No Place in the Sun

by John Mulligan

  ‘I’m sorry about the short notice, Harry, but part of the deal was that I come on board immediately. I’m not leaving you stuck though.’

  ‘Looks like it to me.’

  ‘No, I spoke to Walter last night, he is willing to come to work full time with you; he enjoys this game a lot more than the local stuff that he does during the week anyway, and he’s well able to fit into my shoes here.’

  ‘I appreciate that; Walter is a great guy, reliable too.’ Harry couldn’t resist the barb. ‘Ok, Tom, I’ll make up what’s owed and pay you at the end of the month. I don’t want us to fall out over this, mad and all as I am with you.’

  ‘Thanks, Harry, and I’m sorry about the way this has ended, but I really got a big opportunity with Tania Sherry and I’d be foolish to pass it over.’

  ‘Ok, don’t worry about it; I suppose that if I was your age I’d want to make a killing. Can you do me a favour though; can you do the editorials to go with the ads in the Sunday papers?’

  ‘Did them last night, oh ye of little faith.’

  Harry laughed as he took the pages from Tom. ‘That illiterate jackass Murtagh will have to start earning his wages from now on; he’ll have to go back to school and learn to write his own column.’

  Tom sipped from his coffee. ‘I’m sorry to be leaving, Harry; it was great working here but I need to go with this one, like you say yourself this business won’t last for ever and I need to make hay while the sun shines.’

  ‘You’re right, Tom, I’m in retirement mode I suppose and you’re looking to expand and go big time. I hope you made the right choice with that crazy bitch though.’

  ‘I’m twenty seven years old, Harry; I can handle her, I’m a big boy now.’

  ‘Now pay some serious attention, guys.’ Tom looked at the two fresh-faced salesmen who sat across from him in his office. ‘You think you can sell property just because you sold a couple of houses a week in your last jobs. This is a whole new ball game, you’ll be expected to close up to twenty sales a day each at busy times, a whole new way of working that you have no concept of at this point.’

  ‘Twenty? In one day?’ The young man sounded incredulous. ‘How could a person do that, I mean you usually have to put half a day into any customer to sell them a house.’

  ‘This is different, its high volume, high pressure stuff, and you can make a lot of money if you work your asses off. If you don’t perform, not only will you be earning small money but you’ll be earning it somewhere else.’

  ‘So how do we do it, I mean what are the logistics of it?’ The other man seemed eager.

  ‘Simple process, I’ll do a presentation every hour, ten to fifteen minutes of hard sell on the project, dressed up as an information exercise on Spanish property. Then you get behind your desks and sell like crazy. No more than fifteen minutes per customer from pitch to close; any more and they are timewasters, tyre kickers, lose them.’

  ‘And will you be selling too?’

  ‘Damn right I will, probably selling two to every one of yours, but once you get the feel of it you’ll start to put lots of sales on the meter. Now, are we ready to make some money, guys?’

  The two were excited now; Tom was talking about the kind of money that they had only dreamed of up to this.

  ‘Ok, you’ve studied the project, but study it again. Learn every house type and learn the site layout, no point in looking up stuff when the customer is sitting across from you. Have it all in your heads, ok?’

  They nodded.

  ‘I’ve put your names on a couple of houses on the master sheet; if anyone needs a push, tell them that you’ve bought those ones. That’s what closes sales, if they think that the salesman has faith in his product they are a lot happier. My own name is on the one just inside the gate; better not tell them that one isn’t for sale, its going to be the security office.’

  They laughed at Tom’s little joke.

  If they’re flagging, remind them that they can earn a lot of money from renting the house out when they aren’t using it themselves. You have the spreadsheets showing the different rates for the different times of the year?’

  ‘We have, but what’s the real deal on rentals?’

  ‘You won’t be telling them any lies in one way. I mean if they work on it and advertise, they could conceivably get rentals all year round for a house in Spain. Of course it won’t drop out of the sky, and it would be a best case scenario, but no point in giving a negative view of things.’

