Mission Possible

But director Carl Wolfston isn't fretting about making payroll. His Pleasanton, Calif.-based company has only two employees, and one of them is his wife. He doesn't have much in the way of fixed expenses either.

Headlands, nevertheless, is a cutting-edge storage integrator with clients such as Commerce One and E-Trade Securities, a fat distributor credit line and well-established relationships with vendors such as Compaq and Brocade. If business is off today, so be it, said Wolfston. "After the lull, things are going to rebound again," he said.

Instead of spinning his wheels trying to sell anything and everything in today's cutthroat market, Wolfston plans to spend more time prospecting for new customers. Sixty percent of his business comes from repeat clients, but he tries to add a couple of new names each month.

Wolfston's approach turns on one key strategy,networking. He's plugged in to the industry,to vendors and, in particular, to a group of "deployment partners" that help him design and implement solutions and service customers.

The director likens his business engagements to "Mission Impossible" assignments. When there's a job to do, he calls on one of his 10-or-so partners,mostly IT managers,for expertise.

"I pay these guys very well. It's a great secondary income for them," Wolfston said. "They smother the customers with support. They're technically competent, and most of them are former service people, so they know how to work with clients."

When the mission calls for a high-end Compaq implementation, his go-to guy is John Hagan, who spent 10 years as a senior field engineer at Digital Equipment and now manages IT operations for a mutual fund company that trades globally. "Carl is the sales person. He's the social being," said Hagan. "I'm the technical person, the mechanic."

Hagan said Wolfston sometimes pulls him in on the front end of a sale to consult with the client. Other times, Hagan just installs the solution.

Wolfston doesn't mind that Hagan moonlights elsewhere. He said it helps the technician see how other shops run their operations, keeps him on technology's cutting edge and gives him better access to vendors. At a recent trade show, for example, Wolfston instigated a networking opportunity by arranging lunch between Hagan and a Compaq engineer.

Wolfston puts networking to work in other ways too. He spends three months of the year in classes and seminars where he keeps both his technical know-how and his Rolodex up-to-date.

Some of his contacts, such as Hagan, stem from his days as a sales rep at Digital in the 1980s. Wolfston also worked for Emulex, a manufacturer of host bus adapters, before going out on his own in 1992.

For a little while after going solo, Wolfston integrated his own products using Digital components. But he later scrapped that approach in favor of reselling Digital's own solutions. While his revenue dropped, profits soared.

Now he partners only with name-brand vendors. Compaq remains his primary partner, but he's also forging relationships with Cisco, EMC and Sun Microsystems. He said he wants to know that a vendor has the service capability to respond to clients at any time,even, say, at 2 o'clock in the morning.

But while Wolfston stays focused on cutting-edge solutions, he's not ignoring bread-and-butter implementations or hardware sales. His track record puts him in the catbird seat when it comes to angling for accounts, and his administrator can handle routine transactions such as taking orders and sourcing products from distributors.

Actually, Wolfston uses his expertise in leading-edge technology more as a means of establishing rapport than as a revenue driver, he said. Case in point: When he began working with SANs four years ago, he advised a number of clients they weren't yet ready to deploy those networks. "What I'm leading with is knowledge," he said. "A company may not be ready to buy for another three years, but I get my foot in the door."