Sidekick
WMMM #076 - This week I share a sales story that has a little of everything.
Jeff Keplar Newsletter September 7, 2024 8 min read
Matt was wearing a path in the carpeting between his office and mine.
We were on the 11th floor of the Xerox Tower in the Las Colinas office complex of Irving, TX.
Matt ran Application Sales for Enterprise Accounts in the U.S.
His office was in the north wing.
I remember seeing the 14th hole of the TPC course that hosted the Byron Nelson.
That was from my office window in the west wing, and I led a sales team that covered 100 of the Fortune 500 for Tony.
Tony ran the Technology Sales for Enterprise Accounts in the U.S.
Tony was in his office in Manhattan.
Just a Typical End of Quarter at Oracle
We were negotiating a deal with T-Mobile.
It was the last week of February and our fiscal Q3.
I had the lead for the Oracle team.
For T-Mobile, we had Rob, the CIO, and Phil, the VP of Sourcing.
In my office, I had a desk and a side table.
On the side table was a landline, hosting an open bridge line for participants from both parties.
This enabled legal counsel to come and go, as well as subject matter approvers.
The core negotiators from both sides typically stayed on the open bridge.
On my desk was another landline with an active direct line to Rob.
On my cell, I was connected with Tony.
Rob and Tony were also dialed in and listening on my bridge line.
We had agreed to a 3-year deal for $89M.
The deal contained database, middleware, and CRM apps from our recent acquisition of Siebel Systems
We were nearing the end of the negotiations over the terms and conditions when Rob announced he wanted to pull the Siebel software from the deal.
If It Didn’t Go Sideways, It Wasn’t a Real Deal
As introduced in "The Fighting Chair" and highlighted again last week in "Ain't Got No Rap," pulling a product sales team's products out of a large multi-product transaction is just the sort of thing that could send the Oracle side into the equivalent of a civil war.
If you have yet to read those editions, please do so to understand better why this situation might be a problem for me.
Rob and I had a tough start to our relationship when he was announced as T-Mobile's new CIO.
That was three years ago.
Rob
Oracle had a new ULA in the latter stages of a sales cycle when Bruce retired, and Rob was announced as his replacement.
A change like this was almost certain to derail that deal, a large, material transaction in my Q3 forecast.
But I was determined and admittedly desperate to get Rob on board with this brand-new concept, and there were only 30 days left in our quarter.
I recall Rob, our sales lead for T-Mobile at the time, and me jumping on a plane to San Antonio to crash a T-Mobile executive offsite to introduce ourselves to Rob.
Against all odds, we closed that deal on the last day of February.
However, their legal team pulled a fast one on us when we sent the final pre-signed paperwork to T-Mobile for signature.
I won't disclose the details, but we saw what they had done when we received their fax just a few minutes before midnight Pacific Standard Time.
Of course, we had a process to prevent this sort of thing.
But, if Oracle wanted this deal to count in Q3, they had to accept this order as is.
We ultimately accepted it, but I took some serious heat over it.
To this day, I don't believe Rob was a party to these shenanigans.
He had only been on the job for thirty days.
I let him know it wasn't cool to do that.
I had built a brand inside Oracle for doing clean deals, and I now had some brand damage to repair.
He never said so, but I think he felt bad about it.
Over time, however, Rob and I built a healthy, positive, trusting relationship.
Looking back, I found him to be a wickedly bright and funny individual and enjoyed the times when our paths crossed.
Won't Back Down
I pushed back on Rob.
I asked him to double-check with the LOB champion.
We had confirmation of the value proposition for Siebel.
The business "needed" the software we were proposing to complete their annual objectives.
We weren't just "stuffing" Siebel software into this order.
Rob privately (on our direct phone connection) told me that he was getting push-back from Germany.
Deutsche Telekom (DT) had a significant investment in T-Mobile.
DT used SAP.
T-Mobile used SAP for ERP because of DT.
T-Mobile was not an Oracle Apps customer.
I held my position.
Matt was checking in regularly for updates.
He knew I was facing resistance from the customer.
He also knew that we had a LOB championing confirming the budget and need for Siebel.
Meanwhile, Tony was watching the clock.
Tick tock.
Time was running out in our quarter.
He had checked with Keith, and Keith was okay with pulling the Siebel software if it would get this deal closed in Q3.
Keith did not want to risk an $89M deal for $3.5M of Siebel software.
I suspected Matt knew this, but I did not discuss it with him.
I told Tony we should stand our ground.
I did not think Rob felt strongly either way.
I didn't think Rob knew the value prop for the LOB.
I didn't think he cared.
If his LOB had included him, he would have cared.
The Apps team had chosen to stay clear of the CIO and place their bet with the LOB.
It's easy to look back after the fact and see where errors were made.
Selling enterprise software isn't easy.
Tony thought we were running out of time.
I wanted to stand my ground.
I asked him to trust me.
Rob got back on the direct line with me.
I told him that the deal was sold to Oracle, with all of its concessions, in return for an $89M order.
"If you pull the Siebel out, the price is still $89M."
Rob said he'd get back to me.
I had the bridge call muted, but Tony was still on my cell.
He had heard me speaking with Rob on the other line.
Rob jumped back on our direct line and agreed to leave the deal as is.
"You better be right about that LOB," he told me.
I trusted the Apps rep and Matt, so I wasn't worried.
Right on cue, Matt appeared in my office doorway.
