When a termination interview takes place, it should never come as a shock. There are inevitable signs that dismissal is in the air, and an astute executive recognizes them. These are some of the main indicators:
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• You are asked to move into an office smaller than your last one, or to a floor with less status.
• Your car is taken away from you.
• You are transferred to an interstate branch.
• Suddenly you have to make appointments to see superiors you usually just dropped in on before.
• Your name is conspicuously absent from office memos.
• A company policy regarding expense control seems to apply only to you.
• You have to share your secretary with a junior executive.
• There is a reorganization, and your new title is "Special Duties." Or your responsibilities change from a line to a staff function.
The list is almost endless, and each firm has its favorites, sometimes subtle, sometimes not. One senior finance executive shows his hand by addressing a prospective terminee as "Mister" instead of the more usual first name.
Very rarely are there not signs that you've fallen from grace. And if you miss those signs, you probably deserve what's coming, anyway.
HANDLING THE TERMINATION INTERVIEW
Obviously you will be under pressure. The way you handle the heat may indicate your true mettle: that, anyway, is what you will be intending to communicate.
This, after all, is an excellent opportunity to leave a lasting and favorable impression with the person terminating you. With luck he may feel that you are a poised, capable, mature executive and that he has made a terrible error. He too will be apprehensive, and eternally grateful if you allow him to so execute his task that your neatly severed head falls tidily into the basket beneath the guillotine.
The decision to become an unwilling or ungracious victim,
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and use this last moment to tell your employer exactly what you think of him and his, may momentarily release your id tensions, but it will also taint any subsequent telephone reference, which may in turn haunt your search for a new employer.
Thus let me offer you some specific don'ts:
• Don't say anything that is in the least derogatory about the individual effecting the termination, or the corporation. (Say it later when you are out of the place.)
• Don't ask "why?" (Not knowing may in itself be grounds for termination.)
• Don't ask to say goodbye to your colleagues. (A person dismissed has a communicable disease and nobody will, at that moment, want to become infected.)
• When you are happily settled elsewhere, it might be nice to tell a couple of your former colleagues that you have a big jump in salary, and for a lightened workload with a thoroughly decent bunch of people. Be relaxed about it all and suggest, one day, maybe, getting together over a drink. Then forget them.
• Don't break down, don't argue, and, above all, don't lose your temper. Keep your emotions under strict control.
• Don't take, or attempt to take, any company documentation with you. (If they have a mind to be nasty, it is theft, or attempted theft.)
• Don't haggle over your final check. But study it closely when your emotions have cooled. If you are unsure as to your entitlements, or if you feel you may have been short-changed, then a telephone call to your lawyer could set you straight.
• Don't, for a while anyway, contact any former clients to sway them away from your former employer. Wait until you are in a position of real strength, then let out the word. Maybe they will come to you.
• Shake hands with your former boss, thank him for the
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opportunity of working for him, and wish him good luck for the future. (He'll probably need it. There is one satisfaction in knowing that all your problems at work are now his.)
• Make sure you collect all your personal effects. Or, if you can't, leave an address for them to be sent on to you.
Then don't do anything for two days. By that time you should be seeing things clearly and your approach to finding another job will be a lot more rational. Be assured you will live to regret anything you do in anger.
RESIGNATION OR TERMINATION?
Sometimes the choice of resigning is offered. Should you accept the offer? Yes, unless it is going to cost you really big money.
It always better to be able to say truthfully that you resigned. It may be a technicality at this late stage, but that technicality will be recorded on your personnel file, forever.
The other argument is to get all you can, and if you are in a position to exact a minor fortune in exchange for this terrible indignity, then, in fairness to your loved ones, you are ethically bound to demand money for your flesh.
If you are truly attuned to the situation, you will verify in advance exactly what the corporate policy to payoffs has been. If it is adequate, you may wish to have in your pocket a letter of resignation, carrying yesterday's date, announcing your resignation effective as from today.
Then, when the subject of termination is broached, with an utterly clear head firmly raise the subject of your golden handshake. If your "bonus" has already been drawn, study it closely and make sure no zeros are missing, and accept it gracefully. If the lagniappe is to be delayed until you have proven yourself a good fellow, be even more egregious. However, if you are being terminated by some pious puritan who, under the guise of keeping your money for himself, has as-
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serted that he doesn't put gold handles on pine coffins, and you know that he won't relent, then you might, I half seriously suggest, wish to play him at his own game and beat him. As you take his check firmly in your fingers, exchange your own resignation and quietly announce that your decision to resign was taken yesterday, wish him the best of luck, and head for the bank to clear your deposit forthwith.
On the bright side, you may wish to reflect that every cloud has a silver lining and that you have been launched, albeit unwittingly, upon a new career with better prospects than the last.
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PART FOUR
HOW TO TURN A $1,000 lOU INTO A MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR CORPORATION
24- How to Become Established Immediately
There is at bottom only one problem in the world and this is its name. How does one break through? How does one get into the open? How does one burst the cocoon and become a butterfly?
THOMAS MANN, Doctor Faustus
FOUR AXIOMS FOR ASPIRING TYCOONS
The early metamorphosis of an aspiring tycoon is usually effected in a low-overhead environment within the protective green chrysalis of Other People's Money (0PM). The emergent butterfly is characterized by a cluster of predictable traits: high profile, cool nerve, wide smile, unbounded optimism, and the unyielding pursuit of someone to love—a client. But, for the unwary, there can be many a slip betwixt the cocoon and the client; and the tycoon in contemplation of the flight from emergence to eminence might, with advantage, apprehend the wisdom inherent in four profoundly simple axioms:
Axiom 1: If your outgo exceeds your income, your upkeep will be your downfall. The fact is that new businesses most frequently fail for simple lack of initial capital. It always takes longer than you think, which makes low overheads as comforting as a rich uncle because they allow time for the pursuit and subsequent conversion of unwilling clients.
Axiom 2: Appearance is the only reality. To others you are what you seem, and the essence of turning a $ 1,000 lOU into a million-dollar corporation—or a prince into a frog, or a frog into a gourmet dinner—is the manipulation of that amorphous
jumble of symbols, sounds, shapes, colors, and impressions that is thrown, kaleidoscopically, into a pattern on the screen at the back of the human head.
We consciously apprehend only the pattern. The individual colors are absorbed unconsciously, subliminally, on many cerebral and emotional levels.
A doctor's cure lies in more than his words or his six years in medical school—it's in the tone of his voice, the hue of his office, the color of his gown, the authority of his stethoscope, that white blur and red seal of the certificate on the wall behind him.
Success in almost everything you could think of is largely based upon nonverbal transmission of powerful abstract messages. Life imitates art, reality is a concept, our world a set of images: images for which hard-headed corporate executives are prepared to pay top dollar over on Madison Avenue. Such is the power of art to shape life that, if Botticelli were alive today, he'd probably be working for Vogue. Shelley, an incurable romantic, would possibly be writing copy for vaginal sprays.
