Meet Me in ORD - The Verizon Story

This week I share another one of my favorites: the Verizon DBaaS story.

Read on my website: https://www.jeffkeplar.com/newsletter 2/1/25

The Players

Verizon

John C. - CTO of Terremark, a wholly owned subsidiary of Verizon

John - President of Verizon Business

Mike - General Manager, Managed Service and Cloud Solutions

Mike C - Verizon Hosting Manager

Rich - Procurement

Oracle

Larry - Account Manager

Shawn - Vice President Sales, Communications Industry

Matt - SVP, North America Sales

Mark - Co-CEO

Brian - Headquarters Approvals

Taking Us Back to that Place and Time

By early August, we knew where we would finish for Q1.

We drained the pipeline in May, the closing of our fiscal year.

There wasn't much left to begin our next fiscal year.

Q1 was traditionally the lightest quarter of the year for sales.

If we had executed it flawlessly in Q4, only small orders would have been left for Q1.

Oracle used to reorganize its sales organization in June.

Reassigning accounts can cause a temporary loss of momentum.

Additionally, much productivity was lost due to vacation time taken in the summer months.

Every once in a while, we had a slipped deal from Q4 that would close in Q1.

If we weren't closing a slipped deal, we focused our behaviors on doing those things necessary to exceed our annual quota for the new year.

This was the team responsible for Oracle's largest accounts in North America.

It was not a business that was forecasted by applying formulas.

"Pipeline multiplied by conversion rate" rarely produces reliable results.

The transactions were too large.

Most spanned multiple fiscal years, adding to the complexity.

As a result, it wasn't easy to replicate the Company's quarter-over-quarter growth performance.

It wasn't possible to close a significant transaction every quarter.

Fifty accounts in this space, even if they were Oracle's largest, wasn't a large enough business to support YoY growth every quarter.

However, these accounts had a material impact on the Company's annual performance in North America.

North America also led the way in Oracle sales results.

When Mark needed to shore up weakness elsewhere or juice the stock, he called Matt.

And when Matt needed to make an impact, he often called on us.

The 80/20 rule was affirmed year after year.

On this particular day in August, we were faced with a depleted pipeline that compromised our ability to identify a sure and straightforward path to exceeding the sales performance of the year we had just completed.

Mark faced a similar situation at his level and was already discussing Q2 and Q3 with Matt.

Matt was always locked in on his business and was already aware of the challenge.

He called me.

"We need to manufacture a material transaction. Do you have any candidates?"

I wanted some context for his request, and he provided it.

The usual suspects (accounts) would be a challenge, but I asked him to give me 48 hours to see what I could uncover.

Larry had an entry in the pipeline for about $2M.

It was for database hosting with Verizon.

The opportunity was in its early stages.

I called Shawn and asked him what he knew about it.

Shawn scheduled some time for the three of us to kick this opportunity around.

Two days later, I got back with Matt.

My early targets were a couple of large ULAs that weren't due to expire for a couple of years and the small hosting deal at Verizon.

To drive a material transaction, we'd have to renegotiate those ULAs.

I told Matt to give me a week, and I would have a strawman of a strategy for all three.

Problem-solving - No Obvious Answers

Larry had been working on the Verizon opportunity for six months.

He jumped on the Verizon acquisition of Terremark, a company that provided managed IT services and cloud solutions.

By acquiring Terremark, Verizon now had a cloud and was in the hosting business.

Larry thought there was a value proposition for hosting Oracle software.

Larry was developing a sponsor at Verizon for his idea.

Shawn pointed out that we had an internal obstacle.

Oracle did not allow its sales organization to sell database licenses with hosting entitlements.

We had done just that in the Telco vertical nearly fifteen years earlier.

However, as Oracle grew, it tightened its business practices and removed hosting license rights.

I told Shawn that I would own this obstacle for the team.

I met with Matt and recommended that we work on all three ideas.

Based on what we knew right then, none stood out from the others as more doable in the timeframe we wanted.

