Customers Win, Suppliers Win

Customers Win, Suppliers Win: Lessons from One of IBM’s Most Successful Strategic Account Managers by Noel Capon and Gus Maikish vividly draws account management best practices from IBM’s up and down fortunes since the 1970s. In the process, it also offers an illuminating insider perspective on Big Blue’s best and worst times - as experienced in day-to-day interactions with some of its most important customers. The book’s most provocative takeaway: IBM’s services-led sales strategy has often hindered, rather than helped, efforts to achieve a fruitful long-term synergy of high margin hardware and software sales with low-margin services sales. The 1990s breakup of the salesforce to serve rival line of business organizations and the 2002 acquisition of PwC Consulting emerge as culture-shaking events for IBM that could only be turned to advantage by great account management.