If You Can't Take a Joke...

by Gordon Gray

  It also worked the other way as well. When I was looking for a new job, I always contacted the headhunters as it was a good idea to make sure that they had your CV on file for any future requirements. Those that specialised in defence manufacturing industry placements had a unique view of the industry. If a company wanted to find a certain type of person to fill a particular role, then they went to a headhunter to get them to trawl the market for the best candidates. In the process, the company revealed to the headhunter a lot about their structure, perceived market position, plans and aspirations as well as their salary scales etc. Equally, an executive working for that company who was fed up would go to the headhunters to seek alternative employment. So, the headhunters often heard the other side of the story. What was wrong with the company, what sort of management culture they operated and why people wanted to leave. Over time, theses headhunters knew an awful lot about most of the major companies.

  The typical headhunter was usually a charming, articulate person, who might be wearing casual light-coloured suits and burgundy loafers with tassels. He would always start by taking my CV and questioning me line by line on its contents with open questions. “What did you like about school?” “Why did you leave the Royal Navy?” “What made you decide to move out of the Harbour Radar department?” “You say here that you did such and such. Tell me about that.” “What salary were you on then?” “How did your wife feel about you changing jobs?” “Tell me about your achievements while you were with Thorn?” “What career benefits did you think you would get by moving to a defence consultant?”

  So it continued as they dissected me and my career, line by line, to be sure I was the same person that had compiled the CV. This could take about two hours, but I knew at the end that they could not say I was trying to be somebody I was not and hopefully they felt I was the ideal person for whatever job it was. Only then, once they felt that they were comfortable with me as a candidate, did they ever tell me anything about the position that they had been asked to fill. Often though, it ended in disappointment as it was not a job I would want or a company for whom I would not want to work. If it was not what I wanted, then nothing lost and the headhunter had my CV on his database for any future requirements.

  Sometimes it would be a direct approach from the company themselves. I was sitting in the departure lounge of Abu Dhabi Airport waiting for a flight to India. In walked a man I knew fairly well. Adam was the owner and managing director of a small defence consultancy company and we had worked with him a few years earlier in Plessey. He was a jovial, friendly, outgoing guy who always seemed to be in good spirits.

  “Gordon, how good to see you. I am so glad to have bumped into you as there is something we need to discuss,” he gushed. He was treating me like a long-lost son! He put his arm on my shoulder and led me across the lounge to a quiet corner with no other passengers nearby. “Let’s sit over here and have a quiet chat.” He went on, “We have been watching you and believe that you are one of the best guys around in the industry. We have big expansion plans as we are looking at new markets and we feel you would make an excellent addition to our small team. Other people who know you well are working with us and agree you are the man to have onboard. Would you be interested in joining us?” Before I could think or reply, he continued, “And don’t worry about the salary, it will be much better than what you are on at the moment.”

  “How do you know what I am on at the moment?” I asked.

  “We know what your company pays as we have done work with them.”

  “What about Kelvin, your deputy, does he agree to this offer?”

  “Of course! He is with me 100% on this. Look, I must go now, but I will call you when you get back to the UK.” We shook hands and he left to board the London flight. I boarded my flight to India with a feeling that life was going to get better and trying to see myself as an ‘International Defence Consultant” rather than a “sales rep”. I believed him and his sales pitch. I took the job, the higher salary and the big new car; but it was a mistake. What he had failed to mention was that his sycophantic deputy had never wanted me onboard at all and he spent the next twelve months undermining me and backstabbing me to Adam whenever he could. I was not really aware of this until it was too late. I was made redundant and had to start again back in mainstream defence sales. Working in a consultancy, however, gave me a fresh and interesting perspective on the defence market as I got to know a number of different companies and saw how they operated, as well as getting a clearer view of the market from the customer’s viewpoint. But I also found it a frustrating position to be in. A consultant is neither the maker of the product nor the buying customer; he is neither the poacher nor the gamekeeper. He sits somewhere between the two, trying to bring the two sides together and to a deal.

  Once I was called by the managing director of a small marine electronics company who I knew pretty well. He wanted me to join his export sales team but he wanted me to meet his sales director first as I would be reporting to him. A one to one meeting was set up. The sales director, who was called Eddie, strutted into the office. He was a short guy with a prominent stomach. He had bright red braces, green striped tie and was not wearing a jacket. He was brash and loud and immediately told me that he used to be a photocopier salesman. He continued by telling me what a great copier salesman he had been, how many awards he had won and how only the very best salespeople succeed in the copier business. “It is the toughest sales job anywhere.” I was clearly meant to be impressed. He had not asked me one question about myself at that point or told me anything about the company or the job. He really was all mouth and lots of big talk of what he had sold, the high targets he had always met and the bonuses he always won. This was not the sort of man to whom my old mentor Ernie would have taken! He finished with the motivating challenge of “I drive the team hard and set good targets that you will meet ‘cos I’ll sack you if you don’t. You’ll find me a tough guy, but fair”. He even said at one point, “I am a good boss as I will never bollocks you in public, only in private.” Charming! At the end of the interview, he offered me the job by saying, “Now, do you want the job or not?” I said I needed to think it over and discuss it at home. This clearly annoyed him.