In New York, because I now have an established organization, I can afford to work at a small spartan black table. But when I was an aspiring tycoon, my first desk was enormous and had to be assembled in five great pieces inside my office.
Perhaps I was simply an aspiring megalomaniac, but still, as through a glass darkly, I seemed to perceive that a desk, if you are an aspiring tycoon, is noi just a desk. It is a symbol, an altar of your intended success. It is at just such an altar that the archetypal New York banker puffs the incense of his fat cigar, robed in a three-piece pinstripe and immersed in heavenly Muzak. To become a priest of business, then, you would be wise to follow his example. Sounds a little too simple? People wouldn't take you seriously, you say? Well, if you feel like it, why not prove the advice for yourself simply and without great expense: invest in an organ to grind and a monkey on a chain holding a tin cup for you—I'll bet you don't collect anything but nickels and dimes, but you will collect, because people
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will believe that you are what you seem.
But it needn't cost you a fortune to take a more daring route and, from your very first day in business, project the image of an already up-and-going enterprise that has been around for years. This can be easier than you might think. You don't after all need acres of office space to command a good address on your stationery, or an imposing brass plate on a solid timber front door. My first office, as I mentioned, at the start of this voyage was not premier space. But I covered the ratholes with tin, the walls with mahogany veneer, and the floor with thick golden carpet. At the windows I installed rich opaque silk curtaining that caught and enhanced the natural light, then framed them with a regal blue shantung, and, like a bridal gown, it all touched the floor.
Conscious of Machiavelli's advice that a stranger judges a prince by the bearing of his ambassador, I hired an attractive, well-groomed, well-spoken secretary. The wall between us was so thin she could have pushed her finger through it— certainly we never had a communication problem. Nonetheless, I installed an intercom unit on my desk and also on my secretary's. There were five buttons on each set. Some callers thought my organization occupied the whole floor. In a way, it did.
Whenever the phone rang my secretary would positively sing our name. But getting through to me was always made marginally difficult. You had to be announced. Then, when I came on, I would say ''John Wareham speaking," to distinguish me from all the other Warehams in the office: "How can we help you."
Axiom 3: You become what you seem to others. Like the New York banker, the shimmering priest attends his altar with incense and heavenly choirs. It affects the congregation, but just as certainly it affects him too. Any top sportsman can tell you he plays a better game when dressed for the part.
I would not for one moment be so immodest as to suggest that my appreciation of symbolism accounted for my early success. A lot of the credit must go to my capacity for enjoy-
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ing what I was doing. Rolled-up sleeves and long hours are powerful symbols too.
But, once people perceive you as a tycoon, they will help to make you one. An entrepreneurial friend of mine went on to become famous, bad-tempered, ulcer-ridden, and very, very rich. He employed a small staff of five, yet his entry in the telephone book took the entire page, listing some dozen departments and divisions. If you had ever gotten to see his switchboard, you would have observed that all of the calls were answered by the same operator, and most of them went to Mr. Big. He said the "big image" helped him to raise public money for his ventures.
Aristotle Onassis became a shipping magnate although his envious rivals said he owned only the smoke above the tankers that bore his name. Which was true—it was all done with 0PM. People were prepared to back Ari because of his self-fulfilling reputation.
As long as we believe in the wizard of Oz, we invest him with magical power and he really becomes a wizard. Helena Rubinstein understood that women buy dreams, not smells— not grease, but beauty. When we believe there is magic in the bottle, we create the genie.
Axiom 4: The first transition is in your own head. "From the sublime to the ridiculous," Napoleon remarked upon his exile and imprisonment, "is but a short step." So too is the journey back the other way. Keeping a hold on reality is a luxury you can rarely afford when you set out to become a tycoon. Believing you are special when the only evidence of this state exists within your head commands a higher priority—and you must also be capable of communicating this new reality to your clientele.
I first met "The Galloping Gourmet," Graham Kerr, in a dingy set of rooms above a winter-bleak comer of windy Wellington in New Zealand some twenty years ago. We were both hustling for business with very little in sight. He had given up his evening to address some thirteen "Jaycee-ettes," and I was in a back room on the committee of a three-man fund-raising
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team. Through the thin door I could hear him pull out all the stops, talking to those housewives as if they were the worldwide television audiences he was later to command. In a way they were, though at that time his television debut was still a dream. At the close of the evening we shared a drink. My subsequent recollection of Graham was of a very friendly, totally natural individual who believed he was going places. Listening to him, I believed it too.
"Imagination rules the world," said Napoleon. "It is like the Danube: at its source it can be crossed in a leap ... I abandon myself to the most brilliant of dreams."
Actually deciding that you really are in business to stay, or that you are not just a doctor but a great doctor, not just an advertising man but the advertising man, not just a politician but an emperor, requires the clear head of a madman. Like the decision to win a beautiful woman, it is not to be taken solemnly, but with gusto and passion, for that is the only way she will succumb.
Advertising tycoon David Ogilvy records that the day he began in business he made a promise to bis small staff: "Agencies are as big as they deserve to be. We are starting this one on a shoestring, but we are going to make it a great agency by 1960."
That peculiar brand of humility is the stuff of great people. An internalized belief in their own worth guides their actions, shapes their world, and invests that of their followers with a special significance. Their world changes because they are prepared to move to the sound of their own music. And, like the Pied Piper, they inevitably attract a following: sometimes children, sometimes rats—it depends upon the personality of the piper. If you want to become great today, you need only to hear the music in your head and then arise and commence to dance the Tycoon Tango.
Thoreau put it nicely: "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
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25- Two Short-cuts to Get You Moving Faster than the Competition
No man can cut out new paths in company. He does that alone.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR.
Wh EN I was eight years old I sold football badges for the big game in my home town. So did 108 other eager beavers anxious to earn a twopenny commission on a badge that sold for a shilling—^today that would be about ten cents on an investment of sixty. The reward for the boy who sold the most badges was twenty shillings . . . one whole pound—an enormous sum to a small boy accustomed to sixpence worth of weekly pocket money.
When I first set out to sell, I stood on a dusky Friday evening with two friends at the main intersection where thousands of people passed and we all shouted, "Football Soo-win-earsV In half an hour two people stopped to buy and we fought for the sale. Being smallest, I missed out both times.
It then occurred to me that I was standing in the worst possible place to sell anything, first because I couldn't buttonhole hurrying passers-by and, second, because if anyone did stop, I only had once chance in three of getting the sale. So I took to the bars. Even though it was against the law, I trudged into every saloon in town. I would sight a circle of people, duck between the legs, arise into the middle, and go into the pitch I had created and rehearsed.
I was a source of amusement and bewilderment. Someone
would say, "Give the kid a shilling." I would retort, "Give the kid nothing! Support your team, and all buy a badge." I was never happy until I had sold everyone, and then I would hurry on to the next group.