He had his cell in his ear and Tony on the line.
He looked at me with a "and…?" expression.
I said nothing but gave him a thumbs up.
He double-clutched and asked: "So they've agreed to the Siebel?"
I nodded yes and began speaking on the bridge.
The lawyers had finished, and we had to turn the paper one final time.
Tony jumped back on my cell and said something I'll never forget:
"Jeff, there aren't a handful of people in this company who would do what you just did for the Apps team.
Why did you do it?
I know this; there's a place for you in heaven, brother."
I merely told Tony that I treated Matt and Ken (the Apps rep) the way I'd want them to treat me.
If we want to change behavior, we have to start somewhere.
I heard later that Matt and Tony thought I had ice water in my veins.
I did not tell them that I believed, from my experience over the last eight years negotiating with the brutal Telcos, that if I gave in on the last-minute Siebel request, the other side would know that our $89M was not our best offer.
It would open the door for more concession requests.
I knew that we could not honor any more requests.
To me, this was easy; it did not require ice water.
I did not tell them I had reason to believe Rob trusted me.
And that is the real story for this week, not the $89M deal.
Sidekick
"The coolest smartphone of all time" was the Danger Hiptop, made by Danger Inc. from 2002 to 2010.
T-Mobile branded the Hiptop the "Sidekick" when bought to run on their network.
The Sidekick had email, instant messaging, video games, an organizer, a calendar, a calculator, and communities.
It used a cloud service for the entire personal data on the device.
It became an iconic mobile device in the U.S. because Hollywood embraced it.
Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Snoop Dog, Kim Kardashian, and Tony Hawk were some of its many pop star users.
The screen rotated 180 degrees to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard.
It was designed to be held with both hands.
The Sidekick was the counterculture competitor to the Blackberry.
Microsoft bought Danger in 2008 for $500M.
On October 2, 2009, Microsoft lost access to user data in Danger's cloud.
Contacts, notes, calendars, and photos were gone.
Their high-profile clientele were frantic.
Early reports stated that T-Mobile had lost all data on their Sidekick devices.
As luck would have it, Rob was hosting a meeting with his key suppliers on Friday morning, October 2.
Rob, our Oracle Account Manager for T-Mobile, was already in Seattle and scheduled to attend.
The CIO had told Rob that "Jeff doesn't need to fly in for this."
That all changed on Thursday, October 1.
Although the Sidekick data loss announcement would be made on Friday, T-Mobile's C-levels were briefed on Thursday when the problem was discovered.
I got a call from Rob, our AM, on Thursday afternoon.
The CIO rearranged Friday's meeting and wanted only his inner circle partners to meet with him in a closed-door afternoon session.
He needed our help solving an urgent problem but declined to elaborate.
Rob and our team thought Rob, the CIO, would much appreciate it if I could find a way to get there on short notice.
Like most calls Oracle Support receives on any normal business day, this Sidekick situation was not a problem with Oracle software.
With most of those calls, Oracle adopts a no-fault approach and seeks to solve the problem versus determining if they were the cause.
We learn that it wasn't Oracle's issue only after the problem is resolved and root cause analysis is complete.
I landed in Seattle late Thursday night.
Rob briefed me early Friday morning.
He had learned why the CIO wanted to meet with us that afternoon.
Rob knew about the Sidekick data loss and gave me the scoop on what he had learned.
We decided to initiate a request with Oracle Support.
Our logic was that T-Mobile was a significant Oracle account with an Oracle Support contract.
Once a support request was made, we escalated to a more appropriate area within our Support organization that may know how to help them.
By Friday afternoon, we had identified a SWAT team within Oracle that were experts in data loss and recovery.
As we arrived at Rob's offsite for this meeting, our eyes met, and he gave me a nod of approval.
He opened the meeting by thanking everyone for being there on short notice.
He gave a special acknowledgement to "those who flew two time zones to get here with no chance of return until tomorrow (Saturday.)
(If you are in Seattle on Friday afternoon after 2:00p and must fly east to get home, your earliest chance is a red-eye at midnight.)
We learned in this meeting that the media was crushing T-Mobile for this data loss.
Their brand was taking a hit.
And, it was undeserved.
Danger deserved the blame.
They had no HA/DR strategy and no daily backups.
Microsoft had owned them for nearly a year, so technically, this was Microsoft's issue.
But if you owned a Sidekick, it was a T-Mobile smartphone in your eyes.
We informed Rob of what we had to offer him.
No strings were attached to our offer, and we purposely did not say that.
We didn't have to.
It was more impactful not to.
He was grateful.
Ultimately, the Oracle SWAT team manually recovered the lost data, byte by byte and bit by bit.
If you want to earn trust, solve a problem that is inflicting personal PAIN.
Rob already had a favorable impression of Oracle and his account team.
His view of us jumped to an entirely different level after the Sidekick debacle.
Lessons Learned
1) Treat others as we would want to be treated.
2) Know when to stand your ground.
3) Wanna earn trust? Solve a problem that is inflicting personal pain.
4) It's worth it sometimes to give up a Saturday.
Thank you for reading.
Jeff
When you think “sales leader,” I hope you think of me.
If you like what you read, please share this with a friend.
I offer my help to investors, founders, sales leaders, and their teams.
I possess the skills identified in this article and share them as part of my service.
In my weekly newsletter, Win More, Make More, I provide tips, techniques, best practices, and real-life stories to help you improve your craft.
