Wake up IBM Defund and dismantle Digital Sales immediately. With Covid there will be no traditional office environments for at least another year. Your Industry and Geo Sellers are basically Digital Sellers now. Digital is a total overlay and a complete Cost center. It's a self perpetuating machine that takes head count from Sales. You could eliminate a massive Management chain with a few keystrokes and put 10s of millions back into legitimate Sales resource
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@4hqc+18xiJZKb
The difference between sales people at IBM and sales people at AWS, GCP is that the latter do a lot more than sales. I interviewed at both. Their sales people cross over into implementation.
I agree with channel reps point - they are not doing much besides passing on emails
- however you think f2f reps do not have overlays? IMHO, they should remove folks from all units, just look at deals closed vs their salary. I know some f2f reps are paid 6 digit with 30-50k deals closed. Some of them are my colleagues covering key accounts. how could you justify that.. again, not to attack on BUs, but look at your reps, managers, executives. remove those who are not performing.
@4tjq You are missing the point Times are lean And if layoffs are necessary they should be in areas that are using up more resource in comparison to the revenue they provide. Digital sales and Channel sales are complete overlays. Stacking at its finest. There is minimal to zero customer touch with these groups. They should be the first areas for the axe to fall
Again , why do people look down on digital? digital transformation, social engagement, everyone wfh, it’s all part of digital. Yes you might still need f2f sellers covering largest accounts, for IBM, maybe 100? rest of it should be digital sales
Clearly you have absolutely no idea what on earth you're talking about. I can tell you the move to Digital has been ongoing since 2015. Ditto with removing managers. This is NOT some new magic.
And, whiles it is true other companies have a strong digital presence, the key competitors to IBM, AWS, MSFT, Salesforce, Google Cloud are all heavily investing IN face-to-face sales.
Lookee here:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/08/google-cloud-chief-kurian-has-aggressive-plan-to-hire-salespeople.html
https://www.onmsft.com/news/amazon-beefing-up-aws-sales-team-to-combat-microsofts-azure
People who complain about digital because they are not in digital. And old school sellers don’t understand why they are being let go. All big tech companies are investing heavily in digital sales. It’s not inside sales, not in traditional sense, you have to keep up with the economic shift. Glad to see IBM is moving towards more digital sales and marketing. need to consider applying for digital jobs next year!
HPQ IBM just laid out their go forward strategy to the EWC. What part of their statement are you saying is “not true” IBM is focusing far more on “enterprises”, digital sales, and thinning down of remaining operations including channel/partner engagements. You may not agree with it, but IBM is restructuring to get efficient and that means downsizing of the current go to market engagement process. Right now it appears like 1 out of two jobs will be impacted in Europe if you include Newco spinoff. Approx 35-40% of the jobs in NA will be impacted including Newco. The rest of the world will be impacted 20-25%. This restructuring is big, and its rushing ahead at warp speed as time is not AK’s friend. Good luck to all as IBM wants this done by June
Cheap labor (Age Discrimination) + Social Equality (Reverse Discrimination) + Nepotism (Elitist Discrimination) is the steady diet that will always keep the Digital toilet full to the rim. Keep up the good work IBM! While the rest of the IT world eats your lunch
"...But if you look at Bain and MSFT playbook,..."
Where does one find this "Bain Playbook"?
Of course Digital is a waste It's roots were in Canada Who remembers? It was called "DotCom" and was a complete resource s—.
When IBM bought Redhat they mapped their revenue profile into fortune 1100 and everything else. They discovered the 1100 accounts brought in the lions share of revenue independent of platform/SW/services. Essentially the big accounts did all of the business. With that said, IBM is adopting that policy moving forward. Where do they draw the line between digital sales and face to face is still a metric that is in flux. Some believe you have to have face to face to move new IBM offerings, and some believe that just executive relationships can get the job done. There are others who say the hyperscalers have almost zero marketing per se and they are executing just fine. IBM has always had a love / hate relationship with digital vs direct marketing. Right now the focus is on lowering costs, so 1-2 directs per fortune 1000 may be way too aggressive when all is said and done. We’ll know the answer come Jan As others have said, AK is shaking the way IBM has traditionally done business, and he certainly wants to surprise Wall Street on the up side when June gets here. Don’t be surprised if things change a LOT
Digital owns nothing They exist by getting funding from other areas of the business. True they are probably cheaper labor at the rep level And now you have created a whole Management structure Hundreds of Managers!! And we all know that's where the real cost is Just to direct resources that were taken from areas that are driving revenue? And don't Digital reps just pass everything to Partners? Seems redundant and foolish during tight times.
Isn’t AI part of SW? And is it just Fortune 1000 or based on IBM revenue? Most of the enterprise sellers are just waiting for ELA. They are not hunters. Outside NA, digital sales is very common and I agree with the other comment, Microsoft, Amazon all rely heavily on digital sales. Digital transformation digital sales. If IBM wants to grow again, need to invest in bringing net new customers not just stupid ELA.
@vjh+18xiJZKb not true
IBM will have in person sellers for the fortune 1000. This will include services, cloud, HW, SW, and AI. One - two sales leaders per enterprise. Everything else will transition to a skeleton crew of digital sales as IBM wants to lower their SG&A to the bone.
Most tech companies rely on digital sales. It’s unfortunately a high ROI model.
digital selling is very common in Europe. not so lucrative in NA
I think the move to more digital sales, IBM wants to save a lot of money and hire cheap. If they are doing the same job as you said, why would you want to pay a premium salary to a industry or geo seller? Instead you can hire cheaper digital sales. But if you look at Bain and MSFT playbook, they focus more on marketing and digital sales and less on face to face. We might see a big reorg after the new year on the geo side. Not what we want to see but who knows.. other thread said layoff going on in digital sales too..
More than Digital Sales, many Garage related teams can go. They add no values and they keep declining client engagement requests. Makes one wonder what they really do...