In response to the recent SLales blog entry in reference to high fives, I wanted to take a moment to clarify the position of C-Level and VP level personnel and the use of High-Fives here at SoftLayer. Being a technology company that is constantly in search of the next innovation, we believe that a natural progression has occurred from the more legacy high-five to the more refined Fist Bump. If you don’t know what a Fist Bump is – just catch the latest episode of “Deal or No Deal” and you will see Howie Mandel and his Fist Bump maneuver. If you are not a fan of the show, think back to your childhood days of the Wonder Twins. When that dynamic duo sought to bring about Water and Animal shapes, there was always the obligatory “Fist Bump” to initiate the process. Although not a new concept by any means, we believe the next generation Fist Bump is a far superior form of adulation for the following reasons;

1. The Fist in itself represent power – it’s the most aggressive form in which the hand can be manipulated
2. The force in which the fists bump can speak volumes in reference to the level of excitement
3. Fist Bumps can be performed repeatedly with numerous other individuals without a stinging sensation
4. Fist Bumps can be performed in meetings, on phone calls and around cube corners without direct line of sight
5. Fist Bumps don’t make that “slappy” sound that tends to annoy unrelated third parties
6. Fist Bumps do not require an individual to “go high” – Fist Bumps can be performed at low, standard and high grades
7. Fist Bumps do not spread the “Samf’s” during cold and flu season
8. Fist Bumps can be personalized – example – two bumps and roll
9. Fist Bumps seem to be understood and appreciated by young and old alike
10. A proper Fist Bump is simply more elegant and invigorating then even the wildest of High-Fives

So, here I sit thinking about the lack of Fist Bump deployments and maybe it resides in the fact that we don’t have a virtual Fist Bump like Mary’s High Five symbol. So, without further a due, I give you the Virtual Fist Bump – III!

As anyone can plainly see, if you looked at the end of your clenched fist, you would see four fingers with a tucked thumb. That is easily represented as III! with the little dot representing the tucked thumb. So listen up SLales – a new form of celebration is acceptable here at SoftLayer. High-Fives and Fist Bumps abound!! Let’s celebrate SoftLayer’s Success!!

Now if we can just teach Doug how to Fist Bump without turning it into a game of bloody knuckles from the third grade.

It looks like nonsense to you, but it means OH SO MUCH more to the members of SLales.

“.llli” is the international SoftLayer Sales symbol for *high five*, invoked when major deals are closed, or when hilarious jokes are made over the cube walls.
Here’s how it works: the period is the thumb, the three lower case Ls are the index, middle and ring finger, and the lower case I is the pinky. See it?

SoftLayer Sales are the big mouths of the company – we are louder, more boisterous and more interactive with our teammates than most of the other office departments, so high-fiving is pretty much a standard mode of communication. (I don’t think it hurts that pretty much everyone on the sales team was in a frat/sorority in college.)

Not everyone loves the high-five, though. When there’s a .llli session going on in the sales area, most others steer clear. When a potential high-fiver (read: Douglas Jackson) is hired, part of the training documentation includes a list of C-titles and VPs who you should not attempt to high five. Doug seems to specialize in getting people to high-five, knowing that they don’t want to.

Just another peek into the world in which we live. Come on sales chat sometime and give us a high five. Or make it a double:
illl. .llli

Every so often on a slammed sale days, I offer to pay for lunch for the sales team to keep everyone at their desks focused on sales rather than worrying about food. Other times, a very nice customer might offer to pay for lunch one day for the sales team. Regardless of the situation, I usually task someone with ordering and picking up the food so the rest of the team can focus on sales. Seems pretty simple right? Somehow it never seems to go as planned. Here are two examples:
How to spend $200 on lunch for 6:

Daniel one of our Senior Account Managers calls me on his way into work (he comes in at 11:00PM), here is the conversation:

Daniel: “Hey Steven, I see its really slammed at work want me to pick up lunch on the way in?”
Steven: “Sure, go ahead no one has had time to get up from their desk much less get lunch. Pick something up an Ill buy lunch today for the team”.
Daniel: “What should I get”
Steven: “Whatever is fine, gotta go the phone is ringing”

Daniel shows up a bit later with a ton of food, enough to feed half the office not just sales. A really nice Fajitas feast with all the fixings, hot sauce, cheese, beans, guacamole, rice, pretty much everything. I thought to myself, wow Daniel did a really good job here this is excellent. Then I get the bill… It was over $200 for takeout lunch for 6 people. I promptly tell Daniel he is no longer on lunch delivery team, and that $200 for lunch is a bit much. Two months later I am still trying to work up the courage to put that one on an expense report.

How to spend $25 on lunch for 10:

A particularly grateful customer contacted us saying that he wanted to buy lunch for the sales and a couple of networking team members that helped him out with a recent issue. Mary another one of our Senior Account Managers was tasked with the order this time and after much discussion back and forth between Pizza and Mexican food, we settle on Mexican food. I am thinking to myself, thank goodness Daniel isn’t in charge of this order, Vik (the customer) probably doesn’t want to pay $200 for lunch. When the food arrives, I step out into the sales area to examine the feast. Much to my surprise there is only two very small bags of food half full.
I announce out loud:

“Where is the rest of the food? This isn’t close to enough to feed 10 people.”
I’m told “that’s it, that’s all we got”.

No cheese, no hot sauce, no guacamole… this is a far cry from the spread Daniel got last time and there was no chance of it feeding 8 people. Ultimately I send someone back for more food.

