“Why I’m So Interested In Selling,” Gus Maikish

Preface: Gus Maikish is one of the first people I met when I started my selling career. He started a few years before me and was managing some significant banking accounts for IBM. Since I was assigned to a different team, I didn’t spend much time with Gus, but remember one call that I tagged along. He was talking to a very difficult customer. I was naive and thought you couldn’t push the customer or disagree with them. I was blown away when Gus opened a very difficult conversation in a direct and tough minded way. It was a difficult conversation, but what he wanted to do is to get the customer focused on the critical issues and communicate as straightforwardly as Gus was communicating with them. While Gus might be surprised in reading this, it taught me one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned, you can’t avoid the tough discussions. Gus progressed in his IBM career, later managing one of the largest banking accounts, Citibank. He lead a team, driving $100s M in business. Gus now lectures in various business programs and has written one of the best/most pragmatic books on account management that I’ve ever read, Customers Win/Suppliers Win. It’s not an esoteric book on theories, it’s a pragmatic focus on the job and how to sell both to the customer and within your own company. It’s written in a way that you feel like you are accompanying him on meetings, watching how a master gets the work done. It’s a must read for any leader or seller who really wants to master working with the largest and most important accounts. Thanks Gus, both for what you taught me early in my career, in your book, and your reflections on selling.

When I finished college I needed a job. Having majored in Psychology there weren’t many opportunities for someone with a BS degree in that field. Because I had worked as a “tab machine operator” while in college the school placement office gave me a programmers aptitude test. Based on my score they suggested that I get a job as a computer programmer. I started as a programmer trainee at Con Edison in NYC. Six months later I was drafted and spent the next two years managing the data processing center at Fort Jackson in South Carolina.

While there I had some contact with IBM people. They were Systems Engineers, very technical people. I was impressed by the people that I met and decided that when I was discharged that is what I wanted to be. IBM was not hiring in 1969 when I was discharged so I worked at a few other companies doing technical work and studied for an MBA in night school. In 1972 IBM was doing on campus interviews for sales people. The last thing in the world that I wanted to be was a salesman but I thought if I got that job I could switch and be an SE once I was an IBMer.

Once I started at IBM I saw very quickly that IBM SEs were really smart but the company revolved around the sales people. It was the sales reps who called the shots and made the money. Having learned about business in the MBA program I saw that the value to IBM, and to any business, came from the salespeople.  I was assigned to work with a midsized bank, National Bank of North America, and stayed in that job for eight years – I loved being in a central role at IBM.. Sales people produce revenue, without revenue there is no business, everything revolves around sales and the customer relationships that produce it. 

I sold the bank on branch automation after studying the operation for two years. We won the contract for teller terminals, branch equipment and ATMs, very few banks had that level of automation then. I felt like I was changing the world of banking. I worked with tellers, branch managers. marketing people and every senior executive at the bank, including the President and CEO. We, IBM and NBNA, did it together. My sale made it to the Wall Street Journal. It is hard to describe that feeling, it was great.

I was promoted to several other jobs in IBM but got back to what I really loved when I took the assignment as Account Exec on Merrill Lynch. Merrill was transforming its retail operation. They wanted their brokers to become “Trusted Global Advisors” to their clients. To do that meant developing a whole new support system. My team and I worked with Merrill to develop, install and train their people on the new system. Like NBNA this was transforming their business, and the industry, and I was in the middle of it. I understood their operation and knew every senior executive at Merrill. Apart from the hundreds of millions of IBM revenue, the sense of satisfaction, the high that I got from seeing years of work that resulted in a customer’s transformation is what it’s all about. 

My final assignment at IBM was Citigroup. Citi was a global customer. We did business all over the world – Mexico, Brazil, China, Japan, India, Europe, etc, etc. Having to deal with issues and cultures from a wide range of places was different for me and, again, very satisfying to see a system evolve from concept to world wide implementation knowing that I played a central role in it.  

I managed the relationship with NBNA, Merrill, and Citigroup for eight years each. It was a truly great career that I could not have imagined when I got my BS in Psychology from CCNY.