HOW THEY SELL EX-CIA MAN GATHERS MARKET INTELLIGENCE FOR WESTINGHOUSE AIR BRAKE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000300240004-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 1, 1998
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: November 18, 1964
• Content Type: NSPR

WALL STREET
Sanitized - Approvediporveas?OI M3RDP
NOV 18 1964
CPYRGHT
`giant r l axt%:+rc tending to base their
'Ivey Sell horetlia ?e in cost analyses, rather tltai
x-CIA Man Gathers I of gales presentations.
Lne days or the back-slapping salesman arc
Market Intelligence for a thing of the past with us. The only way
make a sale toda
is to
i
t
y
conv
nce
e ci.is
j' toner that the equipment you will make w I
:T)
ti
h
B
Ai
k
s
ng
ouse
ra
r
e do a job cheaper and better than whit the
'1 ...?e???m??a?~j_or~, ".mu_..? , u.....ui ul.c 1111,J3-111711,1 V71 A:5
j hL' ai Pick Top prospects th st(+..~"
-
r i Truck,' To get. that information, Ed has organized
ran Off-Highway a system whose thoroughness reflects not only
j
his intelligence training but his personality. `
s
~~ ')t?1~~C;;'On Rivals Activities "Ed Green is the most organized person i've
a b
l
-.~
a. u,r, ;l ?
ucat h e tofu his mother where
For'me'r Ike Aide Shuns Spies tsi stack the iapers."
C PYRE HT By FREDERICK C. KLEIN
Ltoday has employes reading and analyzing
P:i.TrsBURGH - When Edward J. Green
i came to Westinghouse Air Brake Co. in 1953,
fresh from a top job in the Central Intelli.
genre Agepcy,,he was dismayed by something.
a. budding'! sales boss with a more conven
tional background might never have thought'
of. "I was shocked at how little was under.
stood about getting and processing Informa-
tion," he says, "We got reports from sales.
men and read the trade journals and tytat sort
of thing, but what we learned wasn't being
put together in an organized way in time to
aid decisions."
So Ed Green began organizing a sort of
business CIA at "Wabco," and intensified his
efforts when he became marketing vice
president in 1959. Using market researchers, is
salesmen and engineers as "agents," the com-'
' parry today spends about $1 million a year
collecting information on customers and com-
petitors. And its approach, though far re-
moved froni anything the layman might think,
of as "salesrnanship," has paid off in results
any sales boss of the glad-hander school might
envy, Reversing a previous slump, Wabco's
sales of air brakes, signaling devices, road
graders, off-highway trucks and other rail-
roa.d, construction and industrial equipment
have spurted alnto:;t 42ei? in the last two
years, to a 1963 record of $241 million.
No cloak-and-dagger work has gone into '
producing these results. Ed Green firmly de-
clares he is "opposed to industrial spying in
any form." Indeed, he thinks actual espionage
is overrated even in gathering political Intel-
V ligence. He had little contact with it himself;
his jobs with the CIA and its predecessor, the
wartime Office of Strategic Services, were all
administrative- Even so, he says, he dis-
covered that F09% of the information collected
by he CIA came from "overtly obtainable
sources."
Attuned to the Field
Blit tapping those "overtly obtainable
sources," Ed thinks, is as Important in sales'
as in diplomatic planning-and especially in.
Wabco's capital-goods field. The company, he
says, averages about five years to think up aj
new product, design it, produce it and begin selling selling it--and "that's too long to waste on ? a
piece of equipn-.cnt" that won't sell. Moreover,.
many of Wabco's customers, which include
r.Filroe, cons r:uctio n
have. b I r1iI ,a ;ri n ,
;reports, and scrutinizing research reports;
reaps tabs on Communist research, by looking
hrough the CIA's Consolidated Translation
urvey' reports or, technological development- 4,
lesmen, \the company compiles exhaustivel
ossiers on customer= and prospective ens-
mer's. Currently it's hi,ryhly interested.in ,sell-
ateri train nperatnls. So a shelf at W abc:n'.l.
witch 3T SigilaI (livisinn ltea.dgiiarter:s in
wissvale, Fa., ne r it, lmu,Vrh, bulges with
lue-C61ercrl. 10o;;e-leaf '' iies detailing the
Onsidering new facilitic:; or major service es-
ansions. They i,lachirle won the nickname or
very member of every major transit author.
I y in the country.
In the field, the sale':-Wien Ihcnu;elveis con-
antly roam through customers' plants and
ffices, quizzing production men and pur-
hasers on company activit9ea, plans and
Beds, and filing regular reports, many on.
"I see Wabco people frequently, and they're
i constant touch with our operating ,-)enple.
ir.ports John W. Barriger, president of the
abco customer. "They ride our trains and
t lk to our foremen. They know ow brake
Beds as well as we. do."
Competitors get an equally thorough check.
