Monday Morning Numbers or Get Off the Train

"There was something of a ‘keep up or clear off’ mentality in those days. I was often known to say, ‘This is the Netco Express and we don’t carry passengers. If you’re not contributing, get off the train.’ For the A-team who stuck around, I found a unique way to keep them, quite literally, driving hard. The majority of our sales team were young guys, and I’d asked them what it was that would most motivate them and how to incentivise the top performers. They wanted me to take them for a drive in the Porsche Turbo. So, that’s what I did."

"His tense Monday morning sales meetings with our small team – where each person outlined their target for the week, before reporting back on Friday afternoon (by which time you sure as hell better have hit your numbers) – were working. Grant and his investment partner, Steve Sinclair, had pushed for a better margin by being harder on costs and also putting up the price. This was building a respectable margin."

"That’s why, several years later, Paul and I found ourselves glued to the phone on Christmas Eve, trying to close a sale. Most of our colleagues, and frankly most of the country, were winding down, tidying up the last items on their to-do lists and hoping to knock off early for the holidays. But we were hunched over the desk, eagerly waiting for a call that could make or break our month’s figures. It was a far cry from my spelling spotter days, but the stakes still felt high. Paul had been working on a deal with the Hamilton City Council, and we were down to the wire, with plenty of red tape to navigate (as is typical with public departments). We were deeply entrenched in this team of go-getters though, and hellbent on making it happen. We were so determined, in fact, that we’d had the technicians on standby and the copier (worth $100,000 in 1990 and the size of a small car) already loaded into one of our huge Mitsubishi delivery trucks, circling the block until we got the green light. The council didn’t know that its new machine was orbiting the nearby streets for the entirety of that day while their team were gearing up to clock off for the holidays. Finally, just after lunchtime, the phone rang. We must have been one of the final things on that guy’s to-do list, but we no longer cared. The deal was confirmed. ‘When can we expect the install?’ the client asked. ‘In about ten minutes,’ I replied, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice. The council was probably expecting sometime in the weeks following our summer shut-down. It certainly couldn’t have anticipated just how prepared we were. Before we closed for business that day, the copier was in the council’s office, and we were heading home on the high of another deal in that year’s books."