Interlude - Index of

and we were right to do so.
Was our sales strategy the
same thing? Or were we
re fusing to change course
Starting NetApp | 37
The Best Sales Advice Ever
Never buy anything from someone
who is out of breath.
when the terrain demanded it? We did have some sales but not
the groundswell we had hoped for. It was a difficult debate.
Mike Malcolm was leaning toward the direct sales model,
but Charlie Perrell disagreed. That wasn’t surprising, since we
had hired him precisely because of his strong indirect experience.
As much as I respected Charlie, I agreed with Mike that it
was time to hire a direct sales force. Mike decided to try doing
both at once. We would continue working with resellers, but
also hire salespeople to call on larger accounts directly.
We needed to find someone with strong direct sales experience
to head up the effort. One of our first salespeople was Kathy
Mendoza, and she suggested we talk to her husband, Tom Mendoza,
who had left Auspex as VP of sales a year earlier. Tom met
with James and me, and he was very impressed with our product
strategy. His meeting with Charlie did not go so smoothly. Tom
thought the indirect scheme was doomed to fail.
Tom deconstructed our indirect sales model for Mike. We
were mostly working with small resellers, and Tom felt that we
were doing all the work, and they were making all the money.
NetApp would help make the sale, and maybe help again later
if there was a problem, but we sometimes got less than half of
what the customer paid. Tom told one of our board members,
“You’re dead. This is toast. Great group of guys. I really think
it could be a great company. But if you go down this path, you
won’t make it.” Tom convinced Mike and the board that the
math just didn’t work.