Novel : BEWARE THE ABANDONED
CHAPTER 5
TAOS, NEW MEXICO
Getting to Taos, New Mexico from Paris is neither quick nor easy. Conscious of cost efficiencies, The Sanctuary had chosen the least expensive route. The early morning flight from Paris to Madrid took two hours. After a two-hour layover, John Cross caught a much longer flight in the afternoon to Dallas, Texas. Another two-hour layover in Dallas, delayed his arrival in Albuquerque until the evening.
He felt lucky when he exited the airport to find the Taos shuttle van waiting. It took over two hours to make the one hundred and thirty-five mile drive up State Road 68. Upon reaching the outskirts of Taos; the shuttle pulled over to the side of the highway and let him off in front of the Days Inn. It was the van’s first stop in the small town.
Coming into Taos is like coming into most small American towns. Along each side of the four-lane highway are the icons of American retail: A Ford dealership, followed by a Chevrolet dealership, followed by Sears, followed by Walmart, followed by a Quality Inn, followed by a Sonic hamburger restaurant.
Land is cheap in New Mexico. Businesses can grow horizontally, instead of being forced to grow vertically. You see, very few two-story buildings. Businesses have big parking lots, often with vacant, undeveloped land between them and the next business.
Low, scruffy trees and bushes add a hint of greenery to the grey-yellow desert landscape. Encircled by distant, dark mountains the Taos valley seems flatter and broader than it is.
John took out his cell phone and called the main college number. The receptionist told him they had been waiting for his call and said they would send someone to pick him up. He stood, with his bag at his feet, watching the parade of pickup trucks go streaming by. There were no pedestrians.
A fiery red ball of a sun was setting. It put on a glorious show. After spending two years in the narrow canyons of Paris, John had almost forgotten how the big New Mexico skies could make one feel so small and inconsequential. Tainted pink by the dying light, puffy clouds sped across the darkening blue dome.
This had been his home and refuge for ten years. After living in a vibrant city like Paris, it now felt foreign, empty and dead. He no longer wanted to be here. It brought back too many memories of Raymond Powell. He wanted to get on with the challenges of living and use all the skills he had acquired.
A pimply faced kid, driving one of The Sanctuary’s white pickup trucks, pulled up beside him. John threw his suitcase into the cargo bed and climbed into the cab. It only took a few minutes to get to the college. Most places in Taos took only a few to get to.
Twenty-five years earlier, The Sanctuary had purchased five hundred acres of desert land on the outskirts of Taos. One of the first things the contractors did, when they built the campus, was to drill for water. They had got lucky. They had drilled into a large aquifer. The trapped ground water, that had been compressed by an ancient geological formation, gushed with great force to the surface. Ever since, it had been irrigating the lawns, flower beds, trees and the eighteen-hole golf course.
The college was at the end of a long dirt driveway, a half mile in from the highway. A high chain link fence surrounded the Sanctuary's property. It controlled who got into the campus, not who got out. The guard at the only gate, was there to make sure only the invited, got in.
While cocooned in this compound for ten years, it had never felt like a prison. To John, it was an oasis in the middle of a desert, a safe refuge in the middle of a hostile world.
After childhoods, full of horrors, the campus was somewhere its inhabitants wanted to be. Not somewhere, they wanted to escape from. The Sanctuary took care of their every need.
Anyone who had wanted to leave could have left but without a family to go to where were they going to go? To remind themselves of just how well off they were, all they had to do was walk to the edge of the campus and stare through the chain link fence at the endless grey, brown, dry, desert that surrounded their lush green campus.
They had all experienced the harshness of life. They understand what they had gained. You do not have to be an adult to know when you are well off. As far as John Cross knew, no one had ever left The Sanctuary before they left to go on their two-year mission.
The Sanctuary gave them a purpose, a goal, an opportunity to do something honorable with their lives. They accepted that they were being prepared for the responsibility of saving children from the same dire circumstances that they had escaped. They also recognized that they could not save every abandoned child.
The children who grow up in conventional environments look upon their future as a mystery. They receive a general education. Those on The Sanctuary campus understood their learning had a purpose. They knew that the profits of their future enterprises and their personal incomes depended on how well they absorbed what they were being taught about running a business.
