My most recent Applepeels post, "Lessons learned from nearly twenty years at Apple," got some interesting comments both here and at Digg. As is sometimes the case, a few seem to need a response so I felt the best way to handle it was do a new post.
One comment suggested that there might be a difference between how sales and engineering work at Apple. That's absolutely the case. It boils down to something fundamentally very simple. Steve is very passionate about engineering and design, and he often views sales people with something bordering on contempt. In his heart of heart Steve believes that the products should sell themselves. I have heard Steve say in person that if he did more advertising that he could get rid of the enterprise sales force. Some products do sell themselves, like the original Mac and the iPod. Others don't and require a sales force. How much of a sales force and what kind of a sales force has been an eternal debate within Apple.
There were for the years that I was at Apple, 1984-2004, two schools of thought. One was you needed people who at their core were Apple users and believers then secondly sales people. The other which has gained ascendancy in the last few years at Apple is that you wanted people who were sales people first and could get by on a Mac. This has resulted in what some have termed the Oracalization of the Apple sales force.
I can't prove that one method is better for Apple than the other. I do know that having knowledgeable sales people is better for customers, and I strongly believe that it is better for Apple in the long run, but I'm not running Apple. If you want more of my thoughts about sales, read my post, "What sales Is really all about," at my main blog or check out my website, "Sales Team Help."
There is also a huge difference in working at Apple's corporate offices and working out in one of Apple's offices. Suffice it to say there are no Café Macs out in the field, and in my nearly twenty years in the field, the only Apple beer party I ever attended was one in Cupertino.
I don't suspect Apple is very different in this respect than most corporations except that Apple only has three significant sites in the US with thousands of people. The rest of Apple's US locations are the Apple field offices which usually only have sales people with perhaps some administrative and pre-sales support people. These spots are definitely second class citizens, but it is hard to provide the same kind of services for 50 people as you do for thousands. Apple might do a little worse job on this based on what I've seen from few companies, but it's not a debate worth having.
There was one comment that I thought was laughable at least from my perspective. The comment said the following about my attitude.
...he holds some kind of grudge against Apple's current management, which is also not uncommon among those who predate the company's recovery from nearly going belly-up under the "do whatever the hell you want" policy of Steve's predecessors.
Well I think the comment does a huge disservice to the hundreds of dedicated Apple employees who stuck with Apple during the tough times in the nineties. There were some times when it wasn't much fun carrying an Apple business card. I can remember many drives from my Washington area office to my home base during which I was on the phone constantly dealing with customer satisfaction issues that resulted in getting new equipment for customers. When you're faced with poorly designed products, you have a couple of choices. You either ignore the problem or fix it. I fixed every customer satisfaction problem that ever got escalated to me, even if it meant fighting tooth and nail with corporate to get it done.
I guess associating the "do whatever the hell you want" policy with Steve's predecessors is the one I find the funniest. It was well after Steve came back when Apple's enterprise sales force was sent off on a mission to penetrate the enterprise by selling iMac kiosks. It was a complete failure and after three years, a lot of enterprise sales people lost their jobs for trying to execute a failed strategy. There are other examples, but the real truth is that Apple sales force management still is in a "do whatever the hell you want" mode because as I've mentioned before Steve doesn't really care for sales so he stays out of it as much as possible. Is that good or bad for Apple? Time will tell. If you really want to know about the Apple sales force, talk to someone working in it now or in the past. Even newcomers will vouch for the weirdness of working as an enterprise sales person for a consumer driven company whose CEO has said some not-so-very-flattering things about CIOs.
Employees getting shot for failed executive strategies is not something on which Apple has a patent. It's often standard operating procedure in corporate America.
Unless you consider writing retaliation, I doubt that what I have for Apple's current sales management is a grudge. Mostly likely I know more about some of the personalities of Apple sales executives than people who have never worked for them. I sincerely doubt that I would have been tapped to provide a lot of the contacts and background information for a couple of recent WSJ articles if a "grudge" was my driving force. Nor would I have been tracked down to provide some positive comments in this recent article on Apple's progress in higher education. Also I recently came to the defense of Fred Anderson at the end of my October 06 post, "One of those times I'm glad I have a Mac."