Additionally, I suggested that while we adopt a mentality of closing a big deal in Q2 if any of the three got legs, it would take until Q3 or Q4 to get done.

He agreed.

Timing is to Sales, What Location is to Real Estate

When I traveled, I had a morning ritual that included riding a stationary bike in the hotel fitness center while I caught the morning business news.

One morning, while getting my cardio in, the CEO of Verizon was a guest on CNBC's Squawk Box.

Verizon had recently announced disappointing earnings

Their CEO was invited to address their current performance and future plans.

In the interview, he discussed their plans to expand revenue sources beyond wireless and FiOS broadband.

The acquisition of Terremark provided Verizon with opportunities to do that in cloud and managed IT services.

Bingo.

Hosting Oracle's software in Terremark's cloud is a perfect example of a new revenue source.

It also leveraged Verizon's shiny new acquisition, Terremark.

We now had a public statement from the CEO that we could use.

Larry had been in the right place with the right idea!

Emerald City

Larry, Shawn, Matt, and I all had been selling Oracle for over 15 years.

We had familiarity and trust with each other.

When you closed enough large complex deals, you began to earn respect with Oracle's headquarters approvals group, known as HQAPPs.

The four of us had accumulated capital in that area.

I reached out to Brian for advice on the hosting issue.

He was a long-tenured member of the HQAPPs team.

I had learned that the best way to be successful with these large, outside-of-the-box ideas was to enlist the help of HQAPPs as a virtual member of your team.

Where others might have revealed as little as possible - HQAPPs had the authority to say "yes" and "no" to any and all ideas from the sales organization - I had better luck bringing them to our side of the table.

"Help me find a way to get this done" fairly characterized the approach.

Brian immediately reminded me of our shared history writing hosting business.

I had done some deals in the Telco vertical in the early 2000s that he had approved.

And then, Oracle decided to restrict database licenses from hosting.

I acknowledged the obstacle but moved the conversation to revisiting the here and now.

The ever-sly Brian patiently listened to me explain why we should consider making an exception.

After I finished, Brian told me that Oracle had recently begun to revisit the concept of hosting rights.

He pointed to a transaction recently completed with Microsoft.

"The field" did not know about it because the transaction was done at headquarters.

Sales was not involved.

Brian advised me that my best chance of getting Oracle to approve my request was to closely follow what was done for the Microsoft deal.

I asked to view the internal approval file, and he sent it to me.

Oracle's global headquarters used to be in the Redwood Shores community of Redwood City, CA.

The campus was built on the former site of Marine World, a theme park for animals.

Because of the six distinctive, emerald-colored glass buildings situated around a body of water, the campus was often called Emerald City.

HQAPP personnel were based in Emerald City.

Alignment on the Field of Play

It was time for a conversation with Matt.

I shared the CNBC Squawkbox episode.

I told him about my conversation with Brian and the Microsoft deal.

I was ready to frame a conversation with Verizon, but I needed everyone on board before we did.

Matt pinged Mark to let him know how we wanted to proceed.

Mark was reluctant at first.

Matt convinced him to allow us to try.

When Mark agreed, he made it conditional on following the Microsoft approvals.

"It has to be like Microsoft."

Our Champion

John C. was the CTO of Terremark and a supporter of Larry's idea to offer Oracle database as a service (DBaaS.)

Larry had developed John C. into a sponsor.

We started with John C.

Our plan was to move up the food chain using the CEO's comments on Squawkbox to help us open doors.

We learned that John, the President of Verizon Business, was the ultimate approver on their side.

We rapidly moved up the chain with John C's sponsorship.

When we reached the office of the President, he asked us to work with Mike.

That was a seminal moment in this deal.

We could have pushed for a meeting with John.

In our internal account planning and deal strategy, we had mapped him with Matt.

Having this meeting now would satisfy those more interested in optics than how real sales are made.

The optics would have us driving a "top-down sale" and getting a face-to-face meeting with the ultimate approver.

