How to Sell

I work for a big technology company. I know this is supposed to be a technology blog, but I recently took an awesome sales class and thought I'd share what I learned. Even though my day job has little to do with selling a product, I found this class to be extremely useful and practical. Whether it be selling an idea, point of view, or oneself for a raise/promo, we all engage in selling in one form or another. And after I learned how to sell, I then took a Negotiation class to figure out how to get the most in return for what I'm selling! A powerful combination indeed.

In a nutshell, the key to selling is politics. Every major buying decision is a political decision. Different people are striving to advance their particular agendas. This is a key point I'll return to later. The political power base of an organization is often not what it appears to be. It transcends the formal org chart and structure. Identifying pockets of informal influence and positioning yourself for political advantage is even more important than the objective merit of your idea.

Any organization with more than 1 person has politics. A person's authority in a company is usually obvious from an org chart. A person's standing and influence in an organization is more subtle and requires investigation. Adding value by doing good work is not enough to earn influence within an organization. To become influential, one must be recognized by powerful people. Therefore, to sell effectively to someone entails understanding their personal agenda and helping them advance that agenda.

One particularly effective tactic that smart people use is to socialize ideas first before formally proposing them. Its effective for two reasons:

1. When people are bought-in to your idea, they'll defend you.
2. It prevents someone from surprising you with something you hadn't thought of at an inopportune moment

Intel to Eventually Exit NAND Flash

First the context

Intel announced record revenue and unit shipments in Q4'07 that beat their previous record by a half billion dollars. Intel netted $2.3B from a gross of $10.7B. Gross margins, a highly watched indicator of profitability, came in at a whopping 58%, almost unheard of in any business. Further, profits grew significantly faster than revenue, another sign of a keenly improving operation. The primary drivers for the impressive gross margins were: higher unit volumes, lower unit costs, and lower 45nm costs. The 45nm process is a breakthrough technology that utilizes for the first time hafnium based high-k metal gate technology.

Yet Intel's stock price got spanked, down 15% immediately in after-hours trading. What was the underlying reason behind the seemingly dichotomous market reaction? Weaker than expected Q4 results, uncertainty in the overall economy, and less than anticipated Q1'08 guidance contributed to the stock price demise. But the primary reason was Intel's NAND flash business.

Flash History 101

Intel pioneered the non-volatile Flash memory technology in the late 1980s. The key distinguishing advantage of flash memory was that it was non-volatile, meaning that the memory chip didn't lose data when powered off unlike DRAM for example. After transitioning to the much more lucrative microprocessor business, Intel's primary motive for remaining in the NOR flash business was to keep open a second flank on AMD so that they couldn't compete as effectively in the higher-margin processor business. Recently NOR flash started to lose out to another flash technology called NAND, which was much better suited for the growing data storage market that is utilized in devices such as mp3 players, digital cameras, and just about every other device that needs to retain data after power is turned off. And NAND was the fastest growing semi-conductor segment, period. Intel was even willing to enter the NAND business late because it found a way for it to complement its main processor business by including flash memory on its computer motherboards in its vPro platform and its still to be proven Turbo Memory offering.

The Rub

This all sounds promising for NAND, so what's the rub? Despite the near ubiquitous nature of Flash memory, Intel never found a way to make a profit with it, even when it was #1 in the NOR market for years, much less now with NAND where it's #5 with 3% market share behind Samsung, Toshiba, Hynix, and Micron respectively. In 2006, the Flash business lost $555M when Intel finally had enough and spun it off with STM to get their Flash assets off the books.

So the obvious reason Intel will jettison its remaining NAND flash business is profitability, or lack thereof. In the current environment, Intel has made clear that it no longer has the patience to tolerate money losing ventures as they have demonstrated by selling off numerous unprofitable businesses over the last two years. There's also a strategic reason that makes this prediction a near certainty. Competing in NAND exacerbates a conflict with a potentially important and strategic customer - Samsung. Samsung currently purchases significant quantities of processors for PCs and is working with Intel to develop the next generation of DRAM technology to benefit Intel's primary PC business. Further, Intel is counting on Samsung to be a strategic customer in a key future growth area, the $10B mobile internet device consumer electronics market.

The only issue that is preventing Intel from exiting NAND immediately are its existing contractual obligations. So the question is when, not if Intel will sell off NAND.

Beware: Web Photos Can Now be Searched and Identified

For all of you who have posted or have friends who have posted brazen pics of you on the web - Beware. A new search engine called Polar Rose uses sophisticated facial recognition algorithms to reconstruct a 3D shape of someone's face to generate a "face print". This face print is then used to search against other photos for matches.

Facial recognition isn't new. However, Polar Rose has demonstrated that its method is more accurate than previous attempts attempts at this technology. Now Polar Rose has made its best in class facial recognition software available for use on the internet. The Polar Rose plug-in for Firefox is in beta and will be released this month. The Internet Explorer plug in will follow shortly.

The plug in allows users to:
1. Identify the name of any person in a public photo on the web
2. Search for more photos of the same person across the entire internet
3. Create alerts to be sent when new photos of a person are posted
4. Collectively add information and tag people in online photos
5. Sort online photos by the people appearing in them

Polar Rose's reach extends to online photo sharing sites such as: Snapfish, Webshots, and Flickr. There is no question that there will be more tracking of online photography. Further, no search engine "opt-out" is available at this time.