My parents, had they fully recognized the nature of my wanderings, might not have appreciated either the short- or long-term significance of this work, but I won the one-pound first prize for every match. More than that, my commission came to almost five pounds and my tips anywhere up to ten. At the age of eight I was, I thought, a millionaire, and this first fortune, though quickly squandered, taught me two short-cuts that I have assiduously applied to the art of wooing clients:
Separate yourself from your colleagues. I've always been wary of any association that purports to sell both my services and the services of a colleague. A professional association can certainly do a good job advancing the overall professional standing of its members, and this is a laudable pursuit. Personally, however, I have tended to the rather expedient view that he travels the fastest who travels alone, and have joined only associations whose requirements for membership include bona fide academic accomplishment.
Go where the best prospects are. If you're selling football badges, the best prospects (1) are in bars and (2) have already been softened for your soothing advances by the terrifying effects of demon alcohol. In business it's better to go to the ethereal chamber of your intended angel—his heavenly office—and catch him stone-cold sober, and prepared to do business at 10:30 a.m. on any weekday except Monday, when he might just be nursing the demon.
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We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
POGO
Four Errors to Avoid
Attracting the eye of a well-heeled client is not too different from romancing an aristocratic woman—vulgar overtures tend to go unrequited.
So, before you set about your courtship, please allow me to suggest four no-no's that might save you from disdain:
Don't advertise. Not in the press, that is. Media advertising is great for a clarion call that, by its nature, commands the mass market. But for a professional— never. Advertising is what a so-called professional does when he doesn't know who to talk to: clear advice to any shrewd executive that his clientele is, at best, limited; that some may be fleeing; that he has been reduced to begging in public.
Don't make cold calls. Cold canvassing chills the soul. The odds of reaching a good contact are low, and if you do you will have to spell your name and explain yourself, which almost inevitably will make you sound like a diamond trader or an insurance salesman. Even if and when Mr. Angel gets your intended message, your cold call may still persuade him you have no existing clients, or are absolutely desperate for more. When he puts down the phone, perhaps earlier than you might wish, there is a good chance you will feel like a teenage suitor
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who gave the candy and flowers but never got kissed. Don't chance it.
Don't think a brochure will get you clients. The myth that a brochure will entice droves of clients is perpetuated by public relations people who get paid to produce brochures. In fact, a brochure will rarely sell anything unless you have already established your credentials, and this will require more than your pretty face and fancy words on glossy paper.
Ultimately, serious prospects will ask to "see your material," and then you may need a brochure. But if it comes unsolicited, your best hope is that the front page will get a glance as it travels to the file under the desk. In fact, I'd almost bet five dollars that not one person in three would be any the wiser if you took a competitor's brochure, pasted your own logo on the front cover, and passed the whole thing up as your own.
Don't expect anything over lunch except indigestion. Hope makes a good breakfast, a dyspeptic lunch, and a poor supper. Yet some people, surveying the many packed restaurants of business communities, really do believe you can get a client by buying him an expensive meal. I fear they may be engaged in wishful thinking. However haute the cuisine, it is difficult indeed to enjoy your food while trying to sell someone something. You mention your services just as a fish bone gets stuck in his throat or, worse, your own. And, since you will probably have little to celebrate, the arrival of the check may be even more discomforting.
I was spared such embarrassment one evening at the Casa Brasil restaurant in Manhattan's Yorkville when my wife and I were dining with the New York president of Canada's DHJ Industries, Chuck McCrae, and his wife. At 11:40 p.m. I said, "Chuck, is it snowing outside and have you seen any wild moose in the street?"
"No," he said, "not at all, and it's summer."
"Then we are in trouble," I explained, "for there are men in this restaurant wearing ski masks and carrying sawed-off shotguns."
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At that point they overturned our table, spilling an excellent bottle of Chateau Graud-Larose (they were desperate men). After explaining that this was a stick-up, which I did not doubt, they threw Chuck against the wall and took his loose change and credit cards, as well as cash from the register, the patrons' jewels, and my wristwatch.
It was all over in a flash and suddenly, as an optimist always can, I found that the cloud had a silver lining. The glazed eye of my shaken guest locked mine as he intoned: "I will never forget you or your firm for as long as I live."
But it's difficult always to make that sort of an impression, and perhaps the most appropriate time for dinner is after the deal has been consummated and you are prepared to unwind. But be warned, nonetheless: an ongoing professional relationship should always be conducted with the advice of Machiavelli in mind—your friend may one day become your enemy.
If you can't get to prospective clients by advertising, cold calling, sending out brochures, or buying lunch, how can you open that essential first conversation with your putative client?
Solving this dilemma requires, before any telephone call or other form of solicitafion, becoming:
• An acknowledged authority
• Recommended by people who matter
• Attractive to deal with
HOW TO BECOME AN ACKNOWLEDGED AUTHORITY
Know thy subject. As I have said, it starts in your own head. Get the books and study them; read the technical publications; join the trade associations and attend all the seminars. In short, absorb all the material in your field of expertise. This won't take as long as you might think. In any specialized field it doesn't require all that much time to have read all of the books.
A college degree might be a help but the absence of any formal training in naval architecture didn't seem to bother the world's current number one yacht designer, my countryman
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Ron Holland, whom I first had the good fortune to meet during Cowes Week. At the time he was on the threshold of world fame, but you would never have guessed it. Still in his twenties, he was unpretentious, happy-go-lucky, wore blue jeans and cowboy boots. Next year he knocked his stuffy, long-established, blue-blooded New York competitors from the roost that their credentials had commanded for more than twenty years. How did he do it? Simply by designing yachts that sailed faster than the competition.
The world then beat a path to Ron Holland's studio, and, at the time of writing, the top ocean-racers of England, America and Greece are all his designs.* And it's the same in any field: build a better mousetrap, and you'll never need to deal with vermin again.
It was for this reason, some ten years ago, that we at Wareham Associates gained the jump on our competitors by installing a computer and collating information on executives by industry, suburb, qualification, age, and salary, plus a myriad of biographical data. The intention, then dimly perceived, was to determine factors common to executive success, and also to provide instant information on salary levels by industry and qualification. Over the years, as we updated our methods and equipment, we were able to look at appraising executive potential by analyzing data fed into the computer, until we could predict personality traits and levels of motivation from hard life data. When we became able to link our computers worldwide, we were able to gather and analyze, from any country, a priceless electronic intelligence network.
Look as if you know your subject. I said earlier that "to become established you must do all one can to be established." So, from the outset, wherever I have gone I have endeavored to project the image of:
* Actually, another of my compatriots also pulled off the same trick. Bruce Farr, a twenty-four-year-old radical designer, literally revolutionized the ocean racing world from a sleepy office in Auckland, New Zealand. The world authorities reacted by changing the international rules of ocean-racing yacht design.
