Cashed out and sent home. An intermission

After Landmark was purchased by Halliburton, I decided it was time to return to the US and try something new.

First, I had to find my replacement for Halliburton. I identified the regional manager for IBM, and recruited him pretty hard. This turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him. He reluctantly took the job, and we overlapped for a short while.

Here is a funny anecdote: Landmark, and now Halliburton, had quarterly sales meetings where the regional VPs would get together with our boss and thrash out what the following quarter's sales goals would be. As you can imagine, this was always an interesting give and take, because we were a public company that gave regular guidance to the stock market. The VPs pushed for as low a number that was acceptable, our boss (and the CEO) always pushed for the highest number possible.

In my last QSOR (Quarterly Sales and Operations Report) I was accompanied by my successor. But since he was so new, I was the one who made the presentation. SO I got up in front of the group, and pitched what I thought was a fair number.

At this point, my boss (who looked and acted like a high school football coach) said that I was sandbagging, and that the number I presented was too low. He knew that I was leaving the company very, very soon.

So I just looked at the new VP (who had just flown in from Kuala Lumpur) and said, "OK Hank (my boss), what do you want it to be?" he gave me a number something like 20% higher than mine. I smiled and said "I am sure that Koid (my successor) will have no problem hitting that number"

I am not sure what Koid thought, but that was his new target.

We had fun at these quarterly meetings. We introduced new selling techniques, new products, new marketing plans.

One other story from my last QSOR is that my boss asked who would like to introduce the marketing VP to the group. Nobody seemed too interested, so in the interest of fun, I volunteered to do so. She was so upset that right before I got on stage she came and asked me, sotto voce to please not embarrass her. Of course I did not. I gave a great introduction, stressing the importance of Marketing to the company (which I honestly believe, to this day)

Then I came home, took a couple of months off, and started with a brand new company.

That's up next.