Sales Lessons from South African-born Briton Who Kept Gates Awake at Night

Dr David Potter died recently aged 82. Back in 1980 the 'maverick academic' founded an English computer company, Psion. Quite the legacy, it begat Apple VPs, revolutionary chip makers and the world's first hand-held computer with market-making digital personal organiser (PDAs as then called, pre-smartphones).

I learn this and more, including how he was the only person the Microsoft founder said worried him, from glowing obituaries.

Recounting a fascinating worklife, which thankfully contain a trio of Sales pointers. Remembering that this was a pioneer who blindsided, took on, and beat when dwarfed by, American and Japanese behemoth rivals of the day.

Two of them push heartily through my 'recruitment' open door.

As London broadsheet commentator, Andrew Orlowski set out;

"Hiring a computer science graduate at Psion was like expecting an AI to give you a smart answer: what it comes up with is going to be derivative and already out of date."

This highlights the folly of recruiting to a spec of someone doing the exact same job for the past couple years that you want them to do for the next two.

I've been sadly party to the "meat and potatoes" hire. I never then let it happen on my watch. It’s backward-looking and inherently limits innovation. For both growth and consolidation aims, interview for trajectory, mindset, and adaptability instead.

Another key insight;

"Good people also tend to hire other good people".

Vital, as;

"Hiring brilliant people has an exponential effect".

I've bashed my own head against this particular brick wall. When HR insist on doing the initial screening for new sales colleagues for instance. Also one painful experience was of a vast global operation allowing a continually non-performing and role-hopping sales 'leader' to make final decisions.

Talent attracts talent. You shouldn't allow anyone else to gatekeep it.

And a third evokes Brooks' Law. Beyond mere late project warnings there's shaky operational crutches;

'... an abundance of capital has made engineers lazy. They throw resources at a problem, rather than their intellect.'

I absolutely know one thing here. You can never spend your way out of a Sales problem.

Throwing money at a broken sales process never fixes it. Extra budget, redundant tech stacks, or deploying more under-prepared reps at an iffy pipeline just scale the underlying friction. Sharper strategy and better execution outdo any bigger spend.