Page 125 - James Caan - The Real Deal

11 · Pall Mall

I picked up my next employee after a candidate told me about
a guy called Mark at another agency he was registered with. So I
called Mark up and told him I wanted someone to specialise in his
field. He was keen to move because he had been his agency’s top
biller – he’d billed £180k the previous year – but only taken home
£15,000.
That created a problem for me: I was pretty sure that if I told
Mark I’d pay him 30 per cent commission he just wouldn’t believe
me and so wouldn’t join me. If you tell someone who’s earning
£15k that they could earn £60k, they can’t accept it because the
gap is too big: they think there has to be a catch. So I told him
that with ‘us’ he would make £25k and he came on board. I let
him work out for himself that he had the potential to earn £60k
and we moved to a bigger room.
A few weeks later I overheard Mike interviewing a woman, and
because it was an open-plan office I could hear their conversation.
She was working for Canon selling office equipment and being
interviewed for a position at a rival company. As I listened in, she
struck me as an asset to any company: she wasn’t overly salesy,
just really straightforward and clearly reliable and trustworthy.
The office equipment market was huge in those days, and I thought
about how many more people we could place if we had a specialist
on our team. So I walked over to where they were sitting.
‘Hi, it’s Sam, isn’t it? My name’s James, nice to meet you. So,
Mike, what have we got for Sam?’
He started going through the opportunity while I read her CV.
‘Ever thought about recruitment, Sam?’
There was something about her that I knew would be just
perfect in recruitment.
‘We’re looking for someone to specialise in the office equipment
sector, and as you obviously have all the contacts you should join
us.’
‘It’s not what I do,’ she said.

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