Every year at Thanksgiving my father and my step mother fly down from their home in Canada to visit me and my family here in California. It’s a tradition we’ve had for many years and hope for many more years to come as we finally get back some some semblance of normalcy in the time of Covid. It’s a week of quality time with the grandkids and all of the holiday season traditions which we cherish since my family is scattered around the country. From the very first visit my dad asked to block out the evening before Thanksgiving to have dinner with one of his former work colleagues and his family and that tradition has remained each time he returns. I never questioned it much as he has collected many friends over the years both in his work and personal life however I sat down with him one night and asked him to tell me the story of how they met. After that night I realized this one was very special based on how this 20 year+ friendship came to fruition and worthy of sharing with others.
For his entire career my dad has been in sales. Selling meat to restaurants, copiers, phone systems, you name it he sold it. So in 1998 at the age of 58 after leaving Siemens he took an enterprise sales executive role at Sun Microsystems Canada which at the time was still relatively small but growing at a record pace and working to take meaningful marketshare from the giants that are Microsoft and HP in the server market. In an enterprise sales role you have usually at most 2-3 named accounts and team that supports you in qualifying and closing multimillion dollar transactions. One key role on that team is that of a sales engineer (SE) who has a technical background and is tasked with knowing the Sun Microsystems products in intimate detail and usually works very closely with the IT departments for the clients the sales executive calls on. Its a critical client facing role and having a good sales engineer can make or break your year sales wide so when my dad comes on board to this new job one of his first tasks is to assemble a team starting with this key role.
Now with Sun in its zenith of momentum many sales executives had established teams for years and the pickings of available SE candidates upon his arrival were slim. And frankly from those that were available no one was very excited to work with a new “old” sales guy that from initial perceptions was a few years from retirement, set in his ways and could not keep up with the young buck hot shot sales guys that already had track records and little need for sleep. I suspect that was the same perception of my father’s manager at the time who meekly offered up a young unproven SE candidate that every other sales executive had taken a pass on as surely my dad would as well. He was 28, had recently move to Toronto from Sun Microsystems China with his wife, was soft spoken and spoke broken english. His name was Honglin. There were many reasons he should pass on Honglin as well. How could he trust such a key role to a young kid who had just moved here and was unproven in this large enterprise market? Could he put him in front of customers and would the customers understand him? How much technical depth did he have? And I’m sure Honglin had many questions and concerns as well. Do I really want to work with an old school sales guy that maybe doesn’t know our products well? Will he work hard or mail it in knowing he can retire soon? Better to hold out for someone better but my dad and Honglin looked past all of these easy reasons to say no because they took the time to get to know each other and saw the two character traits each were looking for – drive and integrity. And both of these men had these in spades.
So the Old Lion and his protege get to work. Their largest account is Rogers Wireless which has a virtual monopoly on the TV cable market at the time and starting to build a cellular platform that will be marketing leading in Canada in a few short years. Huge investments in server infrastructure are needed and HP, Microsoft and Oracle are going after it hard with teams of veteran sales execs and executive leadership leaning in. No one gives Sun Micro a chance to win any meaningful part of this business. But they get their shot and momentum builds. My dad holds court with the business executives at Rogers and Honglin digs in deep with the IT stakeholders who will help make the decision on tens of millions of dollars in server infrastructure. And every day he and Honglin check in to compare notes and monitor progress. Honglin will come back with various promising progress reports that proved the drive my dad saw in him was bearing fruit.
“John good news we did a demo today for our product and they think we are stronger than our competitors!”
“John good news I had lunch with one of the junior IT technicians who said if we can offer this one feature it will increase our chances to win”
“John good news I know one of the other technicians. He is from the same province I grew up in China and we eat lunch together a few times a week. They all want Sun to win the work and they are recommending us!”
They kept at it and over the months not only did business momentum grow. A great mentoring friendship blossomed. One day Honglin humbly asked my dad if he would help him work on his English so over the weekend he would work on various vocabulary and writing assignments and my Dad would review it on Mondays to help with corrections until his english become fluent. They would introduce each other to their wives and soon Honglin would also become a father to a son who is now 14 and has know my dad all his life.
And in the end the Old Lion and the young SE protege win that Sun Micro server deal as well as many other pursuits and beat out the likes of HP, Microsoft and Oracle who not only had the best of the best in sales executives but the likes of Carly Fiorina, Bill Gates and Larry Ellison trying to influence as well. And that year my father John , at age 58 was named Sun Microsystems “Rookie of the Year” at the end of year sales awards and Honglin was also awarded for his work supporting my dad! The Old Lion still had the magic and his most important weapon – how to spot talent and character.
But the best part of this story is not winning some big server deal. It was the birth of a lifelong friendship from two men that took a chance on each other and made each other better as a result. Their partnership in business would eventually find different paths – one of retirement for my dad few years later and one of many promotions for Honglin who now runs a team of sales engineers for Oracle after he moved his family to live in the bay area and is thriving in his career and personal life with his wife and son. And on every Wednesday the day before Thanksgiving this dynamic duo get together with their families to celebrate a partnership no one thought would be successful and a friendship of men 31 years apart in age, from different parts of the world but sharing the traits that matter most in life.
Happy Thanksgiving