We were less interested in optics right now.

We were lucky to have Matt's trust and support.

He was also less interested in optics and recognized the significance of what had just occurred.

The Fox

Mike reported directly to John.

He had come to Verizon through an acquisition, enabling us to deduce the following:

• He possessed subject matter expertise not found with legacy Verizon employees
• His skills and interests would lend themselves to introducing something new to the business
• He would be more of a risk-taker with less to protect (not a lifetime employee of Verizon)
• He would be more of a challenger of the status quo
• His ambitions would cause him to have a "move up or move out" approach with his employer
• The Verizon sponsor of the decision to acquire his former employer would be his internal sponsor.

We mapped Mike to me.

Mike had survived the acquisition of his former employer and had worked for Verizon for over 5 years.

That John tabbed Mike was a very good thing for us.

Mike was ambitious.

He wasted little time with any of the hundreds of tasks he had to complete as part of this project.

He worked quickly, another excellent trait.

Mike had executive support, enabling him to work different channels within Verizon than those we were accustomed to.

More on this later.

Mike was too valuable of a resource to dedicate to finding ways to politely disqualify our DBaaS idea.

John chose him to find a way to get this deal done for the CEO.

Game on!

Find Shortcuts Where You Can, But Don't Skip the Essentials

So, we had Verizon's attention.

We had a sponsor.

We found the "fox" in the account, and he was assigned to our deal.

Yet, we were really only at the starting line.

We had to have a plan.

In addition to getting Mike to support our plan, we had to get him to own it.

The list of essentials, yet to be done before taking any shortcuts, included:

1-Earn Mike's trust - develop an environment of trust, credibility, comfort, and peer-to-peer status

2-Gain agreement, in advance, about what will happen next

3-Lead Mike through the decision process, but align their buying process with our selling process

4-Develop the emotional gap between where they are and where they want to be

5-Confirm that John was both willing and able to make the investment

6-Determine how the decision will be made and by whom.

The first three steps took skill and experience, but we accomplished them relatively easily.

It helped that Mike was a well-rounded business professional, and our process made sense to him.

In fact, having a plan and a process that led to a decision earned us credibility with him.

The fourth step requires finesse.

Since humans buy for emotional reasons and justify those decisions intellectually, behavior science comes into play.

Executing these concepts requires practice.

We can't give someone a script and expect them to develop this gap successfully.

We have to be skilled at asking questions and probing for feelings, not just data.

Larry, Shawn, and I possessed these skills.

We built profiles for Mike, John, the Verizon CEO, and John C.

The data from the Squawkbox interview, the press release for the Terremark acquisition, the quarterly earnings calls, Mike's and John's bios, and calls we made on Mike, John C., and Mike C helped us develop this gap.

No one at Verizon had any idea how much investment was required to receive hosting rights from Oracle.

No account did.

Oracle published its pricing on the web.

There was no entry for hosting rights.

Step 5 can't be accomplished without a price.

Larry had a placeholder in the pipeline for $2M.

He was shooting for $10M if we could get Oracle to allow him to sell it.

He likely wanted to end up with around $8M.

Mark and Matt needed a "material" transaction from us.

Shoot for the stars; you might miss but still hit the moon.

When I reviewed the internal approvals for the Microsoft deal, I saw that Oracle received a 9-figure order in consideration of those entitlements.

I chose to include this 9-figure price tag along with all of the other license limitations and grants in my interpretation of the "It has to be like Microsoft" we received from Mark.

No one ever told me that I had to price the deal at 9-figures.

But that is where I chose to land.

This was one of the "shortcuts" we took.

Before revealing the investment amount, we had to build the value proposition for Verizon hosting the Oracle database in the Terremark cloud.

The value prop had to exceed the investment amount.

Meet Me in ORD

Shawn and Larry conducted a masterclass in helping me build this business case for Mike.

We approached the project like we were building a business plan for a startup.

We selected a couple of ideal customer profiles.

