David Noe was the Vice President of Global Sales for APL Limited, the fifth largest shipping company in the world. With its fleet of 76 huge container ships, APL carried goods to and from port cities all over the world. APL then moved those goods by truck or train to their final destinations. In addition to moving goods for its customers, APL could also store goods in its warehouses and could help its customers manage all the ‘logistics’ or details of moving products across borders and over oceans.

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David had worked for APL since 1985 in APL offices in Hong Kong, Korea, and the U.S. The group he now managed — the Global Sales Department — had been created in 1996 to serve a new kind of APL customer: the global business. These ‘global’ customers were mostly Fortune 500 companies that had expanded from a single location to have offices, factories, and employees in cities and countries all over the world. A single global business might have offices in four different continents and might move its products between factories and warehouses that were located thousands of miles apart. These businesses needed extra help and attention to coordinate all their shipping and logistics needs between all their various offices and facilities. David’s group was charged with providing that service and handled over $800 million in business a year for those customers.

David’s team members were a little different from a typical sales representative. Instead of arranging single shipments for a customer — say to ship a load of hay from California to Japan — David’s team worked with people at the very highest levels of global companies, helping them use APL’s services in every part of their business. Because of the way they did their work, David and his team spent a lot of time building personal relationships with their customers. And, because their customers worked at businesses all over the world, David and his team learned a lot about different cultures, customs, and business practices. A sales presentation that would be perfectly appropriate for an American customer would not go over well at all in China or in Europe.

David was proud of the work his team did around the world. But now he had a new challenge. One of APL’s customers was changing the way it did business and that would certainly change the way this customer worked with APL?