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• An already well-established market force
• A trusted, respected, and reputable organization
• A knowledgeable, worldly, and wise approach to our business
Building this delightful image is one task, of course. Getting it into people's heads is another and perfiaps an even tougher challenge. Let me tell you how to do it.
Give something away. Most people chasing business put the cart before the horse and ask for money before they themselves give anything. Instead, I suggest you follow the advice of Ecclesiastes and send your bread upon the water. (In New York you may have to send a cart full of bread and maybe your horse too.)
After starting out in New York, we arranged a series of business luncheons at the Waldorf, flying in exotic speakers from far-off cities and countries. It was a small price to pay for the pleasure of inviting key executives to share a first-class meal at a legendary hotel and hear an authoritative speaker give a serious address on executive appraisal, or some allied subject. It is, of course, non-U to solicit at your own dinner table, but some quite useful messages can be communicated with relative dignity on such occasions.
Get the small details right. I said not to advertise, but your letterhead is just that—an advertisement. Whether the message is good or bad depends on what you can do with paper, art, and ink. A letterhead is your first ambassador, and as such it should subtly establish your name, your expertise, your good taste, your savoir-faire. Get it laid out by an artist and printed by a craftsman. Make it unobtrusively impressive. A good letterhead is like a custom-tailored suit—it suggests that you know what you are about; that you are to be taken seriously; that you have already given such valuable service to your clients that their appreciation has enabled you to afford a good tailor.
Letterhead colors are more persuasive than you might guess. High-achievers, according to the psychologist David
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McClelland, are attracted to dark blues and regal reds. And psychiatrist Ainslie Meares says that a corporate logo should resemble a phallus. Meares argues that such symbolism will influence people to categorize your corporation as a thruster. Really? Yes, really. Reflect upon the E-type Jaguar, a classic of automotive design some fifteen years ahead of its time when it first appeared in the early fifties and virtually remained unchanged for two decades. What does it cost? How did it sell? What does it look like? What more need I say?
Your corporate name is likewise worthy of contemplation. It should be distinctive, memorable, short, and presfigious. I probably stayed with my family name because I am egotistical. But it also derives from an Anglo-Saxon heritage (I think we were smugglers) spanning back to the seventh century A.D., and I also like to pretend it has a Wall Street flavor. If my name had been Grubb, Runt, or Toady, I might have felt differently.
A good address too can both enhance a letterhead and inspire confidence. Few people may visit you, but everyone who matters to you (with luck) may know and be impressed by your address. Also, remember that you don't need to own the building to take advantage of its international name. So if you can choose a name that is widely known, then you are onto a good thing; nothing succeeds like address.
Claim the expertise. If you sound and look like an expert, then people may believe you when you make the claim. What is an expert, anyway? Some people would argue that he's someone who knows more and more about less and less until finally he knows everything about nothing. If you are unsure of a field in which to claim your expertise, then consider being a marketing or public relafions consultant. Nobody knows what these people do, anyway, except work exclusively on retainer. You can do that too.
HOW TO GET RECOMMENDED BY PEOPLE WHO MATTER
The first thing is to meet them. David Mahoney, chief
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executive of Norton Simon, said he spent vital hours of his youth lingering at the 21 Club in New York, sipping soda water and striking up conversations with the rich and famous.
You could do a lot worse than become a fixture at a place where the eminent gather, although I wouldn't suggest actually eating there because it can be terribly expensive. But a glass of milk costs very little, and an order like that will get you remembered as mildly eccentric and therefore rich. Give the bartender outrageously generous gratuities (you can afford to on glasses of milk), and he will then allow you to call him Freddie and introduce you by name to his wealthy clientele. In that setting, on those terms, the automatic presumption that you are a "someone" will allow you to seize whatever opportunities fate puts before you.
I met my British Commonwealth chairman Sir Arthur Harper in the course of my first consulting assignment for the Dutch International Philips corporation. He was chairman of the subsidiary I was setting up, had a lot of other directorships, and used his office only intermittently. Philips assigned me his desk for my own work, which was to take some four months.
I'd hardly spread myself out. Goldilocks-like, in the fat chair at the oversized desk, when Sir Arthur returned. Unlike Goldilocks, I was not asleep, but nonetheless I was young and innocent. He was wise and thoughtful. He looked at me and lifted the phone: "We'll have to get another desk," he said. It was installed, and, to my great surprise, I was to experience the unique pleasure of sharing the office of a powerful man who would become both a fine friend and a fountain of helpful hard-headed advice.
Some two decades ago I met Doc McMurry in my hometown and asked him home to dinner. Sitting around the fire that evening with a cold, black, southerly wind beating at my timber walls, I could never have guessed that he would return the favor so handsomely in a land so far away. His name, commendation, friendship, and support have been invaluable, and it would have been difficult indeed to establish myself in America without his help.
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And Rupert Murdoch, who as I mentioned earlier parlayed a small-town newspaper into a publishing empire operating on three continents, also helped me greatly. I called on him following his takeovers oi New York Post, New York Magazine and the Village Voice, which established him as a tough, shrewd and daring operator in this town of lions. (Even ousted New York Magazine publisher, the imperious Clay Felker, was subsequently reported to remark, "What can you say? The man's brilliant.")
Mr. Murdoch welcomed me very warmly in Dorothy Schiff's old office at the Post and was immediately appreciative of my situation. I wanted to include his high-profile name in a special promotion to establish that my clients, like Mr. Murdoch, with whose international organization we had placed a number of executives, were hard-nosed corporate leaders who expected results. Would he mind writing me a letter for inclusion in our promotion?
He moved to the typewriter at his desk and immediately typed a personal note on his corporate stationery. It was a rich favor that did a great deal to help establish my credentials here.
"The best of luck," he said passing over the epistle with the ink still drying on his signature. "It's a great town."
BEING ATTRACTIVE TO DEAL WITH
Everyone secretly would like to prove that he is absolutely irresistible, but some people give up too easily, while others do not give up when they
should. ERIC BERNE
Man with long face should not open shop.
CHINESE PROVERB
A smile will open a lot of doors. Whether they stay open may depend upon the color of both your shoes and your teeth, and whether the shine is in your eyes or your pants.
When I started out and only had one suit I used to get it
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pressed on the way to visit a client while I hid behind a curtain. An aspiring tycoon should look like a tycoon. Wear a five-hundred-dollar suit, even if you have no money in the pockets. Suit first, money later. Polonius knew it before any of us were bom:
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not expressed in fancy; rich not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
If you look like a derelict, you'll collect nickels. Look like a millionaire, and you'll possibly get the best table in the house. And if you can get that, you must be a tycoon, and people will want to patronize you. W^y, presto\
I once met an American holidaying in my ancestral village of Wareham in Dorset, England. We struck up a conversation when I observed that he bore a positively uncanny resemblance to Richard Nixon.
"Yes," he said, "I do. But more than that I live at San Clemente, and often, if I eat unannounced at an expensive restaurant, they rush to give me the best table, and then they don't bring the check."
