Page 64 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

that he’d been there for two years. The secret in getting him to give
up his security was to understand what he really wanted out of life.
‘So, Brian, tell me about yourself, what do you do?’
The first fifteen minutes would usually be taken up with me
asking fairly standard questions like, how long have you been in
this job? What did you do before? Where are you going? What’s
your career plan?
‘I see you’re on £13k at the moment, Brian. What do you think
your salary will be after your next review?’
‘I’m expecting £15k.’
‘£15k, that’s fantastic. Tell me, have you given much thought as
to where you will be when you reach retirement, salarywise?’
This kind of question opened up the interviewee to talk about
his aspirations: was he thinking of getting married, or having kids?
‘So you like the idea of a big family then. Is private education
important to you? What do you think of the state system?’
I was steadily building up a picture of Brian’s life, asking
questions that mapped out his future. The amazing thing I
discovered at Reid Trevena was that for most people their journey
is fairly predictable. Most people instinctively knew that their lives
were pretty boring, and the interviews became really interesting
when I was able to tell them that they could get rid of that
predictability.
‘You know most people who work here don’t send their kids to
a state school. They’ve had the opportunity to earn so much here
and they’ve realised they can do so much more with their lives. If
you had a chance to earn a lot more money what difference would
that make for you?’
I’d then tell them a bit about our company. ‘We’re in the
business of financial planning. We’re an independent brokerage,
which means we’re not tied to any company, and that allows us to
work with the best-of-breed products with Lloyd’s, Abbey and
Hambro. Let me tell you a bit about Lloyd’s of London . . .’ I’d

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