  The quiet one interrupted. ‘What happens when they don’t find tenants? Are they going to come back at us?’

  ‘That’s down the line.’ Tom reassured his team. ‘The place won’t be finished for nearly three years realistically, although you need to tell then two years so as to encourage them, and who knows what will happen by then? Anyway, we’ll be sitting on a pile of money, lads, and we won’t be worried about a few punters and their lack of tenants. They’ll have a house in Spain, that’ll make them happy enough, and who knows where we’ll be? So, let’s get to work, there’s a lot of stuff to do before the weekend; I want you guys to make more money this week than you ever made in your lives.’

  The room was packed. Tania Sherry did things in style, renting the biggest function room in town and packing it with display material provided by the developer. Two saleswomen from Spain, also provided by the Spanish company, were working at two desks along the side wall. The receptionist from Tania’s translation company and one of her Spanish translators were meeting and greeting people as they came through the door and capturing their details on pads of contact forms. Three lawyers from Alicante had their own stands on the other side, each displaying large nameplates. This had been Tom’s idea; give the clients the idea that they were being offered a choice of law firms, although all three were under instruction to help close the sales in the case of any customer who might be wavering.

  Tom and his two salesmen had their desks along the back wall, opposite the dais from which he made his presentation every hour; it was an unashamed selling exercise although the screen described it as an information presentation. This was Tom’s chance to make the sales pitch to a large group of buyers, saving time at the tables when they went to talk to the sales team individually.

  The coverage in the papers had been good too, helped along by Tom’s emails that just needed to be cut and pasted into the editorial. Murtagh had waxed eloquent in his front page piece on the Globe; He readily switched allegiance from Sunspots, helped along by a voucher for an expensive meal for two. One of the more respectable Sunday papers had at first declined any offer of assistance with the editorial, until Tom had called the advertising manager and asked him whether or not he was interested in Scorpio’s advertising business.

  Tania was floating around, charming customers and keeping control of the master sales sheet. There was no point in delivering sales at this kind of volume only to lose one because the same villa was sold twice. He joined her for a coffee on Sunday afternoon, in the first lull that had occurred in two days.

  ‘Well, Tania, looks like we’re mining a thick seam.’

  ‘True in more ways than one, Tom, some of the clients for this stuff aren’t the brightest.’

  ‘Any idea of the score so far? I’ve a feeling that we’re close to the ton.’

  ‘Hundred and six as of a minute ago, we’re well in the black, Tommy baby.’ She was in high good humour; it was all working out very well.

  ‘With any luck we should put another fifteen across the line between now and close, that would be the best anyone has ever done in an exhibition. I can’t believe how well it’s working.’

  ‘Wait until your two protegees get up to speed, although whatever pep talk you gave them seems to have worked.’

  ‘Just a matter of focussing their minds, teaching them to lie creatively, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Time to move, Tommy, here comes the next wave.’ She moved towards the door to greet the fresh crop of buyers.

&n
bsp; Tom stepped on to the podium and lined up the slideshow on his laptop. He tapped the mike and spoke confidently.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen; welcome to Scorpio Properties information presentation. Please take your seats and we will shortly commence a short presentation on investment opportunities in Sunny Spain.’

  ‘Ten weeks at this rate and we’ll have sold out the entire project. That’s quite an achievement, Tom; we’re going to make ourselves a shed load of money.’

  ‘We’re not there yet, there are a thousand villas left on the plans.’

  ‘Don’t be so negative, Tommy, this is all going very well and there seems to be no bottom to this particular well. I reckon that we should be looking around for another project, maybe sell it alongside this one.’

  Tom nodded.

  ‘That worked well for us in Sunspots, we bumped up the price of a small project and offered it as a choice, mostly to show how cheap our main offering was.’

  ‘Did you sell any of it?’

  ‘That was the funny thing, it sold out with no effort in a couple of weeks; people reckoned that because it was more expensive, it must be better.’

