I just spoke with a "business consultant" (read: salesman) from IBM. He wanted to sell me web site hosting services!

"If you don't mind my asking, what does your business do?"

Uhh... that would be web site hosting, but on our own server software.

- Awkard silence (his end) -

"Oh."

He didn't try to push it (good idea), and actually tried to give me an idea. He asked if we offer search engine "placement" services. Seems that any site hosted on their service is automatically rotated through the top 30 search engines, and are placed at the top of the listings on the online yellow page listings (one of them was switchboard.com, I don't remember the name of the other).

He also asked me who handles our sales. I honestly thought he was going to ask me for a job... he did a very good job of making me feel like he was personally interested in Macrobyte. Maybe he really was.

The conversation ended with him wishing me enough success to challenge them. I told him that they're one of the big gorillas in the eBusiness field, and he said something that sounded like, "that's only a problem until we roll over in our sleep." Not sure what that meant, but it game me a chuckle anyway.