We combined third-party data with our own data to create the Total Addressable Market (TAM) and Total Obtainable Market (TOM).

We selected the patterns from our experience that best fit what Verizon salespeople would see.

We built personas for the multiple potential buyers of an enterprise for each profile.

Shawn built use cases for each buying pattern for each profile.

For each use case, he created packaging options - groups of Oracle database products that formed a solution.

He created a base configuration, and one each for high availability, testing, and security.

We created spreadsheet proformas to represent different revenue projections based on tenure (the number of months of experience Verizon had accumulated selling Oracle), conversion rate, number of salespeople, and price.

We created the value proposition for using infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS.)

We created pricing.

Larry found that in the DBaaS world, while in its early stages, paying by the hour is ideal.

Oracle had never offered that kind of pricing.

The latest from Oracle at that time was by Processor (CPU, chip.)

We developed usage-by-the-hour pricing.

(This also created the need to "sell" Verizon hosting rights to the Oracle database in hourly usage blocks.

That had never been done before.)

Our value proposition exceeded mid-nine figures over 5 years.

I had told Mike that our next step was a meeting for a small group with a couple of key individuals from each party.

We would discuss how this might roll out, what it might be worth to Verizon, and how Oracle might help them get there.

This was a "close the gap" meeting.

I called Mike to tell him we were ready.

He called back and asked if we could rendezvous at the O'Hare Airport in Chicago.

None of the members from either team were based in Chicago, but Mike's assistant had worked with mine to establish O'Hare as a doable meeting place, given our travel schedules and the priority for getting this meeting accomplished.

I told him that we could, and he responded that he'd reserved a room in the Red Carpet Club of United Airlines.

The Red Carpet Club

Another shortcut we took was to create an impending event to accelerate the decision.

Oracle's annual user conference, Oracle OpenWorld, was held every fall, always during Oracle's second fiscal quarter.

A component of the value prop for doing this deal was the awareness it would give to Verizon's Cloud Services for the enterprise market.

A press release at Oracle OpenWorld, accompanied by the attendant interviews with all of the industry analysts attending the event, would create significant awareness for Verizon.

They could piggyback on all of the PR Oracle was receiving due to the event.

OpenWorld was scheduled for later in Q2 than usual that year, so we had a chance.

The meeting in O'Hare began late morning on a weekday and ended a little after 6:00 pm.

It went unusually well for how complex the topics were.

However, we were incredibly prepared, and Mike and his team were equally focused and engaged.

We could have merely presented the business plan that we had prepared for them.

But the key to professional selling is not to "tell."

When we can graduate to "helping them make a decision," we stand at the top of our field.

When helping Mike size the opportunity, we began with our results in mind without initially revealing them.

For example, we could ask: "What if your TAM was $X? ( when we had already estimated it to be 2 times $X)

What would that do for the Terremark business (renamed Verizon Cloud Services)?"

More conversation followed, and more probing questions ensued.

When we operate in this manner, we still get to communicate the results of our efforts.

But instead of telling, we are asking first and listening.

We led Verizon to our answers most of the time.

In many cases, they had answers that were different from ours.

Sometimes, they made the business case stronger.

Sometimes not.

Most importantly, the outcome was Verizon owning the answers, the plan, and the value proposition.

Telling isn't selling.

Other examples of our business plan that became the Verizon team's plan and part of their value proposition include:

• Cross-selling to existing Verizon enterprise clients
• One-stop shop by bundling cloud, data management, and communications services
• Cross-selling to existing Terremark clients
• Door-opener and conversation starter for enterprises currently without agreements with Verizon or Terremark.

Do Nothing

Part of the emotional gap between where they are and where they want to be is identifying the pain of doing nothing.

In this particular case, exploring "Do Nothing" also identified a value proposition.

There was a cost of doing nothing.

It wasn't simply the opportunity cost that we had estimated at mid-nine figures over 5 years.

Without asking questions, listening to Mike and his team, and probing further, we would not have learned of the internal exposure of the Terremark acquisition.