Ta.bco engineers, on orders from headqua.r-
reen. Wahco also keeps files on all/execu
ves of competing companies. When a rival'
rm names a new sales boss, it can tell its.
lesmen Immediately what he did in his pre-
ous job, and thus how tough a competitor
The system is still being refined. ton. Early
~s out a 0 on it contract worth
A"
 Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300240004-5
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NOV 1
$l0,nno or more. The salesman must Similar nve?= hga ions targeted cos and ore
Wa b(o's bid with competitors' bids on such mining and road building prospects, and Wabco
thing as price and delivery time, interviewing hit them all with immense success. Sales of
the buyer frr details if the bidding wasn't the Haulpak In 1961 leaped 183%,, over the In-
pul-hlic. Then he must summarize why he troductory year of 1960, and have doubled
thinks Wabco lost- and he's encouraged not since, Wabco says. Industry sources say the
,to spare himself if the fault was his own. company, on the strength of the Haulpak's
Ed Green's experts--one to three full-time,' success, is challenging the long-standing lead-
Intelligence analysts at each of the seven ership of General Motors Corp.'s Euclid divi-
Wnbco divisions, plus a central staff of three, Sinn in the $60-million-a-year off-highway truck
clues as to how selling tactics can be made .: yabro stole a march on the industry wit
more effective. Recently a salesman reported the Haulpak," says R. G. Rhett, purchasin
that he hadn't called on a railroad often ! director of Kennecott Copper Corp. "Whe
enough to discover that it was about to let an they showed us we could move more ore a
equipment contract earlier than scheduled, and less cost on our particular jobs, we bough
a rival got the award before Wabco could them." Kefinecot.t since early 1962 has bough
submit a bid. Instead of chewing him out, 66 of the 65-ton-load Haulpaks, for an averag
Wabco took this as a clue to how that railroad of about $100,000 each.
is likely to operate on contracts of the type A Transit Coup"
involved, and now schedules regular sales Advance intelligence on customers' need
calls to guard against future surprises. further has enabled Wabco to design new pro
An Embarrassing Earful acts, or product adaptations, for specific tna
This was neither the first nor the most
striking case in which the Information turned
up by Wabco's elaborate intelligence network
proved. to be embarrassingly simple-though
vital. In 19.961, Wabco sent researchers to ask
road builders and municipal highway depart-
me-.nts m hti,. they weren't buying its road
graders. They got an earful of things that
might. seen obvious, but yet had been over-
looked. Among other things, the customers
complained that Wabco's - three-model line in-
cluded neither the high-performance machines
that contractors need to shape roadbeds, nor
the low-cost, low-horsepower models cities use
to maintain road shoulders. And they ob-
jected that the placement of controls wa.s too
different from the road graders their drivers
products to emphasize in sales presentation I
Late last year Wabco salesmen and e I
gineers assigned to prepare bids for equi
ment to he used on a test track on which th San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit Di
trict will try out,yarious kinds of transit ge
picked up a tidbit of news from district e
gineers. They learned, and reported to Wab I
headquarters, that the district was seeking a
alternative to the cast-iron truck suspensio
gear long used in transit vehicles, such
subway and elevated-railway cars.
Wabco immediately went to work adaptin
its Hydrair off-highway truck suspension sy
tem-the one that made the Haulpak possib
-to transit cars, a totally new use. Alread
it has won _a $284,000 contract to test the sy -
high-performance graders and a low-cost cessful, the system could win a $2 million c
stripped-down model for municipalities, and ! tract from the Bay Area Transit District, a
adjusted the placement of controls. Sales rose possibly still more lucrative contracts in oth r
14% in 1962, 13%n in 1963, and so far this year; areas of the country. The Bay Area test Ira k
- are up 20%'r. And Wabco'claims to have boosted has been planned as something of an indust y
its share of the grader market 21% between showcase for advanced new equipment, a d
1960 and 1963, running a stronger third to transit officials all over the U.S. will e
Caterpillar Tractor Co. and Jeffrey-Gallion w+atching its operations with intense interest.
Manufacturing Co. Enter the "Pregnant Whale"
At other times, the payoff from Wabco's In a different field, Wabco's Air Brake di i-
Intelligence work has come in accurate selec- i'I sion in 1959 was awaiting the outcome of ra I-
tion of sales targets for a new product. Be- V road tests of a combination of a new ty e
tween 1957 and 1960 the company was field-.1, of brake rigging and brake shoe it had e, e-1
testing prototypes of an off-highway truck,
:called the Haulpak, featuring a new suspen-
sion system' that allowed the lumbering ve-
hicle to haul a bigger load on a lighter body,
Increasing speed and reducing its turning ra-
dius. While doing so, it set its researchers to
i veloped largely to make railroad-car bral s
work more efficiently. But it knew the nw
gosr also would enable a manufacturer to l
make railroad cars bigger without maki g
them heavier-and Its salesmen reported t fat
car makers just then were putting on their
drafting boards designs for railroad cars b g-
Traeking Down the Quarries gee than any that had been seen. So " e
Using sources such as Pit & Quarry Maga- switched our sales approach to emphasize e
nine, Wabco drew up a list of all 2,200-odd weight reduction angle," says William Ayr s,
ti.crne quarrying operations in the U.S. It then . Air Brake division product sales manage
aen, men to interview many of these operators, This rapidly proved to be the right pitch.
