Mr. Samuel J. (Sam) Palmisano
President & CEO
International Business Machines Corporation

Dear Mr. Palmisano,

Well! I never thought I would be writing to you again so soon (see March Editorial). But its all because of something you said when you wrote back to me recently (courtesy IBM's Annual Report 2001). I know you sent the same thing to all the other shareholders, but at least I didn't just throw mine straight into the recycling and bank the dividend! Mindful of the teachings of my business studies tutor, however, I did not pay too much attention to the self-congratulatory preamble but when I read about your men selling products from the Worshipers of Ra and from the Fortune-tellers, I must confess I rubbed my eyes, checked the cover - and recalled a true story.

Once upon a time there was a True Blue Account: wall to wall, bunker to desktop. (A couple of years before my story begins, though, your salesmen had thought this was quite unfair and, in a generous expression of Christian kindness, suggested they gave their desktop business to the men from the Redwood Forest. But back to my story.) The customer's core business systems ran on a S/390 and as a result of undertaking a major strategic review, they decided to hang up their developers' toolkits and go for a package. The winner was UNIX based, developed on the Altar of Ra and also available on the RS/6000. When your men got wind of this, they disappeared around there in a flash of light and a cloud of dust, begging to assist with the migration. When the Worshipers got wind of this, they went into a blue funk, I can tell you, complaining bitterly to me that your men would switch the customer to the RS/6000.

But they needn't have worried. Later, the customer told me your men hadn't even raised the question and, in reply to the obvious follow on, the answer was "they just didn't seem to care." And so an account that should have transitioned to RS/6000-DB2-OS/2, with all the follow on business to be expected over the years, was gift-wrapped by your own people and surrendered meekly without a fight to the Conquering Hordes, sacrificed for short term expediency on the altar of a coding pad and a few pencils.

Now when I saw all this happening, I could not believe that there wasn't another agenda in play here - some form of reciprocal agreements. But to my dismay, try as I might, I could find no evidence of, for example, the Fortune-tellers selling DB2 licences.

So if they are selling theirs and you are selling theirs, who is selling yours?

Now indeed you may have heard all this before, but the reason I am writing is because I have another Big Idea: I think you should open up clear blue water between services sales and product sales.

Anyway, lets finish on an upbeat note. With an account team without an account, you can gracefully downsize. And what with the training you have given them, they could well receive a warm welcome at the gates of the Conquering Hordes: a win-win all around.

Truly yours,
Derrick Price
A (still) hopeful shareholder

P.S. I do hope you're paying attention to my last Big Idea. In the current business climate, those hungry salesmen of yours are going to have to eat lunch in the Redwood Forest to have any hope of getting their numbers.

Derrick Price has spent 21 years with IBM in departments from development in the US through marketing to front line sales, where in 1991 he took a brown envelope full of fivers and never looked back. From there he moved to BT in systems integration sales in 1991 where he will retire later this year.

Keep the Faith!