"Do you then tell them who you really are?" I inquired.
"It would be unfair to disillusion them," he said.
It was a positively uncanny resemblance.
And, of course, in addition to looking good, you need to be a great conversationalist. This begins with the ability to listen. Usually it ends there too.
I once called on a fellow who had an enormous swordfish mounted on the wall behind his desk. "Ever go fishing?" I asked innocently. Three hours later we discussed his assignment for half an hour, and I left with a contract to mount on my own wall.
The chairman of a construction company sat in front of seven huge color photographs of seven children flanking even larger portraits of himself and his wife. "You're a family man, I guess?" I inquired casually. Four hours and the life stories of
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seven children later, his chauffeur took me back to town with an assignment in my briefcase.
The key to being a good listener is to actually be interested in people, and I must confess that I don't find this difficult—to me the lifestyle and background of prospective clients is always fascinating.
They too are often relieved to put off their masks, forget the rigors of business, and relax for a while in the company of a sympathetic listener. These conversations are part of the pleasures of business. As well as making you attractive, an attentive ear is a sure receptacle for cash and checks.
Lord Chesterfield advised his son to take his tone from the company in which he found himself, and this is a fine rule. I was cursed with a youthful countenance, but Professor Daniel Levinson, who gained fame with his book Seasons of a Man's Life, said that I was "precocious," explaining that it was a compliment indicating special wisdom and insight. Who was I to argue with such a perceptive eminence?
But I wasn't always so sure. When newly in business I attempted to enhance any latent machismo with a moustache. Alas, it only served to highlight my pubescence, leaving me wispful. I was not slow to remove the growth.
One other time, when calling upon the deteriorating chairman of a giant corporation, I sprayed my shock of brown hair with silver from an aerosol can. Did it work? For the first time in my life a very attractive forty-year-old woman sat herself next to me and offered her address. Then later, the chairman spoke to me about the problems of "men of our age"—and I had an inkling of what he meant.
Be yourself is the worst possible advice you can give to some people but, now that I have a few gray hairs of my own, I think the best course for most of us, if we can find out who we are, is to serve the dish au naturel.
The particular advantage of doing business in another country is that an out-of-town accent tends to be attractive. I learned this when I took up public-speaking many years ago
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and saw the almost hypnotic effect that broken English can have on an audience.
In Britain, where hesitancy connotes the fashionable confusion that comes with an upper-class education, some Englishmen, when attempting to get elected to Parliament, affect a stammer. I was blessed with one, but too much exposure to the public platform is spoiling it. When I had the good fortune to win my hometown oratory competition, which the crown prosecutor had failed to do in six attempts, he was piqued. "That stammer," he told a friend, "is a trick to win audiences—and it works."
In New York I first worried that a British accent might be a disadvantage but, in fact, it opened many doors. Likewise, Henry Kissinger's dense pronunciation is usually taken as the hallmark of an international. Actually, I wouldn't advise imitating Henry, but maybe you could develop a lisp—it's been a positive boon to Barbara Walters.
I said that you should have attractive offices, and you may have thought I was drawing the bow a bit long. But a skilled negotiator once told me that, in his experience, the most productive meetings are held in pleasant, bright, airy conference rooms.
It is valuable, I think, to invest your life with the flavor and opulence of ritual. People laughed at the Englishman who dressed for dinner in Africa, but I think it enhanced the meal—at least until he found himself on the menu.
It's also worth giving a little thought to the furnishings inside your head. I went off health foods the day I saw that the advice, "You are what you eat," was coming from the vegetarian Tiny Tim. But we do become what we read: New Yorkers are spoiled by having the Times available on their morning doorstep, and the cleverer ones tend to savor the Op-Ed pages more than breakfast. I have always endeavored to read a couple of good nonbusiness-related books a month.
HOW TO GET TRIPLE-A PUBLICITY
We are all dancing in the same ballroom, but the tango of
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the tycoon requires special panache, gusto, and practice. A rose between your teeth may make you noticeable to some, but nothing will command a serious audience as quickly as the radiant sheen of the spotlight. You can dance into it, or, if you have money in your pocket, you can possibly use some of it to catch the eye of the man who directs the spotlight. Best to get your act together first, though.
Of course everybody in this country knows the value of publicity: I don't think the bullet had even gone cold when Arthur Bremmer, the would-be assassin who put presidential aspirant George Wallace in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, asked that typically American question: "How much do you think I'll get for my autobiography?"
America is the great celebrity society, where a jail sentence can be parlayed into a talk-show fortune, a third-rate burglary into an entire Watergate industry. Publicity here is the sweetest of all deodorants, and obeisance is to the talk-show host.
The particular advantage of publicity, if you are an aspiring tycoon, is that it can very precisely help you achieve three critical goals:
• Create awareness of your name.
• Establish your authority.
• Render you an attractive cause celebre.
People who ignore advertising devour news. It becomes part of the collective consciousness and forms the basis of serious discussion over lunch. David Ogiivy shrewdly acknowledged this fact when he advised that an advertisement should be disguised to look like a legitimate news story.
The mass media have an insatiable appetite for people and personalities, comings and goings, ups and downs. Journalists depend for their livelihood on being able to report upon the lives of experts and idiots in all walks of life. With a little thought you should be able to arrange that your name figures in this gallimaufry. But, please, not as an idiot.
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I was momentarily tempted when a wide-eyed and utterly serious New York PR man told me that he would guarantee me a picture and story in the world press. It would all come about as the result of an address I would give to a business audience on the art of baring an executive's psyche. While telling the story I would divest myself of my clothing. The removal of my pants would mark the climax of my address. Naked but, if everything worked out, still vitally shielded by the podium, UPI flash bulbs would light my elan.
"It will be a great campaign," said my erstwhile practitioner of media magic. It was the last thing I remember him saying.
One fellow who actually paid for and accepted similar advice was a New York headhunter of German extraction. He was purveyed by his public relations advisor as a former SS officer and a proponent of Gestapo-type "stress" interviews. A glossy magazine took the story and ran it, including a photo of the Eichmannian interrogator in his office with a searing spotlight behind him. The deadpan body copy explained that he interrogated executive candidates with studied insults and demeaning questions, alternatively delivered with guttural intensity and syrupy charm. Finally, he dimmed the lights, flicked a switch and studied the responses of his quarry to the exposure of pornographic movies. These reactions, according to his unique Weltanschauung, would reveal an executive's stress threshold, and hence his likelihood of job success.
It was great publicity in terms of column inches but dubious image building, attracting as it did a certain measure of Schadenfreude and good-natured banter among his professional colleagues.
I did once myself score a doubtful coup by telling a Rotary audience that it should be grounds for divorce that a man's wife was hampering his career. Today the story line would be the same but the sexual roles reversed. Plus qa change, plus c'est la meme chose.