The acquisition was valued at $1.4B, and the Verizon C-Suite was under the gun to demonstrate to its shareholders what it was doing to drive value from that investment.

SWOT

We built a SWOT chart for this DBaaS project.

We did not share it with Verizon.

In fact, I'd estimate that 60% of the data we produced went unshared.

40% went unused altogether.

But that's the norm with the deals I led.

We found that we were often surprised by the impact running numbers on some off-the-wall idea had on a sales opportunity.

We only learned this by doing it.

After a substantial number of repetitions, across a number of deals and fiscal years, I can confidently state that we should place a priority on the effort we make in our deal preparation.

Create more questions and obtain more answers than you can conceive you will need or use.

Run the extra financial proformas for what-if scenarios that seem far-fetched.

It is time well spent.

It accelerated our growth by increasing win rates and deal sizes.

It increased customer satisfaction as well.

It was evident to them that we respected them and their interests by our preparation.

On that afternoon in the Red Carpet Club, we used the "W" and "T" quadrants of our SWOT with Mike and his team.

"W" stands for Weakness.

What weaknesses did the Oracle team see in Verizon doing this deal?

Why ask that question?

Aren't we opening the door for Verizon to give us an objection that could threaten the sale?

When dealing with enterprise customers, always assume that they will explore every scenario for "not doing" a deal.

This is a best practice.

They are going to do this regardless, so we'd better be prepared.

That's why we went through the SWOT exercise as part of our prep.

Someone in that enterprise is going to ask our sponsor that question.

I'd rather be in the room when that question gets asked.

Better yet, let's ask and see if their answer is the same as ours.

The answer?

What if Terremark falls short of Verizon's expectations?

What if the acquisition doesn't fuel Verizon's growth by accelerating the company's strategy to provide "everything as a service" to business and government customers globally?

In Verizon's view, the weakness of this DBaaS transaction was not if enterprise customers would need more Oracle.

It wasn't whether they would buy Oracle in a DBaaS offering from Verizon.

It wasn't whether they could offer the service at a price point where they made money.

The weakness of this transaction was whether Verizon Cloud Services would succeed.

Verizon was tying the Oracle DBaaS project's success to the Terremark acquisition's success.

They had justified Terremark at least partly on the growth of cloud and managed IT service.

The ideal customer for Terremark already used Oracle, EMC, NetApp, IBM/HP, and Dell/MSFT.

It was highly likely that these clients would want to shift their IT economics to a reduced capex, pay-as-you-go, and flexible scale-up or scale-down model.

They had already invested $1.4B into Terremark; what was another 9 figures to be able to offer Oracle by the hour?

The Price

We reached the point in the afternoon where it was time to tie it all together.

We had discussed the elements of the value proposition.

We knocked down obstacles to executing the plan.

The remaining component was the price.

In the context of helping make the $1.4B acquisition successful with a business plan that yielded mid-nine figures in value within 5 years, we shared the investment it would take to obtain the rights to hosting the Oracle Database.

Predictably, Mike and the team gagged.

They had rehearsed for this meeting too.

We weren't dealing with amateurs.

In the enterprise space, we rarely are.

Our response was crucial.

We had role-played this moment.

I owned our response.

Scarcity

"Oracle doesn't grant hosting rights. They are very protective of the channels available to access Oracle."

"There is too much at stake. The brand is worth billions."

"A significant investment signals to Oracle that an entity is aware of this and is serious about their endeavor."

"It took a significant effort for us to build the business case that enabled us to make this offer to you."

"Take some time to think this over and verify what we've shared today."

I asked Mike for a private conversation with him on Monday.

He began the call with the subject of hosting rights.

"Tell me more about that."

This was another good sign for us.

I explained the reasons for Oracle's reluctance.

Then I gave him the kind of "whisper" information that sponsors share with one another when both are pulling on the same oar.

Oracle had recently made a rare exception on hosting rights with a software industry titan based in the Northwest.

