No Place in the Sun (23 page)

‘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.

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.’