They also understood that the time spent on the compound’s sports fields not only strengthened their bodies but prepared them to work as team members in a competitive environment. To prepare them to move with confidence, in the privileged social circles they were expected to join, they were also coached in manners, in using tableware, good grooming and preparing healthy food.
As they drove up the long driveway to the campus, John could see the leader’s sparkling white pyramid rising above the leafy green trees surrounding it. It was the only three-story building for miles in every direction. On its ground floor was a reception area and a six thousand square foot library. A three thousand square foot administration center occupied the second floor and on the third level was the leader’s one thousand square foot office. On the roof of the third floor was a four-sided white pyramid that soared another thirty feet higher into the sky. From his office, the leader could not only see the entire campus, but he could see all the way to downtown Taos and across the desert to the distant mountains.
Since the building was whitewashed adobe, from a distance, it looked like a wedding cake laid down on the desert. One story residences, lecture halls, labs, classrooms, a recreational center, a student center surrounded the three-story administrative building. All were in the same whitewashed adobe style.
Now that he was a graduate, John learned his status rated him a private guest cottage that overlooked the college’s golf course. He had spent many enjoyable hours on its links.
The kid waited while John deposited his bag into the small, unlocked cottage and then drove him to the student center cafeteria. As he was about to drive away, the driver remembered to hand John an envelope. It contained a letter from Winston Hawkins, the current leader and son of the founder of The Sanctuary. It welcomed John home and invited him to a nine o’clock meeting in the morning.
The only other time he had ever been in Winston Hawkins’ presence was two years earlier. At his graduation ceremony, Hawkins had handed him his diploma and shaken his hand. He had been awed to be in the great man’s presence.
The cafeteria was full of noisy students dressed in The Sanctuary’s uniform of white shirts, black pants, and black shoes. Heads in the room swiveled to check out John’s colorful Parisian attire. John grabbed a plastic tray and pushed it along the stainless-steel counter. For nostalgic reasons, from a warning compartment, he chose the special of the day, Shepherd’s Pie. There was no cashier. Once you were on the campus, money ceased to exist as a commodity of exchange. You helped yourself to whatever you needed when you needed it. Every student, every teacher, every administrator, every clerk, and every visitor were a guest of The Sanctuary.
Arriving from the hard streets, the first impulse of the deprived children was to eat to excess and to hoard everything they touched. They carried food, clothing, pens, and paper back to their rooms. For the first time in their life, they had a private room and a private bathroom. Their small rooms soon became so stuffed with acquisitions that they became uncomfortable. At that point, the student would realize that there was no point in stuffing their bodies or their rooms. They would never want for anything ever again. They were now Sanctuarians. The rooms then reverted to functional neatness.
Even though he had left only two years ago, John recognized no one in the dining room. This did not surprise him. The campus hosted a thousand male students. Twenty percent of the students would have changed since he was last here. He would have only been familiar with those from his own year, some from the year that followed his year and those in the two years ahead of him.
Each year had one hundred students divided into ten classes of ten students. The small classes allowed the instructors to meet, one-on-one, with students for several hours each week to make sure each student understood the lessons they were being taught. For twelve hours a day, seven days a week, students were in classes or in organized activities that would expand their minds and strengthen their bodies. Two hundred instructors taught the one thousand students. They were the best that The Sanctuary could attract to a campus in an isolated community like Taos.
As he was finishing his apple pie, John felt a presence standing beside him. He looked up to see a student smiling at him. John knew he should recognize this face, but it was out of context in The Sanctuary’s cafeteria.
With a slight, French accent, the student said, “John, how good it is to see you. I never had time to thank you. You saved my life.”
It all came rushing back. With obvious surprise in his voice, John said, “Gabriel is that you? I can’t believe how much you have grown in the last two years. I would never have recognized you.”
Gabriel sat down with him. In perfect English, with all the appropriate colloquialisms, he told John about his studies, all the exciting ideas he had been exposed to and all the interesting people he had met. As John looked at this healthy, vibrant, young man, he felt a great sense of satisfaction and pride. Gabriel was standing in front of him instead of lying dead and forgotten in the mean streets of Paris. He had saved Gabriel. If he were to die today, Gabriel was living proof that he had already achieved at least one positive thing in life.
John finished his pie. He and Gabriel walked back to the cottage. The sun had set. The dry chill of the desert evening had crept in. As they parted, Gabriel said, “I hope that someday I can repay you for all that you have done for me.”