ana yre -their jobs to see if they were large`, "The fact that Wabco had such a rigging av il?
enough to use a high-priced Haulpak (they able," and made its virtues known, "was (no.
,post as touch as $130,000 each), and seek in. 1 reason we decided to go ahead with our lg
formation on their equipment buying plans. 'pregnant whale' tank cars," says Stu .rt,
at General Ameri n
i
hi
f
neer
eng
e
It thus ae;ected the 350 best Immediate pros- , Moyes c
pects, and armed salesmen with brochures,
flip-charts and job analysis figures tailored
specifically to each quarry on which the sales-
men would call. . .
Transportation Co.'s tank car division at:
Sharon, Pa. The "pregnant whale," comple ed
i 1961, is 65 feet long, and carries a 32, ON
gllon load.' Before it appeared, General A er-
ican's largest tank car was 55 feet long am
carried 20,000 gallons-- - 1
r
30024pffi4-5
ea
 NOV 1 8 1964
aco i~~,particula.rlyWWII wellsituated~tto~piiiccakk bar?nstorm~irn-g. Edhhad never met Ike before
lip
luct
& hVi M Jo 1 M*
he S~ ~ 1 `- 411,rN rf1'dm' tts
rl 0
ua ifica tons or e o 5
corporate bir?t-i. George Westinghouse founded hower wanted someone who knew military
Wabco in 1869 to market the original air brake staff procedure, Ed says, but his soldier
ha lad ir.ri>n:ed two years earlier, and tn~ 'ricnds were out. "His advisors didn't this-,k it,
a 'a i z r ~: r_ i_':en a far-uZ4ar c .~.~i f^. s Prer:de^.'.al car..d~:ciste
Wrt'rr rail
:; r;.Li,.1ris that ha.s helped sa:e.z , be surrounded by unif_-rrns, so they p::ked
ever sine:ee. In 1886 George Westinghouse also ins`"
founded Westinghouse Electric Corp., and he After I ` - campaign Ed decided to go into
headed both companies until 1911. But there business, and Joined Wabco as assistant to the
was no other en on between the two com- president. He has had little contact since with
panics then, and' there is none at all now ex- either politics or Mr. Eisenhower, though Ike
cept public confusion; the two Wetatinghouses has called a few times to ask about his family;
are headquartered in the same Pittsburgh Ed hasn't tried to push things further be-
building, and their executives confess they cause, he says, he was "disgusted" with
wish mightily they could get the public to tell the way acquaintances tried to "force them-
them apart.) Politics and Intelligence selves" on the General during the 1952 cam-
Insurance,
hhe has e didn't r agree respect"
customers say Wabco some years ago for Mr. Though
a hower, says
with
wasn't doing a very good job of anticipating everything Ike did as President; he regards
customers' needs even on the railroads; let himself as a "liberal Republican" and voted
atone in the other industries it sells to. "Wabco for president fohnson this month.
until recently was a pretty stuffy outfit," says
one veteran -railroad man. "For a long time At Wabco, Ed has presided over something
they got by on their reputation for reliability. of an upheaval in the sales departments. The
company's extensive staff of arl et research-
It's only lately that they've realized the rail. ?ra and intelligence analysts is his personal
roads ,are getting more progressive-more re- creation; the company had no full-time market
ceptive to new ways to cut costs and improve
service. Wabco perked up just in time." researchers when he became sales boss in 1959..
That "perking up," most observers agree, Between that year and 1963 the company also'
can in large part be traced to Ed Green and hired 71 new executives, completely revamp-.
ing its selling departments.
the fresh viewpoint he brought to the com-
pany. Ed's career started conventionally "Some Problems"
enough for a sales executive; his first job Customers say this shakeup "caused some
after being graduated in 1930 frgm little Beth- problems stemming from inexperience"' of the
any College, Bethany, W. Va., was selling r. new men, but financial figures indicate these.
suranc.e. Even then he began developing the now have been straightened out. Sales, after
sales approach he was to institute at Wabco recovering fully from the slump that took them.
pp
"Before Ed would make a call, he'd find ,it, down from $236 million in 1957 to $170 million
Fill he could abdut the prospect," recalls Harry in 1961, are only about holding their own this
T. Ice, an Indianapolis lawyer and friond or y@ar, In the first nine months they were a bout
Ed'a for over 30 years. "Ile never believed even with the 1963 period at $181.2 million.
