It is always a bit jarring--finding an old friend and colleague in the obituaries. Carl Cottrell, a true veteran of the "old HP" made the Los Altos Town Crier (and later the San Jose Mercury-News) two weeks ago: https://www.losaltosonline.com/people/obituaries/carl-cottrell/article_41df88ba-a240-41bf-b6e4-5612f8df345a.html.
Carl was a consummate salesman, who rose to some amazing heights for HP along the way. He spent 39 years at HP, which he chronicled beautifully in his abbreviated biography for the HP Archives: https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/timeline/carl_cottrell/carl_cottrell_memoir.htm#part_14. This archive entree covers his first 18 years at HP, starting in 1952. His memoir covers lots of the early names and contributors, from the customer support group and the quality assurance group through the emergence of formal marketing efforts and, of course, the sales organizations.
His first "big break'" was being asked to manage HPSA, the European sales organization, which he started on January 1, 1961, and he did that well, quadrupling sales in four years. He was then asked to move to the Eastern region and consolidate all of the disparate teams that had just been acquired from rep organizations, a thankless and tedious task. He enlisted Bob MacVeety as his junior partner, a man I got to know extremely well when Bill Terry brought Bob to HP Colorado Springs as our Marketing Manager. That's a story for another time--Bob and I crossed swords several times, but he put together the HP Logic Analyzer belt buckle program, which was the finest incentive for sales people ever conducted!
Sales folk earned a Bronze buckle by selling ten Logic Analyzer units; a Silver for 25, and a Gold for 50. You got a set, including a Platinum one, for 100. People went nuts for these, from 1974 through 1982. MacVeety had been HP's most successful salesman at Bell Labs for years prior.
Cottrell, back in the States, was on hand for the November 1966 launch of the HP 2116A Computer. As he wrote: "We were fortunate in that we had a few salesmen working in Paramus (HPs New Jersey office) who had computer experience. Listening to them, MacVeety and I recognized early on that computers could not be sold like instruments. Much more effort would be required. Customers wanted to see the computer run applications that they needed before they would buy. They needed programming instruction and they needed the appropriate peripherals to go with their computer. Urged on by this realization, we invested in HP's first Data Center in the Paramus office and we equipped it with demo 2116 systems. Soon there was a steady stream of customers visiting our center. Based on our Paramus experience, we began to add salesmen in the Region who had computer experience and could 'speak the language.' Soon, Eastern Region was selling more computers than any other Region, and we had set the standard for others to know. I was proud of our Region."
Cottrell's memoir had just one more line: "Satisfied with my accomplishments in Eastern Sales Region, I brought my family back to Palo Alto to take on other assignments."
HP leadership had no understanding of just how tough this computer business might become. In all of 1967, HP sold just 5 units of the HP2116, all from Eastern Sales, all by Dick Slocum, a salesman working for Cottrell. 1968 was better, and Eastern Sales led again. Hewlett brought Cottrell to Palo Alto to work with the design teams. His observations were trenchant: "They really were different. The lab was full of bearded, sandal types. Quite a shock to somebody who's not used to it. It was quite a different language spoken there. We had people to whom the HP philosophy was just totally strange, but we had very, very sharp people. The challenge was to rein them in. (Tom) Perkins was running the computer dividison, Bill Davidow was marketing manager, and Jim Treybig (Tandem founder later) was working for us. Many people left and became stars."
Then, as Cottrell later told it, in 1969, the computer business was burgeoning, up 500% at a time that Packard had left for Washington and Hewlett was now HP's CEO and President. And Hewlett had a particularly hard time with Perkins, whose minicomputer line now was $30 million per year, and Tom had much bigger plans. "Perkins kept pressing, and Hewlett, piqued, brought Carl Cottrell to Palo Alto to manage a new Computer Systems Group, with two divisions (Dymec, run by Perkins, and AMD run by Jerry Carlson)." It was a near-total disaster. Carlson, an ambitious accountant, had no qualification for managing much of anything, but Packard had long insisted that 'good people could learn any job.' Perkins, who would go on to co-found Tandem and then the remarkable Venture Capital firm, Kleiner-Perkins, was more than well-qualified, but often incredibly prickly as a colleague. He soon left HP.
Cottrell, with John Doyle's help, established low-cost overseas divisions, especially for core memory and keyboards, but Data General and Digital Equipment were being run by aggressive, take-no-prisoner types, and Cottrell's and his team struggled, especially after Perkins deplaned. Cottrell, much later, observed ruefully that, "I gave it my best shot, but we made some mistakes, and I was over my head, to tell you the truth."
A very positive side of Packard's management approach was to take 'failed' executives from one assignment, and put them into challenging new roles that maybe weren't quite so demanding, but could take advantage of the learning that they had experienced. Cort Van Rensselaer had failed miserably as the Oscilloscope division manager, and then also as head of corporation acquisitions, but he and Cottrell teamed up to define and design an Information Architecture diagram for HP in the mid-1970s, and in key areas defined the entire MRP and later Supply Chain Management systems that gave HP an incredible headstart on running a large multinational corporation with highly effective structures. HP never chose to productize this work, but you all know Salesforce where Marc Benioff installed these concepts.
This in retrospect, was a huge contribution for HP. As noted in The HP Phenomenon (p. 188 https://www.sup.org/books/business/hp-phenomenon), "we documented and then started describing for customers what happens via information flows--invoicing, order processing, manufacturing schedules. It is amazing--HP pioneered accounting standards--it was unheard of in those days, but HP people had long since set up accounting standards, so that every division had the same chart of accounts. And we were closing our books in record time."
John Young later gave Van Rensselaer and Cottrell credit for helping, more than anyone else, OR EVEN THE PRODUCTS THEMSELVES, HP being able to become successful in the computing world. This frankly is one of those behind-the-scenes stories that seldom gets told, but is the secret often. Young, with Cort and Carl, enabled by computer sales teams that hosted CEO and C-suite workshops in Cupertino (this was a key assignment for Scott Futryk, who became my partner at AstroVirtual many years later), gave this a clear voice in a 2005 interview with Ray Price and Chuck House:
"I was trying to figure out how to run a whole company, particularly applying this quality defect idea in all phases of the company. We rolled that idea up, and began having seminars here in Cupertino, to which we'd invite a lot of high-powered people to come. We had a lot of great data. That was one of the most powerful selling tools ever . . . because we had zero credibility in big corporate IT places. These were IBM-owned--every company, outside of the lab or the factory floor. If you're going to break into where the real money is in the enterprise, you've got to go up against IBM. You couldn't go sell a Spectrum, you couldn't sell a product. You're selling an answer to a business problem, so you have to tailor the presentation to the corporate communications and inventory guys and corporate manufacturing. Cort van Rensselaer, Carl Cottrell, Hank Taylor, and Sally Dudley had credibility. On a daily basis, HP could get sales from around the world--product by product, office by office, the next morning. The notion that you could get that in 1975 was crazy for any other company. We had the order processing system, we had the order transmission system, and the email that layered on that. It was the leading-edge worldwide system. It was remarkable." And, it propelled HP from the 14th largest computer company in the world to the #1 position in a mere 32 years. Yes, without Spectrum and HPPA, this would not have happened. Yes, without major screw-ups at DEC and IBM circa the 1990 debacles, this would not have happened. But, without question, without Cort and Carl, it wouldn't have either.
And that story doesn't make the obituary, where Carl's family modestly noted only that "he worked for 39 years at Hewlett-Packard, which enabled him to travel extensively and live abroad. Many will remember Carl for his contagious sense of humor, which left a lasting impact on many lives."
Carl was an inspiration for me, a person and colleague whom I will always treasure.
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