  ‘Then maybe we need to do that, get a similar project and bump it up a bit, make ourselves some extra margin.’

  ‘Let me think about that. Maybe we should split this project, give the far side of it a different name and sell it at say twenty percent more than we are selling for now. If it doesn’t sell at the higher price, we can shrink it back into the main project.’

  ‘Or if it takes off, we could enlarge it, eat into the cheaper part? I like it, Tom, milk it for every possible euro.’

  Tom pondered the possibilities. ‘I’d say we need to talk to the developer, get him to offer a different finish to the exteriors on the more expensive one, not necessarily better quality, just different. We’d need to change the literature as well, but they would do that in a couple of hours in Spain.’

  ‘If you go to Alicante this afternoon you could get all that done and be back tomorrow night. Do you want me to come with you?’

  Tom laughed at the memory of their previous trip.

  ‘No thanks, Tania, once was enough.’

  ‘Don’t be such a baby, Tom, but I won’t go where I’m not wanted. By the way, I have a CV here from a guy looking for the front of house job, he says he knows you.’

  ‘We badly need someone at the shows to oversee the marshalling of the people, ideally someone with a sales background. Who’s the guy you’re looking at?’

  ‘Andrew Milton; works as a salesman in a men’s fashion shop. Is he ok?’

  ‘Good old Andrew! I wondered where he had got to. He’d be ideal, great personality and he was a good salesman as well. Yes, grab him.’

  ‘Is he good looking? Should I grab him in the other sense?’

  Tom laughed. ‘Good luck on that one; that would be a first anyway. I’d better get a move on if I’m going to Spain, see you on Wednesday morning.’

  The evening sun was still warm as Tom came down the steps, it had obviously been a very hot day and the heat still glowed back from the tarmac and the airport buildings. He flashed his passport at the nonchalant policeman at the desk and strode past the customs area and through the sliding door to arrivals. Juan was waiting at the doorway and he turned and led the way to the car.

  ‘Good trip?’ Juan was a man of few words.

  ‘Yes thanks, on time, no problems.’

  ‘Enrico already has made the changes to the brochures; we can send them back with you. I collect you in the morning, eight o’clock, and we go to the site and decide on the finishes and the pricing structure.’

  ‘Ok, but we have already calculated the new prices.’ Tom didn’t want the Spaniards to make the running on this.

  Juan put the ticket into the slot and the barrier raised; he drove out on to the main road and headed for the hotel. ‘We must decide how much we each get from the increase, not as simple as just raise the price, no?’

  ‘Juan, we already have a contract with you to sell all the project at the price you wanted, anything on top is ours, that’s already agreed.’

  ‘No, only twelve and a half percent, not another twenty percent as well. Is no fair that we are building, doing all work, and you are making more than we are. Our profit is fifteen percent only, now you want to make twice that amount.’

  ‘A deal is a deal surely?’

  ‘A deal is a deal, no problem, but this is excess, we have to get half of the extra markup or we make other arrangements. Already Senor Simpson has been here and he ask us to give him some of this project, we say no, we have good partnership with Senora Sherry. Pero if you can not meet us half way, we must make other arrangements.’

  Tom had expected this approach, and he had agreed with Tania that they would give as much as half the extra price back to the developer, but Juan had shown his hand and left room for a bigger slice. ‘I can’t possible do that, Juan, your costs are still the same but we have to spend a lot more on marketing now that this is essentially two projects. I propose giving you four percent extra, that’s all we can do. And if you give the back end of the project to Simpson, we can always show that we’re selling the same project for less money, he won’t make a single sale.’

  Juan hadn’t thought of that angle, he was suddenly conciliatory. ‘No need for this, Tom, we work well together. How about you give us seven and a half, leave twelve and a half for you?’

  They were pulling up outside the hotel, time to bury this one. ‘Six percent, my last call; you got me when I was tired after a long day, don’t leave it until tomorrow or I’ll be a lot harder to deal with.’

