Big Blue's first big idea

Happy Tuesday.

Sales methodology decks, rep onboarding bootcamps, go-to-market playbooks: a lot of modern company-building rests on the wager that how you sell matters as much as what you sell.

Here's why.

The Founder

Watson joined the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR) in 1914, at age 42, after two decades selling cash registers at NCR.

The company was a loose merger of four manufacturers, turning out a grab bag of unrelated machines with no marquee product among them.

It wasn't the most prestigious position in the world, but he took the job under a bit of a cloud; an antitrust case from his NCR years had nearly sent him to prison.

In the year he joined, CTR posted about $4 million in revenue, which translates to roughly $133 million today.

The Next Breakout Might Be in Your Pocket

Everyone’s hunting for the next Unicorn.

The type of “category disruptor” that grows fast and turns early believers into big winners.

59,000+ investors think that Mode Mobile could be one of those rare finds.

Americans spend 4 ½ hours on their phones daily, and Mode Mobile is monetizing that screentime. With $1B+ earned by over 490M customers and 32,481% revenue growth, Mode’s EarnPhone is turning smartphones into income generating assets.

Their previous raises sold out, and the company is now offering pre-IPO shares at $0.50/share with up to 20% bonus, exclusive to early investors.

Being early is everything, and this window is still open.

>> Review the offer before it closes

Please read the offering circular and related risks at invest.modemobile.com. This is a paid advertisement for Mode Mobile’s Regulation A+ Offering.

Mode Mobile recently received their ticker reservation with Nasdaq ($MODE), indicating an intent to IPO in the next 24 months. An intent to IPO is no guarantee that an actual IPO will occur.

The Deloitte rankings are based on submitted applications and public company database research, with winners selected based on their fiscal-year revenue growth percentage over a three-year period.

The Moment

Watson left the product line largely alone and went to work on the people selling it.

He imported a slogan he had coined at NCR three years earlier and hung it everywhere: THINK, born from his complaint that "the trouble with every one of us is that we don't think enough."

It went on signs, deskplates, notepads, and business cards.

Then he built the apparatus. CTR's first sales school opened in Endicott, New York, in 1920, putting recruits through six weeks of intensive training before they ever saw a customer.

Watson hired top college graduates, dressed them in conservative dark suits, and banned alcohol on and off the job; a rule rooted in his own early firing after a saloon incident. (yes, you read that correctly)

In 1925 he created the Hundred Percent Club for salesmen who hit quota, with lavish annual conventions where members pledged to bring three colleagues back the next year. There were even company songs, including a rally anthem, "Ever Onward," that hailed Watson by name.

But the real capstone came in 1924. Watson renamed the company International Business Machines and announced it to employees on Feb. 13. At this point, the firm still made clocks and scales; the name described an ambition the inventory had not yet earned. And that was exactly the point.

His stated rationale was that the name was "particularly adaptable and suitable to our business, in view of the fact of our increasing growth."

Obviously, selling unglamorous machines this hard risked looking absurd for a mid-size maker of butcher scales. Yet the culture compounded anyway. By the time Watson died in 1956, IBM's annual revenue had grown to about $900 million; roughly $11 billion today.

The Playbook

1. Treat your salesforce like its own product.

Watson inherited machines no one was excited about and made the selling itself the differentiator. The six-week school, the dress code, the THINK signs: all of it produced a salesforce that was the competitive moat.

When your product is a commodity, the team that sells it is the part a competitor can't copy by next quarter. Invest in it.

2. State your ambition.

In 1924, a maker of clocks and scales started calling itself International Business Machines. The name ran ahead of the products on purpose.

A name that describes your ambition sets the standard your team has to grow into. It's a forcing function disguised as branding. Pick something that will embarrass you if you stay small.

3. Culture has power. Use it.

Watson made hitting quota mean you were granted entry to the Hundred Percent Club, complete with conventions, badges, and anthems for the people who made it.

People wanted to be in it. More importantly, people wanted to stay in it. That's the added boost required to keep people pushing, without requiring you to cut a larger commission check.

That's all for this week. Thanks for reading.

See you in the inbox,

Simon Litt

Know a founder we should cover?

Tell us about them at [email protected].

Forward to a Friend | Unsubscribe | Privacy Policy
This email was sent to: [email protected]

This email was sent by: Quartz Media Network (US), Inc.
848 N. Rainbow Blvd. 3017
Las Vegas, NV 89107