Every year, I teach hundreds of sellers how to sell IBM storage products. I have been doing this since the late 1990s, and it is one task that has carried forward from one job to another as I transitioned through various roles from development, to marketing, to consulting.

This week, I am in the city of Taipei [Taipei] to teach Top Gun sales class, part of IBM's [Sales Training] curriculum. This is only my second time here on the island of Taiwan.

As you can see from this photo, Taipei is a large city with just row after row of buildings. The metropolitan area has about seven million people, and I saw lots of construction for more on my ride in from the airport.

The student body consists of IBM Business Partners and field sales reps eager to learn how to become better sellers. Typically, some of the students might have just been hired on, just finished IBM Sales School, a few might have transferred from selling other product lines, while others are established storage sellers looking for a refresher on the latest solutions and technologies.

I am part of the teach team comprised of seven instructors from different countries. Here is what the week entails for me:

• Monday - I will present "Selling Scale-Out NAS Solutions" that covers the IBM SONAS appliance and gateway configurations, and be part of a panel discussion on Disk with several other experts.
  
  
• Tuesday - I have two topics, "Selling Disk Virtualization Solutions" and "Selling Unified Storage Solutions", which cover the IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC), Storwize V7000 and Storwize V7000 Unified products.
  
  
• Wednesday - I will explain how to position and sell IBM products against the competition.
  
  
• Thursday - I will present "Selling Infrastructure Management Solutions" and "Selling Unified Recovery Management Solutions", which focus on the IBM Tivoli Storage portfolio, including Tivoli Storage Productivity Center, Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), and Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager (FCM). The day ends with the dreaded "Final Exam".
  
  
• Friday - The students will present their "Team Value Workshop" presentations, and the class concludes with a formal graduation ceremony for the subset of students who pass. A few outstanding students will be honored with "Top Gun" status.

These are the solution areas I present most often as a consultant at the IBM Executive Briefing Center in Tucson, so I can provide real-life stories of different client situations to help illustrate my examples.

To learn more about a Top Gun class in your area, see the [Top Gun class schedule].

The weather here in Taipei calls for rain every day! I was able to take this photo on Sunday morning while it was still nice and clear, but later in the afternoon, we had quite the downpour. I am glad I brought my raincoat!

technorati tags: IBM, Sales Training, Top Gun, Taipei, Taiwan, NAS, SONAS, disk, virtualization, unified+storage, SAN Volume Controller, SVC, Storwize V7000, Storwize V7000 Unified, Infrastructure Management, Tivoli Storage, Productivity Center, TPC, Unified Recovery Management, TSM, FlashCopy, FCM