I'm absolutely happy to be judged by my career successes at Apple. If you think you can work in any high technology sales organization for nearly twenty years without being really good at sales, then you've probably never been in high tech sales and should refrain from commenting on it.
Just to be clear and toot my own horn a little, I was with Apple long enough to have closed one of the largest at the time Apple IIe single purchase order educational sales in Canada. I also worked with one of Apple largest resellers in the late eighties and doubled their Apple sales in one year. I then moved into higher education, and eventually was higher education rep of the year and the top performing manager in the five years that Apple had dedicated higher education teams. When one of Apple's inevitable reorganizations took place in the mid-nineties, I moved over to the business and government team. After four years there, I was named manager of the year. In my last four years at Apple, I led a team that tripled Apple revenue in the tough federal enterprise space. My last official act at Apple was to come up with a recovery plan for that federal team since the sixty plus percent growth we were showing wasn't enough for my new manager who by the way was the fifth manager I had worked for in the previous two years. And yes, those five managers pretty much had been given carte blanche to do whatever they wanted.
After one of my team alerted some higher education folks that I was being shown the door at Apple, one of Apple's largest higher education customers wrote a note to Apple sales management asking that they reconsider and suggesting that Apple was making a mistake. Many federal and higher education CIOs and VPs remain on my reference list should I ever need them. Of course my long term former managers at Apple are there also.
I'm sure that there are some of my posts over the 27 months that I have been recovering from leaving Apple that could be considered "bitter." However, I like to think that I've gotten beyond that. I've healed as much as anyone could who saw their career of twenty years and a good chunk of their retirement disappear in flash. As many will tell you I left Apple not because I wasn't doing a great job. I was shown the door because I stood up and complained about some unethical things that were happening at Apple. I've been told that some of the managers who replaced those working for me actually agree with the stand that I took. For obvious reasons they have no interest in taking the same stand.
Perhaps it was foolish to do take a stand on an ethical issue, but I sleep well at nights and believe it is important that people in the Fortune 500 do take ethical positions on tough issues. Your wallet shouldn't be your conscience. I actually don't hold a grudge against anyone at Apple. I'm disappointed in some people who I thought had more character, but as many will tell you that is just corporate America.
Recently I was turning down an invitation to interview for the job of VP of Federal for a major corporation that actually wanted me to do just what I had proven I could do with Apple's Federal Team. The recruiter asked me why I didn't want to go for a $300K+ job. I told the recruiter that I knew the time commitment and the level of work needed to be successful in the federal space and that I would rather get along on less money with more time for my life and family.
Maybe I should have said you can only have room for one mistress like Apple in your life.
If you've been really successful at Apple, I can guarantee that there has been a personal toll to be paid. You probably can't count the weekends that you worked or the days spent away from home.
If I could wish for one thing for the Apple sales people who still really believe in the product, it would be that they get an opportunity to feel good about their successes. I think lots of very successful sales people in companies around the world are under so much pressure that there is no time for feeling good. I think Apple as does many sales driven companies ends up punishing sales people for their success. Eventually you get to the point in sales where you're over fifty and your salary is more than the company wants to pay you, so they find a reason to show you the door. Again don't think Apple is any better or worst than most high tech companies.
I wrote a post, "Should success make you feel good?," not long ago. In it, I make it clear that I don't think people should go to work and end up feeling bad about their successes. It's just not healthy.
Of course even feeling good about what you do can be a fleeting feeling in small business. It's a tough world out there. Companies have to fight to survive and thrive among all the competition.
I hope I've cleared up a few questions and maybe opened the door to a few more. I, like many people who have worked in Apple's sales organization, think that it could be more effective, but as long as Apple makes great products, I don't need a sales person to convince me to buy one.
I am a little disappointed that I'll never get a chance to convince another CIO that Apple is a partner worth having, but that's more Apple's problem than mine.
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