There were no locks on any of the doors on the campus. John pushed open the cottage door, took a quick shower and collapsed on the bed. Sleep came as fast as an express train.
At nine o’clock, the next morning, he entered Winston Hawkins’ large, very impressive office. It was a room filled with antique furniture, original oil paintings and book lined walls. The large picture windows, on all four sides, framed desert scenes and drenched the room in sunshine. Hawkins, dressed in a dark blue, pin stripe suit with a vest, peered at him over half glasses. This left John feeling like he was an interesting specimen under a microscope. With a grand sweep of his hand, Winston showed that John should take a chair across the desk from him.
“My condolences, yesterday I learned of your confrontation in Paris. We had looked forward to great things from Raymond. Thank goodness, you escaped any harm. Welcome home.”
“Thank you.”
“I am sure, over the last two years of your mission, that you have considered how you would serve The Sanctuary after your mission was over. Even when you first arrived here, you showed a natural inclination for business. We have taken great care in developing that natural talent. I am looking forward to hearing about your entrepreneurial plan.”
This was John’s cue. Not sure what to expect, he had been rehearsing his proposal for weeks. He was now both relieved and nervous about being able to present it. His future depended on the next few minutes.
He cleared his throat and began, “Raymond and I spent a lot of time discussing what we would do. We were planning on working as partners. Our first choice was buying and operating a golf course. We both loved the game and thought it would not only engage us but be something we both could be passionate about. Unfortunately, our research ruled it out.”
“Why?”
“Lots of reasons. The biggest problem was that most golf courses do not make a profit. The supply of golf courses exceeds the demand. We also found that we would have to take on a debt of between three and seven million dollars. That’s a big burden when you are just learning how to run a business. There were other concerns too.”
“Such as?”
“Uncontrollable things, such as bad weather, droughts, lawsuits from lawyers getting hit by 200-mile-per-hour golf balls or being run over by drunken golf cart drivers. We concluded that what we wanted was to start a small service business, that required a minimum investment, but had unlimited potential. One, where we can easily control expenses, minimize our risks, and expand as quickly as our profits and experience would allow us. We wanted a business that would let us experiment and make mistakes, without destroying it. Maybe, once we had accumulated surplus cash, we could look at buying a golf course. Maybe by then, we would have learned enough about running a business to be the profitable exception.”
“There are few service businesses that I can think of that would meet your parameters.”
“The only one that we came across that met our criteria was running a commercial collection agency.”
With a hint of disdain in his voice Winston Hawkins said, “Debt collecting?”
"Yes, debt collecting, but not consumer collections. We want to specialize in commercial collections. That is collecting money from businesses for businesses. We saw an opportunity for it to grow into a billion-dollar international business. Most collection agencies just want to be in consumer collections. They want to chase after the hundreds of millions of dollars that large credit card companies put out for collection. It is hard for small, new businesses to get a foothold in consumer collections. It is a cutthroat, messy business, with all kinds of consumer protection agencies interfering in your operations., The big national banks play off one consumer agency against another. They beat them down on their commission rates."
"How does commercial collections differ?"
“Well, to build a commercial agency, instead of selling to retailers, you are selling to manufacturers, wholesalers, and business services. You sell the credit manager of each business, one at a time. It requires providing a professional service that is consistent, effective, and competitively priced. What is attractive is that you can lever your success with one company as a reference for approaching another business in the same industry. You can then use this reference approach to move from one target industry to another target industry. You spread your risk among many customers. If you lose one customer, it has little impact on the overall health of your business. In consumer collections, if you lose one giant customer, it can bankrupt your business.”
“You seem to know a lot about it for someone who has been on a mission for the last two years?”
“We had a mentor.”
“Who?”
“An elderly man, by the name of Malcolm Edwards. He once owned the largest commercial collection agency in Canada and sold it to a large U.S. conglomerate. Shortly after selling it, his wife and son died in a car accident.”
“How did you meet him?”
"Having lost his family, he wanted to get away from anything that reminded him of his previous life. He moved to Paris, to pursue a dream, that he had had since he was a child, to be an artist. After seeing us sketching in the park, he approached us. It turned out that his studio was in the building next to our rooming house. The studio was the neighborhood meeting place for artists. Raymond and I spent a lot of evenings there. Having a theoretical business education, like we had, is one thing but being able to pick the brains of a creative entrepreneur is another. He had built his very successful collection agency over thirty years. When we showed interest in learning every aspect of the industry, he became like a father preparing his two sons to take over the family business. He was a great teacher.
