I was honored to be included in the “Conversations with Early Innovators” section of Oracle Corporation’s Innovation Showcase, which is now being featured on its website along with a 100-day countdown to Oracle OpenWorld.
As the founder of Oracle’s inside sales group, I stressed the
innovation of Oracle’s business practices while others interviewed
focused on the company’s technology innovations. There’s a fun story
about Ted Codd - the father of relational database - in there, too.
Here’s the interview in its entirety:
Anneke Seley was the twelfth Oracle employee and the designer of
the company’s revolutionary phone sales operation that is now called
OracleDirect. She helped to organize Oracle’s first user conferences,
which were the predecessor events to Oracle OpenWorld. Currently, she
is the CEO and founder of Phone Works, a sales strategy and
implementation consultancy that specializes in helping companies
incorporate phone and Web selling into their sales models. Seley is
also the coauthor of a new book, Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
Q:What was innovative about the telephone sales organization that you started in 1985?
A:It wasn’t typical for a
company to sell complex enterprise software by phone, but in 1985
that’s basically what I was recruited to do. I had joined Oracle in an
entry position in 1980, but in 1985, when we were releasing products
for the PC, the old distribution model of having a field sales
organization sell every single copy of Oracle was no longer practical
or economical. So I started the phone sales organization, which
everybody in the field thought was going to be a total disaster. They
said, “Who would buy software on the phone? This is really important,
complex system stuff that people run their companies on. Who’s going to
buy it, without seeing somebody in person?”
Q:How successful was this new sales organization?
A:We started out with two
employees. By the end of the first year, we had about 20 people. It was
the fastest growing sales organization in the company. And now, you can
see what happened—OracleDirect brings in hundreds of millions of
dollars. We did very well. Prospective customers were very happy to
talk to us—and buy products—on the phone, as long as we knew what we
were talking about.
Q:Did your sales staff do a lot of cold calling in the early days?
A:No, because we had a very
active and successful demand generation marketing program that would
drive leads into the company. We also had advertising. I recall one
early ad, created by Rick Bennett, which had a picture of a biplane
[representing Oracle's competitor] being shot down. It got a lot of
attention for being so aggressive.
Q:The book Sales 2.0, which you coauthored, has a chapter about Oracle. Would you give us some highlights?
A:It shows how Oracle in the
1980s was very forward thinking. Nowadays, it’s really common for
organizations to launch or have a big part of their distribution
strategy include an inside sales or phone and Web selling component. It
wasn’t so common in 1985. But a key point about Sales 2.0 is to sell in
the way the customer wants to buy and to align your resources
appropriately—given the profitability, the size of the deal, the size
of the customer, and whatever makes sense. For a lot of customers, it
was totally fine not to see a salesperson. Sales 2.0 is about more
effective and more efficient selling for both the seller and the buyer
that’s enabled by technology. Innovation is not just about the
technology, but also about the business practice that you enable with
the technology.
Q:You also helped to organize the first Oracle conference—what do you recall about that?
A:It was in 1982, if I remember
correctly. I think we called it the Oracle User Conference, and we held
it at the Hyatt Union Square in San Francisco. I know we had fewer than
1,000 attendees because I remember it was a big deal when we had the
second annual conference and attracted 1,000 attendees. The audience
was mostly developers. It was an incredible success—and a useful venue
for enabling direct contact between the Oracle developers and the
Oracle staff and the customer base.
Q:Any speakers stand out in your mind?
A:Tedd Codd, the father of the
relational database, was the keynote speaker at our second user
conference. It was held in San Diego at the InterContinental, which was
a big step up. I was a kid then, and here was this historical figure
who was so important to the company, and we were honored to have him at
our user’s conference. I believe he was retired from IBM at the time.
My job was to keep the conference on schedule and to deal with the
logistical side of things. And here was Ted Codd speaking before the
audience, and he wouldn’t stop talking. But we had to get to our next
session. So I asked him at least three times—you know, “Thank you, it’s
such an honor to have you here, and now we’re ready for the next
session.” But he just kept on talking. It was definitely a moment that
I’ll never forget. He wasn’t a schedule kind of guy. I think he was
really enjoying himself. And, I don’t want to assume anything, but
these technically brilliant people want to see their inventions become
reality. It was meaningful to him that Oracle had done just that, by
creating the first commercially available relational database. [Editor's
note: Oracle founders used Codd's published description of a working
prototype for a relational database as a model for the Oracle database.)
Q:What drives Oracle’s culture of innovation—does it come from the top?
A:Absolutely, it comes from
Larry. Larry was a technical guy. He loved technical innovation, and he
hired people that were really, really good. We didn’t necessarily
follow the rules that other businesses follow. We’d hire people like
me—who graduated with a degree in human biology from Stanford—and let
them start a sales division with no sales background. The idea was to
give smart people a project and let them figure it out. That’s the
essence of the culture at Oracle. It started with technical innovation,
and then it expanded to other parts of the business.
How is your company’s culture innovative? How are you
transforming your business practices to be as innovative as your
product or service offerings?
