Never say Never!

"Never say Never" was a lesson that I learnt at Cisco when I was working in a product team. This was in June 2001 - which almost marks the beginning of the tough time for the industry

Me and my team would interact with a world-class sales organization which was trained to maximize the sales number in that tough environment. The sales guys did not like a negative answer especially for requirements that their customers felt as "must have" and if the competition could do

I realized that the only way to sell your product was to make sure that you 'never said never' for any requirement within your "domain". The "domain" would be defined by your product positioning. The sales people loved it

And when there are hundreds of customers with varying requirements, the policy of "never say never" gets out of hand easily. And it did, for us too!! However amount of time we would work, it would never be enough!

When I look back now, we were being naive. But it seems so exciting though! Probably it gave us a purpose!