2 Learnings from 1 Year at IBM

Just over 12 months ago I joined the largest combined technology & consulting business in the world.

350,000+ employees.

That's a lot of people. A lot of divisions. A lot of tools and systems and ways of working.

Having joined IBM (which has thousands of products/services/solutions) from a 430 person Software-as-a-service (SaaS) business, I think it would be fair to say that it was a culture shock. A big one.

Whilst adapting has been challenging, there have been lots of eye-opening and positive moments too. Here is what I've learnt :)

1) Enterprise IT is complex

Having worked for two software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies before joining IBM, if a friend or family member had asked me how good my grasp of IT was in general I'd have probably responded 'pretty good'.

How little I knew.

SaaS is not enterprise IT. I wish it was (so gloriously and sumptuously simple), but it isn't.

For any SaaS salespeople or marketers or leaders reading this post, I don't want to burst your bubble. I love SaaS. I sell it now. But it is not the whole picture. And when you move from solving a single problem to providing an enterprise wide solution, there is an ENORMOUS difference.

I like the image below because it shows just how many deployment options there are nowadays for IT solutions.

Whilst most companies are moving towards SaaS, the reality is that it isn't right (or even the most cost-effective) solution in many cases.

Banks, Insurers, Governments - there are many regulated industries that simply won't put certain data sets into the Cloud. Not for a long time. Or possibly ever. 

That's not to say they shouldn't move some or all of their 'lightweight' or less sensitive applications to the cloud, it's just recognising that in many scenarios it won't always be possible or even sensible to do that.

2) You have to be ingenuous to succeed at big companies

As someone who prides themselves on being transparent and pro-active and energetic, I've always thought of myself as more of a 'small company person'.

It likely stems from poor experiences with large employers in the past, predominantly due to poor management or the overriding feeling that I was only there to make someone else successful, rather than contribute in a meaningful way to a broader company goal.

In smaller companies, you have much better access to the top.

Generally there is more transparency. More ownership. And employees are perhaps better connected to the company's aims simply because they see or hear or speak to the CEO on a regular basis.

And whilst in small companies you have to be resourceful and inventive to succeed, the same is also true at big companies.

This is never something I would have admitted to a year ago, but I am happy to report that I was wrong, and it is true.

As an example, IBM is so huge and complex that internal networking is essential. 

No one is going to hand you a folder full of gold-plated contacts that you can call upon to resolve a very specific issue, with a specific product/customer/contract, in a specific geography. I wish they could, but they can't.

So what do you do? Get busy.

It's really that simple. 

Pick up the phone, send a slack message, email, cajole, and eventually you'll get what you (and your customers) are looking for.

It's not just internal happenings where this is true, but in managing customer relationships also.

More complex sales include lots and lots of stakeholders with different priorities, which is not easy to manage. As a salesperson (or marketer or pre-sales etc.) you may also be responsible for several products, which all need to be marketed to different lines of business, each one with a different message/value proposition/story. 

Finding the balance across all of these things is hard, and certainly requires ingenuity.

What's Up Next Time?

That's it from me this week - I hope you enjoyed this article and please do comment with any and all thoughts/feedback :)

In my next post I'll be exploring ethics in sales. 'What ethics?' I hear you say! Precisely ;)

Cheers,

Paul