I was honored to be included in the “Conversations with Early Innovators” section of Oracle Corporation’s Innovation Showcase, which is now being featured on its website along with a 100-day countdown to Oracle OpenWorld.
As the founder of Oracle’s inside sales group, I stressed the
innovation of Oracle’s business practices while others interviewed
focused on the company’s technology innovations. There’s a fun story
about Ted Codd - the father of relational database - in there, too.
Here’s the interview in its entirety:
Anneke Seley was the twelfth Oracle employee and the designer of
the company’s revolutionary phone sales operation that is now called
OracleDirect. She helped to organize Oracle’s first user conferences,
which were the predecessor events to Oracle OpenWorld. Currently, she
is the CEO and founder of Phone Works, a sales strategy and
implementation consultancy that specializes in helping companies
incorporate phone and Web selling into their sales models. Seley is
also the coauthor of a new book, Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
Q:What was innovative about the telephone sales organization that you started in 1985?
A:It wasn’t typical for a
company to sell complex enterprise software by phone, but in 1985
that’s basically what I was recruited to do. I had joined Oracle in an
entry position in 1980, but in 1985, when we were releasing products
for the PC, the old distribution model of having a field sales
organization sell every single copy of Oracle was no longer practical
or economical. So I started the phone sales organization, which
everybody in the field thought was going to be a total disaster. They
said, “Who would buy software on the phone? This is really important,
complex system stuff that people run their companies on. Who’s going to
buy it, without seeing somebody in person?”
Q:How successful was this new sales organization?
A:We started out with two
employees. By the end of the first year, we had about 20 people. It was
the fastest growing sales organization in the company. And now, you can
see what happened—OracleDirect brings in hundreds of millions of
dollars. We did very well. Prospective customers were very happy to
talk to us—and buy products—on the phone, as long as we knew what we
were talking about.
Q:Did your sales staff do a lot of cold calling in the early days?
A:No, because we had a very
active and successful demand generation marketing program that would
drive leads into the company. We also had advertising. I recall one
early ad, created by Rick Bennett, which had a picture of a biplane
[representing Oracle's competitor] being shot down. It got a lot of
attention for being so aggressive.
Q:The book Sales 2.0, which you coauthored, has a chapter about Oracle. Would you give us some highlights?
A:It shows how Oracle in the
1980s was very forward thinking. Nowadays, it’s really common for
organizations to launch or have a big part of their distribution
strategy include an inside sales or phone and Web selling component. It
wasn’t so common in 1985. But a key point about Sales 2.0 is to sell in
the way the customer wants to buy and to align your resources
appropriately—given the profitability, the size of the deal, the size
of the customer, and whatever makes sense. For a lot of customers, it
was totally fine not to see a salesperson. Sales 2.0 is about more
effective and more efficient selling for both the seller and the buyer
that’s enabled by technology. Innovation is not just about the
technology, but also about the business practice that you enable with
the technology.
Q:You also helped to organize the first Oracle conference—what do you recall about that?
A:It was in 1982, if I remember
correctly. I think we called it the Oracle User Conference, and we held
it at the Hyatt Union Square in San Francisco. I know we had fewer than
1,000 attendees because I remember it was a big deal when we had the
second annual conference and attracted 1,000 attendees. The audience
was mostly developers. It was an incredible success—and a useful venue
for enabling direct contact between the Oracle developers and the
Oracle staff and the customer base.
Q:Any speakers stand out in your mind?
A:Tedd Codd, the father of the
relational database, was the keynote speaker at our second user
conference. It was held in San Diego at the InterContinental, which was
a big step up. I was a kid then, and here was this historical figure
who was so important to the company, and we were honored to have him at
our user’s conference. I believe he was retired from IBM at the time.
My job was to keep the conference on schedule and to deal with the
logistical side of things. And here was Ted Codd speaking before the
audience, and he wouldn’t stop talking. But we had to get to our next
session. So I asked him at least three times—you know, “Thank you, it’s
such an honor to have you here, and now we’re ready for the next
session.” But he just kept on talking. It was definitely a moment that
I’ll never forget. He wasn’t a schedule kind of guy. I think he was
really enjoying himself. And, I don’t want to assume anything, but
these technically brilliant people want to see their inventions become
reality. It was meaningful to him that Oracle had done just that, by
creating the first commercially available relational database. [Editor's
note: Oracle founders used Codd's published description of a working
prototype for a relational database as a model for the Oracle database.)
Q:What drives Oracle’s culture of innovation—does it come from the top?
A:Absolutely, it comes from
Larry. Larry was a technical guy. He loved technical innovation, and he
hired people that were really, really good. We didn’t necessarily
follow the rules that other businesses follow. We’d hire people like
me—who graduated with a degree in human biology from Stanford—and let
them start a sales division with no sales background. The idea was to
give smart people a project and let them figure it out. That’s the
essence of the culture at Oracle. It started with technical innovation,
and then it expanded to other parts of the business.
How is your company’s culture innovative? How are you
transforming your business practices to be as innovative as your
product or service offerings?
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