  I rang the managing director the next morning and said basically “Thanks, but no thanks.” He asked why and I told him there was no way I could ever work for that man. The managing director did not sound surprised. I learnt later that the sales director and the company parted company a few months later.

  On one approach I received, the headhunters said the client company wanted a sales manager to sell their new range of small boat marine electronics in the UK. It was not clear which company it was, but at the meeting with the headhunter it became clear. I was not very excited. I rang a friend who worked for a South Coast marine company and asked his views of the company and its products. “Look Gordon, they have had a whole load of these things made on the cheap in the Far East and think they can dump them on us to sell them. The product is not very good, they have a poor performance and are not selling. I cannot tell you anything about reliability as we have hardly sold any. Actually, we have heard on the grapevine that if they cannot make some sales soon, then they may get out of the market as they do not really understand it.”

  Out of interest I went along for an interview, but was not overly impressed. As I walked into the offices, I got a negative feeling from the drab decor, all greys and browns and the characterless look of the reception area. The HR person I met seemed preoccupied, distant and disinterested and I detected a lack of any enthusiasm. To her, I was just a nuisance on a busy day. I then sat down with the general manager, a middle-aged man of short and dumpy build, called Mr Clarke, in his small, untidy office. He wore a crumpled brown suit and his shoes had not seen any polish in a while. He did not seem very happy.

  Without any preamble, he began. “Tell me about yourself.” His tone was bored.

  “Well, I am 33, married and have worked
in the marine industry since leaving the Royal Navy.”

  “No,” he interrupted. “Tell me about your current job. What do you do? How many people work for you? What sales have you made?”

  “Oh, I see. My current job entails running a series of sales demonstrations,” I continued, but I found his brusque approach together with the lack of any common courtesies irritating.

  He cut me off after a couple of minutes. “We need a good salesman to sell our products to the marine leisure market, local dealers, yacht marinas, that sort of thing. Can you do that?” he demanded.

  After some short questions and answers regarding the product itself and bland statements from Mr Clarke about “On target earnings over a strong base salary”, it became clear that Mr Clarke saw it as a simple direct selling operation and he had no feel for the end users, relationships with dealers, or customer and product support. I did not see any real interest in, or knowledge of, the marine industry in anything he said. The meeting was quickly terminated as Mr Clarke told me he had lots of other candidates to see. I left knowing that I did not want the job nor did I want to work there. I was a little surprised to receive a job offer a few days later. I turned down the offer even though the money was a lot more than I was on at the time.

  Then a few days later, the phone rang at home one evening. It was Mr Clarke, “Look, we think you should reconsider your decision not to accept our offer,” he began. “Oh really! Why?” “Well, we have reviewed the salary and are now prepared to offer you £5,000 more.” I refused. I wondered what had happened to all the other candidates. Three nights later, the phone rang again. This time he offered an even higher salary, about 50% more than the one I was on. I still refused. I came off the phone and told my wife I had just turned down a 50% pay rise! The more they rang me, the more convinced I was that I was right to refuse. Time proved me right as the company soon vanished off the marine electronics map.

  Many meetings with headhunters led nowhere, but even so they always seemed to give my self-confidence a boost. Some, however, did lead somewhere and that always made it all worthwhile. In terms of ‘hit rates’ then in job hunting, I found that roughly for every 100 application letters I wrote then I might get about ten invitations for interviews. Of those ten, maybe one might result in an acceptable job offer. It makes it sound as though the odds were low. They were. The job market is a busy place and in sales there were always lots of applicants for any job. Sometimes I would hear others looking for work saying, “Well I have written to the two electronic companies in my hometown and they have both said no so I cannot do any more.” Looking for a new job is a full-time job and can take months. When I was redundant, I wrote letters to every defence, naval or marine company in the country, and more than a few overseas, to whom I felt I could offer something, wherever they were. I applied for anything in the papers that I thought I could do, regardless of whether I was qualified to do it as defined in the advert.

  Many adverts were quite ridiculous in their demands. Some seemed to read “Leading naval company requires a junior sales manager to join sales team. Must be educated to degree level, have full Masters Mariner’s ticket and not less than five years command experience at sea. Must be under thirty and have previous international sales experience with blue-chip company”. Clearly such people do not exist, but part of the fun of applying to such adverts was to go and see where the company was out of tune with reality. Then, when all the companies had said no, at least I knew I had tried and I could start again with another set of companies.