John paused, as he let the memories of those evenings in Paris wash over him.
Winston Hawkins had heard enough. Any concerns that he might have had about investing in John’s proposed venture had been erased. He nodded his head and asked, “John, how much money do you need to establish the business?”
John was taken back by this question. He had expected a long, grueling inquisition before the subject of money arose. He answered, “Very little, based on the business plan I worked out with Malcolm Edwards. I will start off with one collector as the inside person and three salespeople, including myself. We will be out there beating the bushes for collection claims and servicing our customers. I’ll set up operations in the cheapest rental property I can find. I believe that within a year I can expect to show a profit. As the business grows, and the volume justifies the expense, I will add more collectors and salespeople. To set things up, I calculated that I would need $400,000. It’s all laid out in my business plan.”
John pushed a folder with his business plan across the desk. Winston Hawkins picked it up and spent several minutes skimming through the pages. John sat there waiting for his future to start. Winston looked up and said, “Where do you plan to establish this business?”
“In Las Vegas.”
“Why Las Vegas? Do you like to gamble?”
“Not really, but in business you do have to take calculated risks. As for gambling in casinos? That holds zero interest for me. As I understand it, the odds always favor the casino. I picked Las Vegas because, first, I feel most at home in the Southwest. Second, it will only cost $400 to incorporate there. The state levies no corporate income tax nor personal income tax. All I must pay is a $200 annual business license fee. Maybe someday I might need to go public to finance a national expansion. If that should happen, Nevada laws allow corporations to operate with the least government oversight of any state. It is also important that Las Vegas has a ten-billion-dollar economy and a population of two million. It’s big enough to give us a solid base to build on. We won’t have to contend with the large competitors in the more established financial centers, like New York and Chicago. Las Vegas is dynamic and open to new business. Everyone has moved there from somewhere else.”
“You seem to have done your homework. To get you started, we will deposit an initial $50,000 in your account today, $10,000 of that should get you a good used car. You’ll need it to get to Las Vegas and to get the company set up. We’ll keep an eye on your account and transfer more to it as needed. Each Friday, I want you to write me a one-page summary of your progress. Tell us where the money is going and what your plans are for the next week. Also, keep us up to date on any changes you make to your master plan. We expect that you will revise it as you encounter problems and opportunities that you had not expected.”
“Thanks.”
“No need for thanks. You’ve earned it. We’ve been preparing you for this for twelve years. It is not a loan. It is an investment by The Sanctuary. I need not remind you that we are counting on the income from your business to help children escape the horrors of the hard streets. We want to see thousands of them realize their full potential, just like you are now realizing yours.”
Feeling overcome, almost on the edge of tears, John choked out his thanks, “If it were not for the Sanctuary, I would be dead. You can depend on me. I will become a successful businessman so that I can save hundreds of children who are facing the same bleak future I once faced.”
He paused for a few seconds to recover before asking, “Is there anything for me to sign?”
“No, everything between you and The Sanctuary, we do on trust. You agreed long before your mission that the sanctuary would own 15% of the shares of any business you established and that 15% of the annual profits would go to The Sanctuary. All the money that you give to The Sanctuary can be deducted by your company as legitimate business expenses. It will take a while for you to get established. Your initial profits will be invested into the business. It is important that your company have a good solid base. However, within three years, we will expect to be sharing in your profits. Now go, make your fortune. You are not alone in this world. The Sanctuary will always be there to protect your back.”
Novel: BEWARE THE ABANDONED
CHAPTER 6
LAS VEGAS
After leaving Winston Hawkins’ office, John waited by the gate until he could hitch a ride to the car dealer on Paseo Del Pueblo Sur. It was a small dealership with a limited inventory. The best deal he could make was a five-year-old, Chevrolet Malibu that appeared to be in good shape. He closed the deal and arranged to pick it up the next morning.
The only other cars he had ever driven were the college’s old clunkers that they taught the students to drive in when they turned sixteen.
The car salesman drove him back to the campus. With reality staring him in the face, he took his laptop and started a search for cheap office space in Las Vegas and somewhere he could afford to live while he was setting up the business.
At nine the next morning, he left Taos. He breezed through Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Flagstaff. It took over twelve hours to complete the eight-hundred-mile trip. He had stayed just above the speed limit.
