ON IBM IN INDIA

BIG SMALLS STEPS

In this well-written article on an IBM salesman in India, Fortune magazine tells a great story of how IBM is forging a part of it's future in large emerging markets.  As the piece explains:

"Gupta is IBM (IBM, Fortune 500)'s top salesperson in the company's fastest-growing industry in the fastest-growing part of the world..."

"Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) is known for design. Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) is known for low prices. GE (GE, Fortune 500) is known for churning out impeccably trained managers.

And IBM? More than anything, IBM is known for knowing how to sell. Ever since the 1930s, when Thomas J. Watson Sr.'s handpicked classes of mostly Ivy League grads began each day with the rallying song "Hail to the IBM," the company has been a vaunted sales training ground.

Six of the company's eight CEOs have come up through sales, including the current one, Sam Palmisano. He calls his 40,000-strong sales force "our face to the client."

The article goes on to tell the story of how this star salesman has achieved his success so far:

"He's not just selling products from an IBM catalog; he's sifting through the company's vast research labs and inventing new combinations of goods and services tailored to each customer."

In this case, the story is how he helped IBM get a good piece of the exploding market for wireless telephony in India.  It's a story that's both about the individual and the company, and is as important in understanding the history of this company, as the role of the Selectric typewriter in IBM becoming a global power in "word processing" before word processing as we know it was invented by Microsoft and Apple.

And like all good stories, this one ends with an enticing twist at the end, offering a glimpse into the next thing that could be a step up for both our hero and his company in the emerging market that's India. It's worth a read.