I’ve been pretty quiet lately on Twitter and haven’t written a blog for a while. While there are many others who have formed the habit of fitting these activities in with their (I’m sure) overly busy schedules, my excuse/reason is that we have just been through the very pointy end of winning a major new customer.
The good news is that we have come through with the right result (more to come on that later when we have something to announce). I’ve been through this process a couple of times, and it is “all consuming” (even dreams end up about the sales process), hence my silence.
Unfortunately the process didn’t conclude in time to allow us to get our new customer to Teradata Partners. I really wanted to get there to provide that sense of confidence in their decision that only another customer can provide, and there is no better place than Partners to talk to customers. I also wanted to personally thank the many of my colleagues and account teams that helped us win the deal.
One of the many write-ups that came out of Partners came from Dr. Mark Whitehorn mulling over continuing speculation of an SAP acquisition of Teradata. He articulates four factors that any potential acquirer would need to make sure they understood in evaluating Teradata:
- Teradata has only just become independent
- The customers are unusual
- The company culture is different
- The people are different
The key summary point for me is this:
Teradata is genuinely different from most of the other BI companies -- it has a very unusual set of customers, a very unusual working/research relationship with them, a very different management ethos and very different staff. It is these differences that make it what it is and also make it successful.
The reason this resonates with me is because it is the key reason why we won our new account.
I’ve been at (or around) Teradata now since 1994. It really wasn’t until I went to my first Partners conference in 1996 that “I got it”. Since then, being part of the Teradata culture really has meant being able to tap into those points that Dr. Whitehorn calls out. In the sales campaign we had conference calls with the Teradata executive and many conference calls with accounts and account teams in Asia, Europe and America. Everyone is keen to contribute whatever they can to help grow Teradata.
And that’s what makes writing the “Thank You” email so enjoyable.
And already this week we are putting back in to help an account team in Europe.
Sean Kain