Another time I drew bold headlines with the tongue-in-
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cheek suggestion, during the course of an address to the British-American Chamber of Commerce, that unwed, live-in corporate couples were rendering corporate chairmen ambivalent, anxious, envious, and uneasy: as a result, I concluded, executive menopause is arriving earlier. This was a little outrageous, perhaps, but it touched a psychic nerve, which is the key to much publicity. "If you want an audience," Marlon Brando observed, "give them blood. It's the ultimate hustle."
But chasing headlines can sometimes find you impaled upon a double-edged sword. Sometimes better than being the meat in a hungry reporter's sandwich is to slice your own. Business and trade magazines are always in search of specialist articles, and, because good material is hard to come by, the Harvard Business Review actually solicits manuscripts. (And rejects them too, I can tell you.)
It's a lot of work to get an article placed in a major publication, but the results can sometimes be surprising. I once wrote a longish piece for the business section of the A^ew York Times that the computer kindly relegated to the front page, and my phone ran hot with cranks for almost two weeks. But a couple of new clients also called. So did four publishers to see if I was interested in writing a book. When they generously pressed me with money, I was embarrassed to refuse.
HOW TO SORT THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF
Michelangelo said that, even before he began to work on a fresh block of marble, he knew there was a masterpiece in there. All he had to do was chisel it out.
In the same vein, one thing you can do is get a telephone book and survey it page by page—your clients are all listed. If they only knew what a wonderful fellow you are, they would be calling you. All you need is a sharp chisel and a lot of patience.
Your chisel and your patience both will wear better, however, if, instead of the phone book, you obtain through a good
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direct-mail house three finely honed lists, as follows:
1. A small list of those prospects whose custom you most fervently desire, and upon whom you intend to manifest the magnificence of your physical presence.
2. A large list of marginal prospects who might just use you but who would not repay intensive wooing. This list should be extended to include people of eminence who are opinion leaders. Such individuals are often sought out for their advice, and they like to be marketplace insiders. If you can deliver a subtle communication to such people, you may effect some seeming miracles.
3. Nonprospects whose money is good but whose custom may be unsuitable.
However hungry you may be, the courage to walk away from some prospects is the key to building a stable of satisfied clients. Li the final analysis, the quality of your base list of prospects reflects your own personality, the quality of your service, and your future. So let the first bite of your chisel eliminate the dead wood.
I have a particular set of criteria for selecting nonprospects.
1. We don't accept an assignment for a corporation unless it is providing a valuable service to the community. It's not that we are idealists, just that it's difficult to recruit good executives for questionable clients.
2. We don't recruit for corporations that are dying. Some quite large international corporations are held together by creditors and rubber bands. Again, any shrewd executive is likely to be or become aware of this fact, leaving us to recruit second-raters. Such people are simply more dead weight, as a consequence of which they are very likely to be fired—with the blame assigned to Wareham Associates. Thank you, but no.
3. We don't accept assignments from clients who want to pretend that we are paid employees. I turned down a major corporation in New York that wanted to both supervise us and assign some of their own staff to actually
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work alongside us—and using our name. Their suggestion was that they could do the job as well as, if not better than us—that we were just an extension of their personnel department. You don't hire a brain surgeon and want to hold his scalpel, nor a barrister and write his summation. A happy marriage may be solidly established upon a bedrock of mutual distrust, but successful consulting is generally a more intimate relationship requiring the mutual respect of both parties.
4. We don't need clients who expect us to agree with all of their foibles and prejudices. W. C. Fields said that, when people asked for his advice, he listened carefully and then advised the inquirer to do what he wanted to do. That's a tempting course, but in the consulting business you would wind up either broke or broken-hearted. I find it better to dig in and deliver the sometimes unpalatable truth. This can be expensive, of course. I lost a major cosmetic king simply because he refused to accept my advice that the best man available was already working for him. The key to the headhunting business is the word available. There were, certainly, better executives on the market, but there was, I was certain, nobody who would be able to suffer the president's bizarre moods and whims. This I delicately explained, and we parted on cool but fairly amicable terms. A competitor accepted that particular assignment but was unable to arrange a marriage.
5. I am wary of a prospect who tells me he has used everyone else in town without success. I know that most of my colleagues and competitors take their work seriously and want to do a first-rate job. If several of them fail with the same client, I tend to suspect, as did Hamlet, that something may be rotten.
6. I don't like a client who denigrates his entire executive team. Some people in any organization inevitably fail, but if everybody is second-rate, then so is the organization—and its emperor.
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4 How to Turn $1,000 into a Multimillion-DoUar Corp. HOW TO APPROACH YOUR PRIME PROSPECTS
Assembling your hot list will present you with few problems. In New York I simply selected what I regarded to be the premier corporations in each industry. We ended up with only 297 names.
We enjoyed the advantage of already having recruited elsewhere in the world for some hundred of the greatest '"Fortune 500 corporations." But, wherever I've opened a new office, I have seldom been handed work on a platter just because a particular organization has retained us in another city or country. Mind you, I'd be lying if I said it hadn't been a help virtually everywhere except New York. Here the haut monde genuinely do believe that the out-of-towner knows nothing about anything, and in such a setting I was keen to boast neither my fundamental humility nor my unpretentious origins.
Our back-up list of marginal prospects included a further 2,314 names, and the response to the steady stream of propaganda that we loaded onto the postman's back yielded some excellent leads. Burdening the mailman is itself an art akin to filling Santa's sack, requiring a keen perception of human nature. The eye of a jaded child can be easier to satisfy than the brain above the hand that holds the blunted scalpel that slits envelopes.
In 1970 I flew to San Francisco to collect an intemational direct-mail advertising award that Wareham Associates had won for an expensive promotion of our services. On the Big Day I suffered from jet lag, overslept, and sheepishly collected the trophy in New York a week later. But I still remember enough about the subject—based upon countless failures, cubninating, finally, in heartening success—to spare you some of my own mistakes.
There are two major advantages of direct-mail advertising:
1. It is flexible as Silly Putty, thus enabling you to reach a carefully selected audience of one or of one million. Actually, any letter that puts your name before any client
or prospect is a piece of direct-mail advertising, and this you should always remember.
2. You can precisely tailor your message to your audience. Direct mail is an intimate medium. Marshall McLuhan would call it "hot." If it is good, it involves the recipient by commanding his attention.
My own award-winning, five-color, four-shot, high-cost campaign, looking back on it, was, in my opinion, hopeless, because it trivialized a serious subject.
I should have put into practice Marilyn Monroe's insight that "Men are always ready to respect anything that bores them." Instead I let our ad agency persuade us that Awmor was the key to getting the attention of the man at the top. But, when you are selling a serious service, you must engage the serious interest of the recipient. The approach can be unique, compelling, attention-getting, urbane, but it should never be trivializing.