  Company Cultures

  Surely, in an industry like defence manufacturing, most of the companies would be pretty similar to each other. In fact, they were all different and had different approaches to how they treated their staff, how they valued their customers, viewed their products and how they saw themselves. From the big boys of the day like Racal, Marconi, Plessey, Thorn EMI, BAE, etc to the many smaller “niche” companies, each company had its own ‘culture’ or ‘atmosphere’. In some companies, this was a good positive atmosphere; in some, it was not. Some looked after their staff well, respected and trusted them. Others treated their staff poorly, did not trust them, did not encourage initiative and generally demotivated everyone. Interestingly, it seemed to be those companies that looked after their staff that also tended to ensure that the customer and his needs were the priority. It was the companies that treated staff poorly that tended to see the customer as an irritation. You could often tell which culture a company had after a short visit and quiet observation of the staff and their mood. Would I want to work in this atmosphere?

  Decca Radar was a good place to work. It had a family atmosphere where loyalty and trust worked both ways and lifelong friendships were formed. In fact, over thirty of us, from directors to sales reps and engineers, still meet up every couple of years for a reunion nearly thirty years after the company was taken over and we all went our different ways. Plessey had a great culture, especially in the naval systems group. At one stage in the early 1980s when I was looking for work, I was repeatedly asked by different headhunters “You have applied to Plessey, haven’t you?” When I told them which other companies I had also applied to, they would answer, “Well, we can leave Marconi as a backstop.” The message was clear and I was very grateful to be offered a job with Plessey. Ultra Electronics always had a good professional culture and was a great ‘niche technology’ house, run and managed professionally as a series of separate, small niche technology companies within the parent group. These companies had bosses who had a passion for their technology, treated their people well – not necessarily just in terms of salary, but in terms of giving them the chance to improve themselves through training and making them feel that they belonged and were valued members of the company.

  If given a choice, then I feel that it is often better to accept a lesser job and lower salary with the company that feels right, rather than the grand title and more money in the wrong company. The wrong job will not last long, while the better company will offer the right chances to grow and progress successfully and happily.

  Final Thoughts

  Much is made in some sections of the media about the ‘defence industry’, or as they like to refer to it, ‘The Arms Trade’. It is seen as something verging on the illegal and certainly immoral and they have a tendency not to differentiate between those employed on genuine government-backed defence export sales to friendly nations and those smuggling guns and explosives to terrorist organisations. A government’s first duty is the defence of its people, so for any country a defence industry is a vital asset. To ensure that the costs of development and manufacture of sophisticated systems are minimised for the home customer, it is important to be able to sell these defence systems to friendly countries with similar requirements. However, this must be offset against the needs to maintain a technical and military lead over our adversaries, so the UK Government has strict rules and a very strong say in what can be sold to whom. The UK Defence Industry is one of the last remaining major industries left in the UK with strong R&D, manufacturing and technology capabilities. I worked as an international salesman in the marine and naval defence industry with many companies between 1977 and 2007 and I found it a professional, honourable and satisfying industry in which to work.

  During the 1980s and 1990s, the UK defence industry went through some major contractions as government defence spending was cut in response to the end of the Cold War, the changing of perceived threats and other world events. These contractions caused many companies to be bought out, sold or merged with the associated redundancies along the way. Between 1980 and 2000, the UK defence industry shrunk from employing over 750,000 people to about 300,000. In the face of these corporate changes, then to maintain some sort of career in the industry I often needed to move on, or I was forced to move on. I changed defence companies six times; I was headhunted for three of those changes, while three were forced on me by redundancy. However, the shrinkage of the UK defence market did f
orce companies to look to the export market for their future and that gave an opportunity for those of us in export sales.

  Every country is different. They all have different ways of doing defence business and different rules for potential suppliers to follow. All have different defence system requirements and during the course of a project, the cultural, ethical and legal differences became apparent and had to be incorporated into the sales strategy and tactics.

  International selling is not a science. It is not a case of “If I do X, Y and then Z, an order will pop out on Tuesday. It is more of an art. Do as many of the ‘right things’ and as few of the ‘wrong things’ as you can and it may result in success, or it may not. There are no certainties. In export sales, the cry should be: “If we keep doing the right things long enough, then we MIGHT win; if not, we certainly will NOT win”. It is a marathon race, not a sprint. It often takes years to get to an order with many of the key factors and personalities affecting the project changing over that period – some of which will help and some of which will hinder. Some of the factors will be under the company’s control but many will not be, so it is important to recognise the factors that can be controlled and those that cannot.