At VeriFone It's a Dog's Life (And They Love It!)

I can certainly do that. But let me step back and emphasize our fundamental competitive ethos: we are insensitive to distance and time. You know, if you are operating by conventional means -- phone or fax or whatever -- you have to know where someone is to work with them. The way we operate, it doesn't make any difference where people are. I don't give a damn where they are, as long as they can access e-mail.

We have also proven that there is no reason VeriFone can't have a 24-hour day. VeriFone does have a 24-hour day -- and without people pulling all-nighters or getting so frazzled they can't function.

We have software projects that basically follow the sun. Our facility in Bangalore, India is one of our centers of excellence for networking and communications. So Bangalore develops the communications code for new products. Of course, that code has to be tested, and that work is done in Dallas. It also has to be integrated into our overall systems code, and that work is often done in Hawaii, where many of our systems engineers are based.

In a conventional company, where all the engineers are sitting in the same place, you'd have a tremendous amount of serial processing. First you write the code, then you test it, then you integrate it. Here, because our people are distributed around the world, everything works in parallel. Before they go to sleep, the boys in Bangalore upload code and ship it to, say, Dallas or Hawaii, let those guys work on it, and then start again the next morning in Bangalore. Allowing our projects to follow the sun is something that we have done consistently -- and with devastating efficiency.

One-third of your people are on the road at least half the time. Everyone is communicating over e-mail. Can you demonstrate how that translates into beating the competition?

We were just in a situation in Greece, a major dogfight over a customer where we thought we had the business. My guy went in to close and the customer was objecting: "This Canadian company just came to visit us. They say you don't have any expertise in debit cards. You don't have any PIN pads installed, and they are the world leaders in debit. So we're not really sure we want to go with you."

Well, it came like a bolt out of the blue. And as luck would have it, our man in Greece had been with us for only six months. He didn't know whether what this Canadian company was saying was true or not. So he asked for 24 hours. He had been inculcated enough in our culture that he went back to his hotel room in Athens and put out an e-mail to I_Sales, which is to all sales and marketing personnel worldwide. He reported on what happened, and that he was going to lose the account, and said: "Please tell me what kind of debit installations we have, what kind of equipment is in place, and any reference accounts I can use to go back and fight the case."

I sit here with great pride and tell you that within 24 hours he had 16 responses and 10 reference accounts. And what he did was really superb. Rather than paraphrase the e-mails, he went out, rented a printer, connected it, and did a screen print. He was in a hotel room, so he had to improvise. Then he went to the customer and politely laid out the e-mails. Sir, you can read for yourself. And oh, by the way, the e-mails include the names and phone numbers of our customers. And oh, by the way, we have 400,000 PIN pads installed. I don't have to tell you who won the order.

There are two morals to this story. Number one, it's a vivid example of what makes this company tick. The people from Asia or the United States who responded to this guy weren't going to get a commission. This was not a sales call, it was a call to arms!

Number two, because we have people all over the world, we were able to act on what happened in Greece. After all, this Canadian company is running around claiming that we are not savvy in debit. And so immediately, we launched a blitz in the market. And I don't mind telling you, when we launch a blitz, we go for the jugular. We're not very high on subtleties.

There are so many stories inside VeriFone -- it's almost a corporate mythology -- of these superfast, superhuman efforts. What kind of commitment do you expect from your people?

We expect people at VeriFone to go above and beyond the call of duty -- not because they are forced to, but because they want to. The people who join this company change. Their pace of life changes. Their intensity changes. Their emotional level changes.

How do you evaluate who's prepared to make that commitment?