So what is the lesson learned here? The sale team is excellent at selling SoftLayer services, and managing customer relationships. They can tell you the difference between and why you want a Single processor 5000 series server vs. a Single processor 3000 series server, they can tell you why your video streaming site needs to run on a server with SAS drives and not SATAII drives, and they can tell you all about StorageLayer and how it can help you. What cant they do for you? They can’t get the Mexican food order for lunch correct.

Next time we will stick with Pizza.

Life at our Corporate Headquarters can get a bit weird at times but is never short on fun. Every day I get to pass the Ferrari Dealership of Dallas on the way to work, often times there are a few whizzing on by my Honda, much to my envy.

When I get into the office where Corporate is located in North Dallas I sit in my cube with Superman as my sidekick and go to work. Sitting on my row is Daniel the gadget guy, Doug who never stops talking (ever), and Mary who manages to receive at least one package a day from various vendors even if she is not here – how she does that I will never know. In the next row sits Amanda from The ‘Ville, Laude the Kung-Fu Legend and Patty Mac-Patty Mac. While wheeling and dealing sales on our services we are always yelling over each other at what, when and where we are selling for coordination of product placement and inventory updates, it’s very much like the floor at the NYMEX, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So there we sit, 12+ hours a day in our nice massage chairs shouting at each other like heathens. Did I mention the story on the massage chairs? Daniel being the gadget guy that he is was always raving about how cool it would be to get office chairs that massage you while you sit there and work. So Lance made it one of our Sales incentives that month that if we hit, we all get massage chairs. We of course hit our team goal and now there is a general low humming from the chairs that resonate from the Sales section of the office – along with the yelling and screaming of course. More from Amanda on our cool new chairs.

Now we share this office building with several other companies and I would estimate that there are around 100+ people at any given time in this building. The restroom here has two stalls – you do the math. It gets quite interesting at times but at least they have elevator music playing in there. I guess.

After my day is over I like to go around and talk to co-workers to catch up on things. Then it’s off past the dealership to my home for some more clicking away at my keyboard to tie up some loose ends from work and some much needed rest. And tomorrow I get to see some more Ferraris – how cool is that?

Michael # 1

As the leader of the SoftLayer Sales team, I like to think of myself as a well respected yet lovable boss that my employees loves to work with. However as all managers are from time to time, I can sometimes be the least liked person on the team due to the difficult decisions I have to make. So when my beloved team decided to create the JibJab snowball fight and post it on the SL forums, it was no wonder I ended up being the one who got hit where the sun doesn’t shine with a snowball.

After seeing their video, I decided to make my own little JibJab video to show the sales team that I know what really goes on in the sales area when I am not around.

117 Servers in one day. That’s right — We sold and fully provisioned 117 servers yesterday. Words can’t express how proud this makes me as we’ve come a long way from when I started at Softlayer just over a year and a half ago. When I got here I was the 25th employee and we were in a very small, weird office and I was always within (literally) arms reach of Lance and Steven and a good (great) day was selling and provisioning double digit servers. Now things have gotten much bigger and we are still humming along coming out with new products, new datacenters (Seattle and more to come) and innovating new and never before seen ideas and services in the hosting world.

We now have over 100 employees, nearing 15,000 servers in production, a new (bigger) office and record revenue being generated daily. Two years ago when we opened our doors for business we had zero (0) in all of the above categories. We have grown up fast while continuing to be the best out there with our innovation and services.

I’m just so proud. *tear*

Softlayer is a very unique company. It is a rare find and it is a pleasure to be associated with this company. I certainly hope our customers feel the same way (and if you don’t, please talk to us so we can make our service with you more valuable). I am a Senior Sales Representative at SL and I would like to give you more of a behind the scenes feel for why we are the best sales staff in the industry.

I am a people pleaser, and I truly love to help people find satisfaction. I have had several sales positions since I graduated from college many years ago. The thing those previous sales positions had in common was that the salesman was incented to take his own needs into consideration first and foremost. This directly conflicts with what I want to accomplish in business. It is understood that everyone goes into business not to play Barbie dolls, but to earn a profit. Still, this seems fundamentally wrong to me. I have direct experience (even in this industry) where sales positions are incented to put their own needs and wants before those of the customer, or even the company they are working for. This misappropriation of incentive or motivation can cause any number of scenarios that are bad for business on both sides. Luckily this is not how things are done at Softlayer. The customer’s needs come first, as it should be.

The main reason why I came to Softlayer was because of the way that its sales staff is designed. We are put together as a team, for the customer’s benefit. Customers do not need to worry about working with a single individual sales person unless they simply prefer to. I know that I prefer to build up business relationships because this makes for a good understanding of what the main goals are for each customer, and I can have a better grasp of what I can personally do to help. We are not individually commissioned so customers can rest assured knowing that we are doing everything possible to put them in the best situation imaginable. This allows us to avidly search for those “win – win” situations that are positive for everyone involved.

The Softlayer Sales staff is also very diverse in the styles and talents that we offer. Everyone here has had several years of industry experience and is quite knowledgeable about not only product lines, but also the businesses of our customers. I would go so far as to say that we have the most knowledgeable staff in the industry.
The bottom line is that an intelligent sales staff working for the right reasons ends up with satisfied customers. Satisfied customers are inclined to do more business with a company, and a positive culture between the company and customer is created as opposed to a negative one where it seems that there is always a disparity between the two.

Because of the culture we have created here, it makes me happy to come to work each day.