me right in the eye and ask, “Gary, if you were going into a selling war and your very job depended on it… would you take this person with you?”  

Not so thinly veiled, it was Marty’s way of telling me that even though we were way above our quota, things can change and when they did at ADP, people lost their jobs no matter what their past performances might have been.  A classic, “what have you done for me lately” culture. 

Well, fast-forward to today’s modern era and I continue to believe that commitment and engagement are critical factors to sales success.  When I have a client who shows me engagement – I will match their commitment and go into a selling war with him or her.  Thanks Marty! 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.