  Juan sighed. ‘Ok, is fair I think, from now on we both making a lot more money. See you in the morning.’

  Tom pulled the curtains and lay back on the bed; time for an early night. He suddenly felt that he was getting old; there was a time when he would have headed straight out on the town, but tomorrow was going to be a busy day and he needed his sleep. He picked up the phone and called Tania.

  ‘Struck a deal, six for him and fourteen for us.’

  ‘Well done, lover, better than we could have hoped for. Now if you can squeeze good quality finishes out of him, you’ll be worth what I’m paying you.’

  ‘That’s the easy part; I could nearly go home now and be happy with the trip. I thought he’d put up a bigger fight. By the way, Simpson was sniffing around the project, wanted a slice of it.’

  ‘Simpson? That little jerk! The cheek of him, I hope that he was sent packing.’

  ‘He was, they just wanted to use him as a lever to put pressure on us, but I blew that argument away. I don’t think he’ll be a threat, he’s too small time and he thinks too small. If he was any use he’d be finding his own stuff and not following us around. Don’t worry about him.’

  ‘I won’t, but it’s time his wings were clipped a bit. Talk tomorrow, and behave yourself in Alicante.’

  Hiring Andrew proved to be an inspiration. The organised chaos of the exhibition room was suddenly transformed into a well-oiled machine. Nobody got past Andrew’s charming approach; every visitor was recorded and assessed and their details were inputted into the laptop by the receptionist from the translations company. By the time they got to a salesman their information was on screen, along with any extra snippets that Andrew had gleaned from his short conversation with them.

  ‘Oh it’s great to be back among friends.’ Andrew raised his gin and tonic and Tom and Walter lifted their pints in salute. The Willows was quiet, it was still early on Sunday evening and they had all had a tough weekend.

  ‘Pity we’re not all on the same team.’ Walter was feeling the heat, managing shows on his own, but he looked happy enough.

  ‘How did you do this week?’ Tom wasn’t prying, just curious to know how his old firm was doing.

  ‘Fifty seven closed, probably another ten will close on Monday or Tuesday.’ Walter had been busy. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Just short
of the hundred, but Andy will move another ten on the phone during the week if the last few weeks are anything to go by.’

  ‘That’s me, Andrew the mover. And shaker of course.’ Andrew was happy, earning decent money again after his sojourn in the clothing business.

  Walter was in one of his philosophical moods. ‘Isn’t it an amazing phenomenon when you think about it? I mean, if you tried to sell a house here without letting buyers see it, you’d be laughed out of the shop, but the punters for the Spanish stuff have no interest in looking at the location, although I suppose there’s nothing to see yet anyway. Still, you’d think that they’d want to view the site or something, but very few are bothered.’

  ‘Same with us, out of seven hundred sales on Montana Fea, only three went out to see it.’

  ‘How do you deal with that, do you go with them?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘Not worth the effort, would cost too much of my time, I’d rather lose the sales. No, Juan looks after them on that side, part of the deal, and we only lost one out of the three, went to another agent when they were out there.’

  ‘That happens, hard to keep them herded, you need to sit on them twenty four seven or they stray. Still, one dropped sale is nothing with the numbers you’re doing.’

  Tom agreed. ‘If you start that inspections trip racket, you need to do big groups and keep them away from any temptation to go elsewhere. I heard that up in Mojacar the agents are so pushy that if you go up to the bar to buy a drink, another agent will be sitting at the table with your client when you come back.’

  Andrew laughed. ‘The cheek of them, maybe we should brand the customers with a hot iron, make them keep their sticky fingers off them.’

  ‘We’ll leave that kind of thing to you Andy.’

  ‘Now now, Tom, I don’t do the pain thing.’

  Tom called for three more drinks. ‘Seriously though, what next? I mean, there must be a finite number of customers for a property in Spain, so how do we move this on to the next level?’