The most affordable decent hotel room in Las Vegas, that he could find, was in a fake Mexican adobe style building. It was close to the Nellis Air Force Base and twenty minutes from the Las Vegas Strip. Every morning that he was there, he awoke as the military jets took off before six a.m.
He had never stayed in a motel. In a few days he had got used to the hard bed, the white towels that were yellowed and worn and the stench of stale tobacco smoke. What was important to him, was that it had a telephone with free local calls, free internet, free parking and a flat screen television. The free continental breakfast, each morning, was a welcome and unexpected bonus.
It was too late to start his search for office space to rent. It had been a long drive, and he was tired. The hamburger and fries that he ate in the motel restaurant were adequate. As soon as he returned to his room, he crawled into bed and was asleep within minutes.
The first morning, he accessed the website of a Las Vegas agency that specialized in incorporating companies. He filled out the documentation they required and transmitted it to them. They responded that the documentation would be submitted to the Nevada Secretary of State. By noon the following day, he should expect to receive the filed articles of incorporation from the State, along with tax registration forms, licensing, and other bureaucratic documentation. As he had laid out in his business plan, he incorporated the business as, FICA INC, trading as the First Industry Collection Agency”.
To open a commercial bank account and a separate trust account for the collection agency, he had to wait until he had completed the incorporation. Initially he could open a personal account in a nearby bank. He deposited the thousand dollars in cash he was carrying and transferred what remained of the first $50,000 from his bank account in Taos.
A trust account for the business is necessary because a collection agency must be able to deposit checks from the client’s debtors. These checks are usually made out to the client and not to the collection agency. The law requires that the trust account money be isolated from the collection agency’s operating account. Each month, money deposited in the trust account from the preceding month, is sent to the client minus the collection agency’s commission. For trust accounts to hold millions of dollars owed to their client’s is not unusual. Since banks pay interest on trust account money, the interest can be an important source income for the collection agency.
Incorporation was also necessary before John could apply for a collection agency licence and purchase a required $35,000 surety bond that the licence required. This bond would cost a thousand dollars.
While he waited, he began his search for a collection manager. Without a licenced collection manager, he could not open the collection agency nor could he open it without having a physical address.
John took the first reasonable space the real estate agent presented. It was a 960 square feet office for what he thought was a low rent of $600 a month. It was in a two storey, yellow office building, just east of McCarran International Airport. He made sure it had reliable air conditioning and free outdoor parking.
Since the great recession of 2008, property prices in Las Vegas had been the lowest of all large American cities. There were several empty suites in the office building. He had chosen the smallest one, with the belief, that he could upgrade to a larger space, when needed.
Finding a collection manager, to build the business around, was critical to its success. He wanted an experienced collector looking for a growth opportunity. This person would be gambling on their future on newly formed business. As the first employee, they would have to find, train and manage a growing team of collectors to handle, what John hoped, would be an ever-growing flood of collection claims.
An experienced manager would expect to be well paid. To create credibility with this first employee, John needed to show them an office. He had to assure them that the First Industry Collection Agency was more than just a pipe dream.
The next morning, he purchased three desks, swivel chairs and a meeting room table from a used, business furniture company. Their delivery charges, cost almost as much as the furniture.
John organized the desks in a U formation, putting himself in the middle and the collection manager’s desk on his right and his future sales manager on the left. This would allow him to listen in on what they were working on and to give him the opportunity to ask, or answer, questions that they, or he, might have. This would expose him to the unfamiliar intricacies of the collection business. Other purchases included personal computers, two large digital screens, an internet linkage to the Cloud, and a telephone system. The communications company promised they would all be operational the next day.
John hung the two large digital screens on opposite ends of the room. One would display commission income made by each collector and the other would display the value of collection claims brought in by each sales representative. Every collector, sales representative and manager would know every minute of every day how they were performing compared to their quotas.
When everything was in place, John transferred the collection agency software that Raymond had created under Malcolm’s direction, from his laptop to the new computer system. Management reports, form letters, accounting records, schedules, the prioritizing of collection calls and sales calls were now easily retrievable and operational. The system also retrieved and displayed information on debtors and prospective clients that it found in Google and other databases. The storage of debtor and sales prospect conversations and correspondence was also part of the system.
