Page 119 - James Caan - The Real Deal

11 · Pall Mall

in a broom cupboard. That feeling of creating something out of
nothing is unbeatable.
Over the next few weeks I found better and better ways of
finding out who the best employees were in any given company.
One of my favourites was pretending to be from Porsche.
‘We’re doing a launch for our new model. I’ve got five
invitations to allocate to your firm, but I really only want to send
the invitations to Porsche enthusiasts. Who in your organisation
would be the best people to send them to?’
The receptionist would say: ‘All the team would love to go.’
‘Give me your best people. It’s an expensive event so we’re
looking for people who really do aspire to own a Porsche.’
Needless to say, I’d get the names of her company’s top five sales
people.
‘Great, how do I spell his name? And out of curiosity, how long
has he been there? And what’s John’s position?’ I was pretty
cheeky, but all I was doing was asking questions and the
receptionist was happy to give me the answers.
In a couple of days’ time, I would call John: ‘Hi, my name’s
James. I’ve got an opportunity I want to chat to you about. When’s
a good time for us to speak?’
I had this enormous desire to make it work and even when I was
getting rejections I was never tempted to throw in the towel. After
that magic moment when I’d realised all I needed to do was to see
things from the clients’ point of view and tell them what they
wanted to hear, I never looked back. All it boiled down to was
having the cheek to tell clients what they wanted me to say. Then
I just had to do the same for the candidates: I asked myself what
they would want to be offered to take my approach seriously.
Every week I varied my pitch and tried a different angle or a
different technique to see what worked best.
There was just one problem: I didn’t have anywhere to interview
candidates. My broom cupboard was so small that when you

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