We learned of this from the approvals group that reports to our co-CEO.

They gave me conditional approval to approach you, but I had to have a business case that would justify you investing at least as much as that software company.

I took a chance on your behalf, but you appear to have the business case now.

See if you can sell this internally.

But the clock is ticking if you want to announce this at Oracle OpenWorld, so let me know how I can help you soundboard this quickly.

Politics

When we are "plugged in" to an enterprise account, we sometimes learn what's going on within without the principals telling us.

In this case, we learned that Mike was not only selling this internally but also exploring ways to get this deal done in our Q2.

The call came from Rich.

He was Verizon's tenured procurement officer.

We knew him well.

Any purchase involving technology went through Rich's group.

It became apparent that Mike and John had not involved Rich.

He had learned about the deal at the tail end of the process.

Rich told us that we knew better.

But he couldn't get too angry with us as it was evident that Mike and John had made obtaining hosting rights for Oracle Database their idea.

They weren't asking permission from anyone.

Rich took control of the purchase process.

Since we knew him to be a thorough and competent procurement professional, we found some comfort in this development.

However, Rich believed he was purposely left out of the loop, and someone had to pay for that.

Unfortunately, the victims were the Q2 close and the PR splash at OpenWorld.

Penalty Box

Rich wanted us to go back to the starting line and walk him through the deal.

Mike had advised me in so many words to "humor him," but I could tell it was a little more than that.

We engaged with Rich, just as we and many Oracle teams had done before.

Rich's process took him the next four months to complete.

It created a couple more key points to this story.

The nine-figure price wasn't just for an entitlement to be able to offer the Oracle Database as DBaaS.

Oracle did not sell "entitlements."

It sold licenses to commercially off-the-shelf (COTS) software.

Even though Verizon already had Oracle Database licenses, Mike and John wanted those entitlements, which they did not possess currently.

In order to do that and pass the stringent revenue recognition policy Oracle established for itself (Oracle was more conservative than GAAP), we had to sell them more licenses of the Oracle Database.

I worked with HQAPP and E&Y, our revenue recognition accountants at the time, on the precise language for these licenses.

To make the license "user-friendly" for Verizon, we inserted language that matched how they would sell DBaaS to their enterprise clients.

We sold them a quantity - thousands of hours - of Oracle Database and the attendant database option products.

We also provided an equivalent metric to match how Oracle "accounted" for licenses, Processor.

Sound complex?

It was.

Rich had some requests that turned out to be very added-value in this process.

To satisfy one of his objections, we added the "Pool of Funds" concept to the license agreement.

This resolved the issue of not knowing how much of each Oracle product they would need for the next 5 years.

The nine-figure investment was an upfront, non-cancellable order.

But Rich did not make it easy on us.

He was just doing his job, however.

Verizon was lucky to have him protecting them.

One of his last requests was a provision that gave them the ability to "convert" hosting licenses to standard, perpetual, internal use licenses that could be used by Verizon IT.

Oracle was reluctant to do that initially.

We went back and forth for weeks until both parties accepted an algorithm we came up with that allowed Verizon to salvage any surplus from their DBaaS investment.

The major sticking point was converting something that was ephemeral (hourly hosting licenses) into a perpetual license that never expires as long as annual support is renewed.

When You Have Two CEOs

…you don't have one.

We were at the finish line.

It was time to execute the paperwork.

It was a formality.

There was no dramatic "close the deal" meeting left to do.

Closing these large deals is really a series of unceremonial closing steps that render the finale anticlimactic.

During the detour taken when Rich engaged, both parties began to get a little antsy at the C-suite level.

Mike was managing the expectations on the Verizon side of the equation.

I thought I was doing the same.

Matt understood what was going on.

He has sales in his DNA.

Mark?

That's another story.

In our internal plan, we had mapped Mark to the Verizon CEO, Lowell.

We would arrange that meeting when the deal was done.

