JOBS: #12: EDI was the Future of Data Exchange

I started as part of a new sales force. The company had been involved with card processing.. and shifted to enter the EDI space. This was electronic data interchange — the capability to send and receive data between business partners: creat a purchase order and send it to supplier, e.g. wal-mart. Who would send shipping acknowledgement and an invoice. the record formats were established by the X-12 standards group.

the software was all mainframe… so hard to demo. We had a deck of transperancies.

My manager was under fire… and I’m not sure he was happy with his new sales team so he rode us pretty hard.

we did get leads… bdrs were to qualify… there were heated discussions about we’re mere the leads qualified. I was less interested in getting the lead qualified: if it was a real person and they weren’t part of EDI, then I’d run with it.

a couple of us woukd team up to ride along pretending I was the tech rep or that she was my visiting VP.
here is what I worked on:

• I’d propose a discounted license if they agreed to only use a few transactions: this worked well in health care where they only needed a few of the hundred we offered. Management did not like it because we couldn’t limit use —- reality was they would only ever need a few.
• my boss asked me to have a deal I won backdated (this was before rev rec rules —- perhaps a reason they were created 🙂 ). The MIS director agreed but wanted to go out to lunch… and asked me to bring a bunch of singles…I wasn’t wild about it but went ahead… and MIS director gave me referrals.
• we got an RFP from BC Tel. I then had to fly to Vancouver to present (there was one major competitor.) presentation went well so product manager took me out… it was a long night and we both crashed in my room… thank goid fir doubjj m e beds but no way this guy should drive. Next step was they visited HQ… They signed a deal and it turns out the other provincial telcos hated Bell Canada so we were able to sell to all of them.
• one lead was Dallas based GTE. They wanted to use a special record of long distance charges so that companies could chargeback departments. It was a lot of data and hiw to transfer. At the time I paid $25 a month for UUNET…internet before World Wide Web. So for $25 we got it done.
• another lead came from the treasurer of Allstate. They were interested in creating a standard fir submitting subrogation claims and payments between 8 major auto insurers. I was part of the working group as a technical and process advisor. I think I won 5 deals.

I had a computer with Delrina WinFax that allowed me to receive customer questions, lead sheets … windows based email didn’t exist. I upgraded to full version and was able to receive a customers rfp by fax or mail and I’d scan it and use OCR to create a word doc where I could enter my responses. The main benefit was that I could work at home… company was wild about it but I just said I had calls etc.

I’m not sure how it happened but a former rep who sold to me at Allied, Ben Slick, called and offered me a central region manager position. That invisible hand seemed in play.

it was all new to me … I worked hard but was a bit underwhelmed.

so, I accepted.