John tested all three computer terminals to verify the system was working as planned. As a final test, he emailed, from his desk top terminal to his iPad, FICA's new client contract form. Using his finger, he signed the contract on the screen and emailed it back to himself. Within seconds, an email, with a copy of the signed contract arrived. Satisfied with this final test, he was now ready to hire his first employee.
John took a direct approach; He phoned all the collection agencies listed in Las Vegas and asked to speak to the agency's legal manager. Malcolm had told him the collector responsible for legal claims, would be the smartest, most experienced collector in that the agency. They would make good managers and be most open to an opportunity with potential in a new agency.
On his third try, he got through to a legal collection manager. He told her what he sought. She showed interest but was reluctant to talk on the phone. John wondered if she would appear for the appointment they had set for the next day. She did.
Her name was Patty Horan. John learned that she was there because she felt slighted. Male collectors with less experience than her, were being moved into management positions ahead of her. She had been collecting for five years and felt that her employer would never move her into management because of the integral role she played as their legal collector. Being a single mother, bringing up a young child, this barrier to her advancement was frustrating. She had financial needs and moving into a higher paying management position was important to her.
John found her to be articulate and bright. To show credibility, in what was a start up, he showed her the slick computer system. She asked several good questions and appeared impressed with his plans for FICA. John laid out the management opportunity.
Patty hesitated. For her it was a gamble. She now had a good job with an established collection agency, but her daughter’s future and a safer home environment was her primary concern. More money and management experience would give her greater security.
Patty closed her eyes and pondered the opportunity. Interrupting her thinking, John asked her how big a salary it would take to get her on board. He was anxious to fill the position. The modest figure she came back with surprised him. He speculated that the low figure was due to Nevada having no state income tax. This had made their salaries lower than elsewhere in the country.
It was then agreed, that if her reference checks were satisfactory, that she would resign from her current job in the morning. Patty thought since she was leaving, to join a competitor, that they would fire her that morning.
Pleased to have one of his two key positions filled, he asked Patty if she could recommend a good collection salesman. Without thinking for more than a second, she said, “Billy O’Malley.”
“Who is he?”
“He is an older guy with many contacts who worked for a large national agency for at least twenty years. They closed their Las Vegas operation a month ago and moved it to some third world country. I don’t think he has landed anywhere yet. Everybody likes him. He’s professional and has a good work ethic. I am sure he could bring in a ton of collections claims.”
“How do you know him?”
“Though the National Association of Credit Management golf tournaments.”
“You a golfer?”
“Yep. Let me see if I can find his phone number for you.”
She took out her cellphone, searched, located it and read it to him. They parted. He said he would see her in two days at nine o’clock.
John phoned the number and left a message for Billy. Within an hour, Billy had returned the phone call. They agreed to meet the following day.
When they met the next morning, John liked Billy. He exuded a warmth and a sincerity that made it easy for him to establish a rapport with strangers. Billy’s grey hair and the fact that Billy could afford to lose at least twenty pounds led John to believe that Billy was in his mid-fifties. Although he had never known his own grandfathers, John thought he looked like someone’s kind, old grandfather.
They spent two hours determining what each of them would bring to FICA. Billy listened as John outlined how he intended to grow the company. He wanted to know why John intended to concentrate on chasing commercial collection claims from the food industry. John told him how Malcolm Edwards had advised him that the food industry would be the best source of a consistent, steady volume of collection claims.
Malcolm had explained that everyone must eat. While other industries went through bust and boom periods, the food industry was steady. It included food wholesalers, restaurants, grocery stores, food transportation, food storage, food processing and the disposal of food waste. Food moved along this supply chain on credit. Credit equalled potential collections. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of businesses in the food industry, generated billions of dollars in revenue. Food would give FICA a fertile field to cultivate.
Billy also liked John’s idea of distributing a daily blog to all FICA customers. It would name commercial food debtors placed for collection and those claims that FICA had collected. Their curious food clients would want to check their accounting records to see if they were dealing with the same debtor and whether that debtor owed them money. If it was past due, they too would consider placing the account for collection with FICA, for fear that it was soon to become a bad debt. Such a daily blog would become a valued source of information to steer them away from possible bad debts in their industry.
Billy had made most of his income from a percentage of the commissions received from collecting his clients' claims. He had a hard time accepting that John’s straight salary plan, could work. He asked John what incentive was there for a salesman to work hard if he were not being motivated by greed. Malcolm had warned John that paying a salesman a salary was a radical idea that the old guard would have a hard time accepting it.