Users however can take precautions to ensure privacy. For example, only use password protected sites. Better yet, use other means of sharing photos with friends and family. Always assume that photos you post will be available and seen by the broader public and select which photos you post accordingly. Lastly, beware of other people posting photos with you in them, especially at public events that may be publicized. And always exercise utmost discretion

Why Did Intel Pull Out of OLPC?

Intel announced today that it will terminate its formal relationship with Nicholas Negroponte's OLPC initiative. Although both Intel and Negroponte share the common goal of supporting a billion children with computer technology, Intel cited philosophical differences with Negroponte on how best to realize the common vision.

If Intel remains committed to the common goal, what was the problem? The problem was Negroponte's unreasonable demand that Intel exclusively support the OLPC XO laptop and break all other commitments with governments and customers considering other solutions, including the Classmate PC.

Intel remains steadfast in its support of the OLPC mission. There is more than rhetoric to back up the claim. Intel has donated over a billion dollars over the last ~10 years to advance the use of computer technology in schools. In over 30 countries, millions of teachers have been trained and they in turn have helped countless more students.

Negroponte's recent actions indicate that he seems to think that he owns this effort alone. Its either his way or not at all. History tells us that this kind of hubris precedes the fall. Given his lackluster success so far, mediocre arrogance might be another way to describe the reason for these recent events. But with Intel still committed to the goal, thankfully the children should still realize the benefit they deserve.

Intel vs. AMD

On November 19, 2007, AMD launched its first quad-core desktop processor based on the much awaited Barcelona microarchitecture. Two processor SKUs were launched: the AMD Phenom 9600 and the AMD Phenom 9500. No OEM officially responded until today. HP was the first OEM to announce that it would begin selling a consumer desktop, the Pavilion Media Center m8330f, that will use AMD's quad-core Phenom processor and will be displayed at CES starting 1/7/2008. AMD still has a number of issues to work through in 2008, not the least of which is delivering the chips to its customers on time and as promised. AMD has proven with recent missteps that this is no certainty. Its therefore no wonder that the rest of HP's desktops and notebooks that will be on display at CES will feature a combination of Intel dual-core and quad-core processors.

Intel's current quad-core processor that has been shipping for some time now has already shown superior clock performance compared to Phenom. In fact, the current Intel bottom bin quad-core proc has outperformed the top bin AMD Phenom 9600. Further, Intel's imminent 45nm offering will further extend the lead.

One of AMD's more notable woes was a bug within the chip's translation-lookaside buffer that caused problems from data being transferred from the Level 2 to the Level 3 cache. Still no word of an official OEM quad-core Opteron announcement.

Expect AMD to divert attention away from its performance deficiencies and towards its perceived advantage in graphics.

The Status of WiMAX

Wide scale mobile WiMAX deployments will start globally in 2008 with collaboration from service providers, infrastructure equipment vendors, and device and PC OEMs. Soon Wi-Fi and WiMAX will be integrated together on the lapotop to deliver cost effective, high speed broadband on the go. Korea is at the vanguard of this revolution having already deployed their version of WiMAX dubbed "WiBro". Other high profile WiMAX announcements have come from Taiwan, Japan, and Europe.

Several OEMs such as Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Panasonic, and Toshiba have announced embedded WiMAX into their next generation PCs. The integrated Wi-Fi/WiMAX module will have advanced multiple input/multiple output (MIMO) antenna technology and multi-band radio support. It supports the IEEE 802.16e Mobile WiMAX and IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n air interfaces and will be available in a variety of form factors.

Asus announced at CES 2008 that it will adopt WiMAX in its VX2 and U6 notebooks in addition to the enterprise class V1, UMPC R50A and mainstream F88. The next generation Eee PC will also have built-in WiMAX. In total, WiMAX will comprise 15% of its self-branded notebooks. Prices will begin from under $1,000. Asus predicts that 20% of notebook users will start using WiMAX by 2009.

WiMAX will bring about a new business model that enables low-cost embedded devices and provides low-cost and flexible service plans for consumers. It takes advantage of new spectrum and open Internet access while spurring new activation and distribution models. The technical benefits of WiMAX features use of a flat and simple all IP-based infrastructure. Operatiors will therefore have the increased ability to pick and choose interoperable and standards-based equipment which will eliminate proprietary premiums and lower deployment costs. WiMAX IEEE 802.16e is based on OFDMA, which enables advanced antenna solutions, multi-megabit bandwidth, spectral efficiency, and volume economics.

The performance of this new technology will benefit greatly from MIMO antenna technology. The general goal of WiMAX is to provide users with mobile boradband throughput comparable to typical throughput at home with DSL broadband. The key additional benefit here is the mobility while not comprimising throughput. Maximum download speeds of 10Mbps for wide area connectivity and up to 450Mbps for local Wi-Fi connectivity. These throughputs are based on theoretical maximums achievable in a zero path loss or free space environment. In practical use, wireless systems tend to deliver ~30% of this throughput.

How will WiMAX modules affect the form factor of laptops? Since OEMs will use an integrated Wi-Fi and WiMAX module on a single or half MiniCard, there will be no additional laptop real estate required. Hence no compromise of the overall laptop will be necessary thereby preserving the most critically desirable feature of mobile notebooks.