The story is told around New York of a marketing wizard who conceived a unique promotion to sell personal jets. To test his conception, a carrier pigeon, in a box, was hand-delivered to the president of a famous New York bank. A message on the box offered the president a glass of champagne and a seat on a special demonstration flight. Whether or not he chose to accept the invitation, the beauty of flight, said the invitation, would be revealed when the pigeon was set free carrying the president's reply, which should be attached by him to the pigeon's leg. A small hole in the box provided the opportunity to affix the said reply to the said leg.
What happened was not quite according to plan. The president accidentally opened the box. The terrified bird flew out and, quite without appreciation of the corporate pecking order, defecated upon the president's hand-tailored, banker-blue suit. Trapping the feathered fury in order to release it down on Park Avenue proved a task requiring the help of other well-dressed colleagues, who were similarly befouled.
I persuaded that very same president, with whom I had
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neither met nor previously spoken, to twice call my office for the sole purpose of discussing our services, merely by writing him a courteous letter. No messy bird. No Madison Avenue hype. Just a clear, simple, dignified message. What could be nicer? The moral, of course, is that you must give serious thought to the tone, tenor, and medium of all presentations, else the dropping that you land upon a president's desk may reflect neither your sentiment nor your intentions.
To be effective, any piece of direct mail you send must:
• Arrive
•
Get opened
• Get read
•
Get your message into the recipient's psyche
• Attract a favorable reaction
Here are my rules for making your direct-mail campaign a success:
1. A personal letter from you to your prospective angel should:
• Give no clues that it is part of a campaign.
• Address him by his correct name. (Obvious, you might think, but it doesn't always happen.)
• Contain, in the first sentence, a benefit, a hook, and a summary of what is going to be said.
• Be individually typed with a fabric ribbon. (The proliferation of word-processors has rendered "perfect" form letters suspicious and a sizeable mailing should therefore look marginally imperfect.)
• Address him as one gentleman might speak to another in a club when they have only recently been introduced: the tone should be friendly but not familiar; the message intriguing while not allowing the wheels to show; the style never stilted, pompous, or apologetic. Take as many or as few words as you need to tell your story in a persuasive manner.
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• Be personally signed in ink or broad felt-tip pen. The recipient should feel that the letter has been written personally for him.
• Contain a postscript offering a benefit, and a reason to take some action. The postscript is often looked at first, and certainly it will be read last.
2. Accompanying the letter could be a piece of propaganda that does not look like a piece of propaganda. Our own best material is contained in our Harvard Business Review reprints, which:
• Offer specific information that a prospect will want to read.
• Establish our own expertise and reputation.
• Suggest we are taking the person we are writing to very seriously.
• Effectively provide a third-party endorsement of our services.
Compared to the above approach, a brochure has practically zero credibility, and will probably be read by no one but your competition.
THE NOT-SO-GENTLE ART OF SOLICITING ANGELS
If you take my advice, then your prospect, before you ever call him to set up an appointment, will:
1. Know the name of your firm
2. Appreciate your expertise
3. Be aware that important people think well enough of you to quote you, recommend you, publish your stories, or ask you to address noteworthy audiences
With any luck, your prospect may already want to meet you—^indeed, mirabile dictu, may even have called your office.
But life is rarely that easy, so let us proceed on the assumption that your prospect has not yet gotten around to placing that
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4 //ow to Turn $1,000 into a Multimillion-Dollar Corp.
call, and that, to alleviate his workload, you have decided to take the impetus in arranging a meeting. This will involve a letter and a telephone call. You can skip the letter if you like, but if it's an important contact you might want to drop your name and letterhead by him again.
The letter. It can be useful for this missive to emanate from a secretary with a grand title, the chief advantages of this indirect approach being:
• The writer can, with as much subtlety as the truth will allow, describe you as a genius
• You avoid the risk of a direct rebuff
• You can follow up later with your own letter if need be
This communication should:
• Be impeccably typed, addressed, and spelled
• Refer to a mutual acquaintance who has suggested that contact be made, or to some news item about the recipient that you have gleaned from the paper (guaranteed to catch his attention, and a good reason to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal)
• Include yet another interesting article you have written
• Refer to an intriguing possibility for discussion
• Advise that you will very soon be calling to arrange an opportunity to get together. The advantage of this suggestion is that he may feel obliged to keep your letter on his desk pending your call
The telephone call. I would suggest that you get an articulate ambassador to set up your appointments, for the reasons hsted earlier. Additionally, your emissary can afford to be pushy: indeed, would be derelict in his duty to be otherwise. Wi^job is to arrange this appointment, and anyone attempting to put him off must, very properly, be harassed. However, if you do get on the phone, and you don't get through, or your calls don't get returned (as can happen now and then), then both you and your organization have been rejected and demeaned.
Should you decide to make your own call, an excellent ploy is to place a person-to-person call from another country. Such calls are flattering and rarely fail to track down even the most elusive quarry; and, of course, the detective work is included in the price of the call. Calling person-to-person from another city can be quite effective too, but never as effective as from overseas. If you can't get abroad, then consider having a colleague call from another country.
Another very useful way to gain the attention of a senior executive is to become a free-lance journalist. When I hadn't long been in New York, I wrote a piece about economic recovery that required me to personally interview Peter Engel, then the head of Helena Rubinstein; David Mahoney, chairman of Norton Simon; and Colin Marshall, at that time chief executive of Avis.
I met Colin Marshall at 7:30 a.m. on a midweek morning and we had a long and very pleasant discussion. Near the end of our talk he asked whether or not Wareham Associates had an international charge account with Avis. When I confessed that we did not, he arranged the matter on the spot, thereby confirming my belief that a chief executive always knows the value of a client. And gently one-upping me too.
Incidentally, when that article appeared in six countries, I received personal thank-you calls from my illustrious interviewees—and a couple of very good clients.
Five other points are worthy of note:
1. Establish a bond of intimacy with the secretary. Woo her a little. But judge your target, remembering the advice of Alfie: "Get a married woman laughing, you've got it made. Get a single girl laughing, and it's all you'll ever get."
2. Refer to your previous correspondence with numero una as though you have been writing to each other for years. Sympathize with his secretary that he is always in such demand. Acknowledge that she is the person who really runs the place (very true, since she runs his sched-
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ule). Enlist her as an accomplice in helping you get an appointment. If you get on her good side, you will soon be talking to Mr. Angel whether he likes it or not. At worst, she just may point you to a genuinely more helpful contact, which enables you to tell that individual that Mr. Angel has instructed you to get together.
3. Never say you want to introduce yourself. Say you have something quite unique to show him that will require Getting Together. Of course, if someone else is calling on your behalf, the advice can be that you have just flown in from Brussels—or, better yet, will soon be flying in from Brussels—and need to set up a brief appointment. The advantage of this ploy is that it focuses upon a suitable date rather than the subject of your meeting. Perhaps, in similar vein, you could paint your house white and say that you will be coming direct from the White House. Obfuscate a little. The goal at this stage is merely to get in.