John got Billy to admit that the salary he was offering would give him a higher income than Billy had ever made. He pointed out that just because a salesman was getting a salary did not mean management expected lower results from him. If a salesman wanted to keep his job, he still had to meet objectives. With everyone on a salary, there would be less caustic competition between sales representatives. They would be more prone to work as a team.
John also pointed out that rather than being frozen in mediocre territories, protecting commission incomes from established customers, he could reassign reps as needed, to territories where FICA would see higher revenue gains because of their experience and talent.
Being paid a salary would also give Billy greater credibility when he gave recommendations to clients. He could now say that he was not a commission salesman trying to pressure them into giving FICA their collection claims. Whether they gave him collection claims or not, would not impact would not impact his salary.
John also outlined how he would adjust Billy’s salary once a year, based on how much Billy had exceeded his annual target. A target that they would both have agreed was fair and achievable.
John showed Billy the two thousand customer prospects that his research had identified and scored by potential. They were to be prospected by descending potential until they were all sold. John said that it was his belief that most salespeople were unsuccessful because they were undisciplined and not working a set plan
Billy asked what would happen if he could not sell anyone on using the FICA collection service. John reminded him that just like commission sales, holding your job depends on reaching reasonable targets. He pointed out that as soon as Billy had landed a hundred and fifty clients that Billy would then hire a sales representative to service these new clients. This would allow Billy to concentrate on selling the next one hundred and fifty new clients. As soon as they had five sales reps, Billy would become a full-time sales manager. John's management plan was to convince companies to use FICA and make sure they never left.
John agreed to give Billy two months to switch any customers, he had had with his former employer, over to FICA. Billy had convinced John that this would bring in immediate revenue to offset his salary expense. While most of these clients would not be in the food industry, Billy did not see this as a problem. He started the next day.
Everything went as John had planned. In a few years, FICA employed thirty collectors, three collection managers, three sales managers, fifteen service representatives, ten new business sales representatives and thirty clerical staff. In six months, FICA had made its first monthly profit.
It gave John great pleasure when he could repay The Chosen’s first $50,000 advance. Every month, he now gave them fifteen percent of FICA’s profits. He invested the rest of the profits into growing the business. He and Billy discussed opening offices in Los Angeles and Chicago.
With the business on a firm footing, John splurged on a house in one of Las Vega’s upscale neighborhoods and on various toys. The Sea-Doo, motorcycle and Lamborghini sports car were impractical because he had little time to enjoy them. To set an example for his employees, John was always the first one in the office each morning and the last one to leave at night which left little time for leisure activities.
As John’s, general sales manager, it was Billy's responsibility to direct the new business sales representatives to the best prospects. One morning John called him into his office. “Billy, I don’t understand it. You have a team of fantastic sales representatives. They’ve sold everyone we targeted except for one that sticks out like a sore thumb. Why have we never been able to sell Player Industries on using our collection service? They must control a hundred companies. I understand that they own casinos, car dealerships, advertising agencies, television stations, office buildings, golf courses, equipment wholesalers and who knows what else. I don’t think we have a client now that has anywhere near their potential.”
“You’re right. They are big. Big and dangerous.”
“What do you mean, dangerous?”
When I first came to Las Vegas, I had a run in with Mike Asino, the guy who owns Player Industries. He was a scum bag then, and he is scum bag now. You don’t want to touch him with a ten-foot pole. He is a predator. To be honest, I have tried to keep FICA off his radar screen. If he sees you are making money, he will find a way to steal FICA from you. What do they say? When you sup with the devil, you use a long spoon. His mob connections make him untouchable. This means if he goes after you, you will have no one to run to for help. He’s got all the politicians in his back pocket.”
“He can’t be that bad?”
“Oh, believe me, he is.”
“I hear what you’re saying but we are running out of prospects in Las Vegas. Sometimes to grow, you must take chances. People change. While I can understand why you do not want to get involved with Asino, it is a potential revenue source that we can't just ignore. I tell you what I will do. I’ll take Players on as my personal sales prospect and keep my eyes open for any danger signals. If we see any, then we can drop
him like a hot potato and you’ll be able to say, I told you so.”
Billy stared at John for a long time before he nodded and left the room with a great feeling of apprehension.