Page 67 - James Caan - The Real Deal

7 · The Job That Changed My Life

‘I’ve got to be able to do that. It’s still double what I’m on now.’
‘Let me ask you a really ridiculous question, Brian. What if I
said that if you don’t sell one a day, you wouldn’t earn anything.
Do those five sales a week still seem realistic?’
‘I must be able to do one a day, because it’s only £20 a month
I’m asking people for.’
‘I’m glad you said that, Brian, because what we do here is about
breaking the mould, this is about breaking out of being mediocre.
If you want to make big money there has to be an element of risk
and reward. Would you describe yourself as safe? Are you OK
with taking a risk?’
Of course, in the right candidates this kind of question provokes
their fighting spirit and allowed me to be sure that they had what
was needed. It was my job to make sure that candidates were
confident that they could achieve what I was telling them they
could achieve, and one of the ways I did this was to introduce
them to a member of the sales team. After a few months in the job,
I had placed a lot of candidates, so I usually knew someone with
a similar background to the candidate I was interviewing.
‘Let me introduce you to Steve.’ I’d pick up the phone, and call
Steve. ‘Can you pop into my office for five minutes, Steve?’
What happened next was very powerful and was really import-
ant in making the candidates believe in what working at Reid
Trevena could do for them.
‘Hi, Steve, come in. Steve used to work in sales at Canon. You
won’t mind me saying this, will you, Steve, but before you came
here your earnings were pretty ordinary, weren’t they? What were
you on?’
‘Just over £10k.’
‘And how long have you been here now, Steve?’
‘Just over a year.’
‘What did you earn in your first year here?’
‘£27k.’

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