Cardinal Initiatives Newsletter Mar 4, 2023 3 min read

This week I share another story that taught me a lesson in sales.

I hope it helps you.

Time Kills All Deals - A Lesson in Sales

As a young salesperson at Wang, I was eager to learn everything I could about the sales process. My managers, Neil and Larry, were seasoned sales professionals. Neil had worked for Xerox and Larry for Honeywell. Both companies were known for investing in their people, especially in sales and management training. Larry’s background was notable in that Honeywell was one of the "BUNCH" companies - Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data, and Honeywell - which competed with IBM in the computing industry. All of them had extensive – up to six months in length - internal sales training programs, which I believe was key to their success.

Take Me Back to that Place

We had been working with the CFO of Diamond Shamrock, Jack, for over a year. The company was biased towards IBM, and their Management Information Services department was "all IBM." However, Jack was an innovator who saw the potential of office automation and the impact it could have on an enterprise. He had bought into Wang's vision.

We had a unique solution for a business problem, but the IBM bias was giving us fits. We approached the opportunity with solution selling, not just selling office automation. The biggest pain we found was in exploration - selecting where to drill for new oil reserves and improving hit ratios. Our solution was still in beta testing and only ran on the Wang VS. The company that developed it was a small startup in Dallas, so Neil was involved.

Paralysis by Analysis

However, Jack had what I recognize now as analysis paralysis. He kept coming up with new questions and more objections. I would dutifully chase down every question and handle every objection Jack would throw. Salty Larry saw this and helped get us to the goal line for a December close.

The Big Mistake

We had chosen the Friday before Christmas as the signing date. On Monday of that week, Neil and I had an idea to take Jack out to celebrate the holiday season. It would be the day before our scheduled signing date, and everything was done, right? We rationalized that we could also use Thursday to ensure everything was in order for Friday.

We had a great time on Thursday night. As we said our goodbyes, Jack asked if we could push the signing date to after the holidays. He assured us that all was good and a "done deal." He was taking the rest of the year off and would return on Jan. 2nd. I had to explain how this deal slipped out of our Q2 and into the next fiscal quarter. I was embarrassed.

Ruh Roh

Upon returning to work after the holiday break, Jack chose Friday, Jan. 4th, as the new signing date. Why not Thursday? Wednesday?

I did not ask.

But we weren’t going to make the same mistake again. No drinks this Thursday. No meetings at all this week.

The meeting was scheduled for 2:00p in Jack’s office at the Diamond Shamrock Tower in downtown Dallas.

At 12:30p, my phone rings. It was Jack. He was postponing our meeting.

I’ll never forget his words to me:

“Jeff, I came to the office this morning with a checkbook (i.e., budget) and a pen. As of an hour ago, I no longer have either.”

Armand Hammer, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum, had initiated a hostile takeover of Diamond Shamrock that morning. William Bricker, Diamond’s CEO, had taken the checkbook from Jack.

< To be Continued >

Lessons

1) Time kills all deals. Once you have a verbal, you must focus obsessively on minimizing the days, hours, and minutes until order execution.

2) Don’t celebrate too early.

3) Seek counsel from those who’ve gone before you. I should have asked Larry for his advice at every step.

Thanks for reading.

Whenever you are ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

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