If we had obstacles along the way, we certainly would not throw them upward for our executives to solve.

Matt was mapped to John.

But Mark wanted to speak with John.

If one steps back and thinks about it, Mark's "need" is understandable.

If this transaction was "material" to his business, he might want to personally verify the data he was being provided.

So I called Mike to arrange the meeting.

Even though we were at the goal line with the final step a formality, Mike understood the request after discussing it with me.

But as he thought about Mark's title of co-CEO, he asked about Oracle's other CEO.

Mike knew our HQAPP group reported to Safra.

I responded that Mark was the right person for a meeting like this.

"You might think of them as Ms. Inside and Mr. Outside."

Then he responded with something I'd heard before:

"When you have 2 CEOs, you don't have one."

The Risk of One More Meeting

The call was arranged with Mark, John, Matt, and Mike as the attendees.

I had to explain to Mike why I would not be on the call.

The truth was I wasn't invited.

Sales leadership can be humbling.

The call was over in 30 minutes.

Mike called me.

He was upset.

He had represented to Verizon that the investment had to be the nine-figure price we had given him.

He knew why and used that as part of his representation.

He knew we had worked hours with Oracle's HQAPP to get the necessary approvals and codify the complex terms.

Verizon had no objection to the price and terms any longer.

The negotiation was over.

(To the reader: I purposely have redacted the exact details of what transpired in that meeting.

Hopefully you will understand and forgive me.

Oracle lowered its price by 20% in that meeting without receiving a qualified objection from Verizon.)

Back to Mike.

He was at risk of losing his credibility within Verizon.

As you will recall, he was not a legacy employee.

He arrived via an acquisition.

John had asked him to get this deal done for the Company.

They had cut corners and used a top-down approach to move quickly.

They had left Rich and Verizon Procurement out of the early discussions.

Mike knew what Rich might be thinking right now.

If Oracle's bottom line wasn't really 100%, and today it became 80% in just a 30-minute call, what makes us think that 80% is their bottom line?

If Rich chose to tug on that thread, this transaction could be delayed or unraveled.

One more meeting.

Time kills all deals.

I talked Mike off the ledge.

I'd seen this kind of thing happen before.

Sometimes, doing nothing is exactly what we do.

This was one of those times.

Mike did his damage control.

Rich did not tug on that thread.

The paperwork was signed.

Closed/Won.

How Did I Feel About the Outcome?

I do not remember having strong negative feelings.

I may have had reason to:

• Matt fell short, and delivering the number for him was important to me
• The drop in price cost Shawn significant commissions that he deserved
• Mike and I had built mutual respect that was damaged at the very end.

But I knew that successful enterprise selling is not single-threaded; it's team selling involving executives from both sides.

When that happens, we aren't always in control of the outcome.

I already had some battle scars from past deals.

In hindsight, should I have begun with a price 25% higher and choreographed the negotiation differently?

That wasn't my nature and still isn't.

It wasn't Oracle's culture either.

Why push your job off to someone else?

Isn't that what Oracle was paying us to do?

I mentioned Shawn, but not Larry.

I'm not sure, but he may have hit his cap on earnings with this deal.

I don't recall having negative feelings about the outcome for Larry, and I think I would.

I take satisfaction in creating a material transaction for Oracle out of thin air.

We took a $2M pipeline entry in its early stages.

We made it a deal that was an order of magnitude larger than that within 6 months.

Larry ultimately wanted to get $10m for his idea.

We were 10X Larry's wildest hopes and dreams for Verizon that year.

We helped Mike and John get unprecedented rights to Oracle Database and improve the chances of success for their Terremark acquisition.

Lessons Learned

1) Enterprise sales is a series of problem-solving.

2) Shoot for the stars; you might miss but still hit the moon.

3) Price is just a number; scarcity evokes emotion.

4) Plan for not having complete control, focus on your behavior, and don’t fall in love with a desired outcome.

Thank you for reading,

Jeff

When you think “sales leader,” I hope you think of me.

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