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On the occasion of the 1926 100 Percent Club Convention and Executive School, Thomas J. Watson Sr. credited his top salespeople with giving the company its best year ever. He believes that this sales plan is the “most satisfactory” in IBM’s history. However, he said, too many people are not meeting their quotas. To address this problem, he set a company-wide goal in 1927 to “help with sales”—despite the fact that he continued to push this agenda.
From his first days as president of Computerized Tabulating Records in 1914, the elder Watson developed a critical eye for sales in an effort to save the ailing conglomerate. “Sell aggressively. Sell results. Sell honestly,” he told his reorganized sales force as he set out to transform the company by giving sales more importance and luster.
The elder Watson has paid homage to the work as the industry’s chief evangelist, preaching exceptionalism in an industry previously known for pushback and shady sales tactics. After all, it was the career he cherished and the one that put him on the path to successful business. In his early days, Watson Sr. sold sewing machines and musical instruments in a village near his hometown of Campbell, New York, before joining the National Cash Register Company in Buffalo as a salesman.
In January 1920, the publication’s ode to salesmanship reflected this sentiment. business machines Readers are told to “cultivate true salesmanship to a science” and “glorify it like a sculptor…glorify his labors.” Most importantly, it says, “Be a leader of men, be a man of the first class, Become a quota man whose standard of achievement is hard work.”
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