Cardinal Initiatives Newsletter Mar 11, 2023 3 min read

In this week's newsletter, I'm sharing the conclusion of Time Kills All Deals - the Diamond Shamrock Story - a tale of perseverance, teamwork, and taking action when time is of the essence.

Previously

Last week I shared a story from my early days as a salesperson at Wang. I was fortunate to be in the Dallas office, where I had experienced sales management, including Larry, a former Honeywell Branch Manager.

Despite a strong bias towards IBM, we had been working with Diamond Shamrock's CFO, Jack, for over a year and had convinced him of the potential of office automation. Just before Christmas, we had a chance to close the deal, a new logo for Wang, and made a tactical error. The deal slipped out of the quarter and into January.

On the day of the new meeting, Jack called to cancel as Occidental Petroleum had initiated a hostile takeover of Diamond Shamrock.

Picking Up Where We Left Off

After a delay caused by a hostile takeover bid from Occidental Petroleum, we were re-engaged with Jack, the CFO of Diamond Shamrock. However, the delay had given IBM an opening, and they were a formidable opponent. At that moment in technology sales history, there was no finer sales organization than IBM. They had relationships in every C-Suite and boardroom, and you didn't give them a second chance to save a deal.

But despite the odds, we prevailed. We had mapped our technology to a specific business problem that only we (at that moment) could solve. We had good competitive information against IBM. But most of all, we had an excellent Coach (Bill) and Champion (Jack.)

In front of Jack, we repeated a mantra: “You’ve had IBM all along. How’s that working for you?”

The Little Things Matter

And with the meeting scheduled for Jack to sign the order, we arranged an internal meeting with Larry and Neil in Larry’s office.

We agreed that all three of us would attend, a tiny decision in a cycle that had hundreds of them. But it proved invaluable. And as we adjourned, two of my peers appeared at Larry’s door. Linda and Annette had adopted me as their “project” and were rooting for me to succeed. They presented me with a Mont Blanc pen for the contract signing, and I hoped we had not disturbed the heavily-present karma in this deal.

But as the authorization meeting commenced, Jack was holding court, and I would have preferred an uneventful “pen to paper and out” meeting. He gave us our props for perseverance which he did not have to do, and a nice gesture.

With the Mont Blanc in his hand and the executables in front of him, Jack began asking questions. When Jack asked a third “What If?” question, Larry spoke up:

“Are you going to sign this thing or what?”

I was mortified. We were at the altar, and I did not want this meeting to go sideways. But Jack, very comfortable in his own skin, said something like, “Why not?”. He signed the order, and we left.

Bless you, Larry!

Of course, Larry knew what had to be done and did it.

Lessons

Looking back, there are several lessons to be learned. First, team selling has advantages. There are different roles best played by multiple people. Second, time kills all deals - don't leave the door open for your competition. And third, prepare for every meeting. The tiny decision to bring Larry and Neil to that meeting was invaluable.

Remember, success is not a one-man show. It's a team effort, and with the right strategy, perseverance, and a little bit of luck, anything is possible.

Thanks for reading.

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