When I first worked on the Dell account, back in San Francisco, in the early eighties, they were severely kicking everyone else's arse. Not only did they offer a superior product for a superior price… They overlaid this great sales model with the kind of service which guaranteed, not just that the average punter would keep sniffing around and buying because they were so happy with both the product and the service, but also, Corporate America, which was constantly worried about both the bottom line and the continuity of service and reduced costs, would keep coming back for more.
At the same time Ross Perot was launching an effort to win the Presidency. And he could have won it too, with a combination of his home spun philosophy, and his perceived honesty. Anyway, it didn’t work out for several weird reasons that would take too long to go into.
So, to read today that Dell is buying Perot systems for a mere $3.9 billion, leaves me wondering what the hell is going on? Is this an indication of the final transmogrification of the increasingly failing current American business model? Who the hell knows, everyone from IBM, to Microsoft, to Oracle is convinced that selling services is the future, rather than selling products. I don’t know. At the end of the day, I have this nagging feeling that if you don’t actually make something… You have *** all to sell. But, then again, what the hell do I know?
Hi George,
Not necessarily. Britain has been doing this since it conquered India. I remember reading "Ghandi" and discovering to my disgust how Britain took spun cotton from the locals, trailed it all the way back to mills in Britain, and then happily shipped it back and sold it to the people they took it from at a profit. It's all about margins, and until America becomes as poor as China and India, or India and China become as rich as America, it will go on.
Kevin..
Yes indeed I get the example, but the dark satanic mills of my youth actually added value to the spun cotton before shipping it back. My problem with most "service" industries is that they just seem to move stuff around, making money on each transaction. Like IT consultants who get paid to put in new sytems, then get paid again to take them out when they fail to work with the existing infrastructure... Still, not as bad as the meaningless advertising we produce for consultants.
Cheers/George
George Parker
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