in the hit-or-miss approach." But the total has been.s held down }?y a
In 1940, however, Ed's career took a detour sharp slump in Melpar, I16:, on electronics
in.o ;politics; he was -elected a Republican division, caused by Government research
sta a senator from an Indianapolis district. A backs. Civilian sales, on which Wabco makes
1 year late,- he ,enlisted in the Navy, and two more profit, are rising strongly, Wabco profits
yeas lat.ar wound up in the OSS, launching l in the first nine months of 1964 jumped a.l-
a nine-year intelligence career. By 1941 he I most 32% over the 1963 period, to $8,484,876.'
was in charge of picking men to work behind The climb allowed Wabco to raise its quarterly
Nazi lines in Italy; the agents supplied anti- dividend on common stock to 40 cents a share,
Nazi guerrillas, sneaked shot-down Allied fly-.'from the former 35 cents, beginning this post
ers through enemy territory and back to summer.
safety, and relayed information from goer- .~ Though Ed Green and the intellt?enc.. ;i.p?
rillas on Nazi troop movements. proa.ch he brought to Wabco are widely crrd-
In the closing days of the war, Ed was ited with a major role in this turnaround, then
military attache to the U.S. Legation at haven't been universally popular: come pec-
13erne, S itzeriand, and there had his only pie feel the focus on planning has been over.'
one. '
personal fling at cloak-and-dagger work-in Since he took office, Ed ha:; urged deal-
r.rs for the company's I,.eTr.urneau-Westing
a. rather undramatic case of watch smuggling. house earth-moving equipment division, who
This occurred when the Hungarian Atnba.s- (.are indepcndcnt bnsin.essnicn, to make up for-
sa.dor to Switzerland discovered some country- mal. fIve?yea.r projection of the buying plans
men had been using his car to smuggle of their eu.stom^r?s. "That would he great i I
watches to the Paris black market; running
had a half-dczen men In work on it " says e. M
across Ed in Paris, the embarrassed Ambas-' IS-W dealer. "I kind of humor Lhe, fictorv
sador gave him some watches to smuggle along that I do It."
hack into Switzerland and return quietly to
their makers. Ed's later work with the CIA, In other respects, too, Ed runs a'tight ship.`
Salesmen are limited on entertaining of cus-
ihough only marginally connected with espion- tourers. They do take customers out frequent.
age, was secret; to this day he will discuss it
only In the most general terms. He says only ly, ? but for lunches and occasional dinner,
rather than nights no the town. "We prefer
that he held the title of director of overseas that our men Ftirk t,, business," says :27?.
logistics, was responsible for keeping CIA. The salesmen, incidentally, no longer get
overseas offices supplied, a4d didpome work.; commissions ciiher_? they work for a salary
on the CIA budget. ,:;plus incentive bonuses. Wabco wants holdors
A "Forger" for Eiseniro of advanced college degrees as salesmen, and
In -1952 Ed went back in . ' politics, organ- feels such men won't want to gamble on com-
izin; Citizens for Eisenhower clubs in Indiana mission selling-especially in a field where
and, dining the campaign, becoming Ike's per- 4 sales efforts may take a long time to pay
sonal secretary. He kept an eye on the Gen?, off.:Humphrey b'Dell, A successful salesman,
eral'e faun in Gettysburg, handled his "non ease he once had to feed a railroad technical
_grl-ft NK-00Ai, ['e6se-'CiA-R'bP75-00001`R0003.0t
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24$U '93'
 Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300240004-5
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reports on certain Wabco equipment for three
years before the line would, buy any.
"When you report to Ed, it has to be
1,2,3; a,b,c," says one Wabco sales official.
"But he's not a martinet," this man adds
quickly. "He's available for help if- you need
it, and he works in such a friend& way you
can't get mad at him."
Spare-Time Work
Ed is "available" to others besides Wabco !
salesmen. Though he rarely makes a sales
call personally, he holds offices in several
trade associations, writes frequently for trade
magazines, regularly lectures on marketing at:
major universities, including Harvard and Co-
lumbia, and is a much-sought speaker at trade
association _ meetings' and management semi-
nars. He also is writing a, book on market-
ing which McGraw-Hill has agreed to publish.
He says he carries on most of this spare-
time activity "because marketing is my hob-
by," but indicates some of it helps Wabco's
intelligence effort, too: "Getting together with
other executives keeps me posted on new de-
velopments."
Ed's petite, dark-haired wife Eleanor,
whom he met when she was a civilian OSS
employe in Italy during World War II, enters
a mild demurrer. "I think a man should spend
his spare time getting his mind off business,"
she says. But, she adds quickly that "Ed seems
happy doing what he does, so I don't com-
plain."
NOV 18 1964
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000300240004-5