Analysts are decidedly underwhelmed by the content of Louis Gerstner’s memo to top managers, leaked to the Wall Street Journal (CI No 2,206) although they believe he will have to reorganise the vast 40,000-member sales force eventually; he has held his fire because customers have been telling him they want one point of contact with the company: I think (reorganising the sales force is) the kind of aggressive move we thought Gerstner would make, Stephen Smith, analyst at PaineWebber Inc told Reuter – Its sales organisation costs it $20,000m a year; An effort to make IBM more entrepreneurial is being thwarted by customers, added Bill Milton, analyst at Brown Brothers Harriman; other analysts said that after IBM settles down and gets its workforce to an optimal size, they believe that Gerstner will make some kind of organisational changes in the sales force.