4. Rarely give your name or ask for the Angel to return your call. Explain that you are very busy and will probably be out. Politely apologize on behalf of your caller that he is out, and ascertain when he'll be expected back, and make an appointment to call him back. It's a Byzantine business, but top people do receive hundreds of crank calls every day, and their secretaries automatically want to—and are paid to—shield them from unfamiliar voices.
5. Be prepared for the unexpected. I can confirm that my expatriate countryman, Keith Crane, president and chief executive of Colgate, is inclined to sometimes answer his own phone, as are a number of other senior executives who like to stay in touch with their public.
Into the heavenly chamber. It is important, once in the presence of an angel, to have an answer to the inevitable question: "What good reason is there to use you in preference to our existing firm?"
Frankly, the question is a red herring. There is no good
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reason and every good reason. The angel will make his choice for emotional reasons rather than as the result of your compelling logic.
Choosing any professional service is like buying a yacht: people buy romance and dreams. I have seen normally sane people literally fall in love with the alluring lines of forty feet of dry rot, and then invent all sorts of rational reasons to justify the large dents made in their wallets.
But the Catch-22 is that you must still adduce something sound for your Angel to hang his logical hat upon, and this should be done with a straight face. In New York my answer was simple: "Any firm is only as good as the consultant handling your particular assignment."
Everyone always agreed. I paused and then proceeded: "In New York / will be supervising your work and, as founder of an international organization operating on three continents, I have particular ego-involvement in seeing that you get the very best service available. Can the consultant who presently handles your work point to the same motivations? Or is he anxious to finish work at five and get home to his family? Does he care about you? Is he really trying as hard as he used to? Do you even know who is handling your work?"
A frown would cross Mr. Angel's face at this point, and on we went: "But the best reason to use Wareham Associates is that we service only a small number of select clients in disparate industries (especially true at the time of my visit). This enables us to scour the market and tap the shoulder of that one best executive wherever he may be: to approach any and all of your competitors unfettered.''
By now I had usually captured his attention. "Mr. Angel, the big New York search firms just cannot, with the best will in the world, offer you the same guarantee. Sometimes, as a result of this peculiar industry, they find themselves in bed with your competition.''
This somewhat romantic approach yielded some attractive clients. I remember being called at 5:15 p.m. on a bleak winter Friday to the executive offices of a major banker. The chair-
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man was furious to have discovered, after my call upon him two weeks eariier, that indeed his big blue-chip search firm had robbed Peter to pay Paul and poached one of his key executives. I walked out with a substantial five-figure retainer in my pocket, and a client whose custom means more to me than the affection of some of my own relatives.
Sometimes I would depart from my prepared message. Once when I called upon Pfizer Inc., said to be the largest manufacturing employer in this greatest city in the world, I was surprised to find myself agreeing with expatriate Australian Neville Smith, the former director of international manpower planning, that executive search was like pimping. We both laughed at that one.
I also enjoyed a laugh with George Green, president of the New Yorker, who listened very carefully, then, when I finished, applauded my performance and made me a gift of the famous Steinberg poster that shows where the world ends—at the edge of the Hudson. One of the great pleasures of living and working in Manhattan is blending with great institutions like the A^^m* Yorker and urbane companions like George (or is it the other way around?). When we discovered we were near neighbors, it was a pleasure to ignore my own advice never to befriend clients or entertain them at home.
Our other major service is contained in Dr. McMurry's unique Communications Grid, and the key to selling this service is often to suggest no more than the truth to the chief executive:
As corporate president you are a victim of the Looking Glass Syndrome. The memos that reach your desk, the reports, the board meetings you attend, all reflect your own image and very little else. Before you were promoted you could survey the corporate psyche through many windows. But now that you are on the other side they have become mirrors. Your staff can still see you, but their faces and words only reflect >'OMr expectations. And yOUT key executives, those you actually pay to give
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you the truth, have a vested interest in withholding bad news, partly because they fear to bring it, but sometimes because they stand to gain if you fail. They mightn't push you into an abyss, but if they see you innocently stumbling towards one they may simply avert their eyes.
Appealing to a chief executive's paranoia is valuable because the only way he can discover what is going on is to hire an outside agency (such as Wareham Associates) to conduct the McMurry Grid. This involves subtle polling techniques and unique field-survey appraisals that enable key executives to be painlessly appraised and corporate problems that otherwise would never have seen the light of day to be precisely pinpointed.
And now, gentle reader, before you rush to the perhaps justifiable conclusion that my methods seem a trifle desperate, please reflect upon a Greek proverb passed on to me by a tycoon whom I met while sailing in the Aegean: "First secure an independent income, then practice virtue."
Recall that I was a hungry and haunted country boy struggling to survive in a jungle of silver-tongued Manhattanites. I was Gulliver among the Brobdingnagians, Alice in the Red Queen's garden, very much in contemplation of losing my head. In Her Majesty's United Kingdom I would have behaved differently. But in America I took my tone from John Wayne, who once remarked of the American Indians:
I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.
THE REAL SECRET OF GETTING CLIENTS
A client is like a friend. You don't make friends by tricking them into liking you. They come to you because they, no less than you, want a trustworthy comrade, someone with whom to share the burden of trying to make it in a tough world.
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It's when you've been around long enough for people to have forgotten when you began, and have established an image that has become your reality, that a reputation is built. There are clients out there who would love to give you their work. What they need to be assured of is that they can rely upon the integrity of your reputation: that you can be trusted.
A fool and his money may soon be parted, but rich fools are becoming a scarce breed, and, anyway, a good client is never a fool, and will count his money carefully. Good clients deal with good people. What you need is to be worthy of your client, and that will take patience and sincerity.
The final secret, I must confess, is that it is upon ourselves, and not our clients, that we must do the most work.
John Wareham is founder and president of an international executive search and management consulting firm headquartered in New York.
He studied psychology to complete his degree in commerce at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, where he was bom. He is also qualified as an economist and a chartered accountant,
A spare-time ocean racer, he also plays squash and chess, and enjoys an interest in theater, opera, and classical music. Mr. Wareham lives in New York City with his wife, Margaret, and their four children.
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(continued from front flap)
gotiations: and "How to Select a Magnificent Management Team" is jam-packed with hard-headed common sense that will make the book a bible for anyone facing the rigors of hiring—from either side of the interview desk.
Mr. Wareham has written what may be the frankest, funniest, and most useful piece of self-improvement advice ever. "How to Turn a $1,000 lOU into a Million-Dollar International Corporation" is a gem: it is engaging, revealing, practical, enriching and, best of all, true.
John Wareham is founder and president of an international executive search and management consulting firm headquartered in New York.
Jacket design copyright © 1980 by S. Neil Fujita Jacket photograph by Robert McKeever/Mayfly
"One of the snappiest, most instructive works of self-promotion since David Ogilvy's Confessions of an Advertising Man. A good bet for anyone who manages people—or hopes to."
Andrew Tobias