HP: A Lesson in How to Sell
September 16, 2015
I am not much of a sales person. Hey, I don’t sell because no one in Harrod’s Creek is in the market for an old, fat, half deaf, and poorly sighted Washington, DC escapee.
I did learn something when I read “HP Announces 25K-30K Layoffs as Part of Split.” Hewlett Packard, the creator of the HP way, is going to split itself into two companies. I just heard that this mitosis will reignite innovation at HP. (Doesn’t HP sell printer ink and fund lawsuits targeting those who were silly enough to sell HP a company?) News travels slowly in rural Kentucky.
The misguided approach to sales I had prior to learning about the HP way was to perform the following steps. Let me use the example of my selling a motor scooter. I did:
- Clean the scooter
- Service the scooter
- Fill the scooter with fuel
- Get the manuals together in one envelope.
The idea was that I wanted the potential buyer to get a ready-to-roll motor scooter.
Now here’s what I learned about the HP way of sales:
- Figure out what parts of a giant company with quarter upon quarter of declining revenue make a Pile A and Pile B
- Assure the lawyers that the litigation against Autonomy will continue
- Terminate lots of people (the equivalent of my taking the rear wheel off my scooter which is for sale
- Appearing on a TV talk show on CNBC saying, “The sale will ignite innovation.”
I plan to try to HP way of sales the next time I sell a vehicle. I am darned confident that potential buyers will be impressed with an unusable vehicle.
I will let you, gentle reader, know how my emulation of the Hewlett Packard approach to sales works out.
In the meantime, why not try the HP method of sales yourself? A sure winner.
Stephen E Arnold, September 16, 2015
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