Border Princes by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Martians, Fiction - Science Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Science fiction (Children's, Mystery & Detective, Intelligence officers, Human-alien encounters - Wales - Cardiff, Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction - General, Human-alien encounters, Mystery fiction, Cardiff (Wales), YA), Intelligence officers - Wales - Cardiff, General, Radio and television novels, Media Tie-In
ISBN: 9780563486541
Publisher: BBC Books
Published: 2007-01-25T10:54:49.705000+00:00

SEVENTEEN

Dean Simms was nineteen years old, but reckoned he passed for early twenties in his Top Man suit. He was always particular about his presentation: mouthwash, a haircut once a week, always cleanly shaven, and a nice splash of smelly, though nothing too strong.

His old man had once told him that the real secret to selling was clean fingernails. ‘They always look at your hands, son,’ he’d said, ‘always at the hands. What you’re pointing to, your gestures. And nothing kills a deal quicker than closing with grubby hands. If you get the papers out to run through them, and you’ve got dirt under your nails, forget it. Client’s looking right at your hands at that stage, looking at the dotted line you’re pointing to. Oh, yeah, and have a nice pen. Not a biro.’

Dean’s old man had spent twenty-three years on the road in Monmouthshire and Herefordshire, flogging steam-cleaning systems door-to-door, so he knew the up and down of selling. Or ‘non-desk-based retail’ as he had preferred to call it. Dean had grown up paying close attention to his dad’s pearls of wisdom. His old man had always brought in decent money.

When Dean left school, his old man had tried to get him a job with the steam-cleaner company, but the Internet had been murdering face-sales by then, and there had been no openings, not even for ‘a lad with good selling potential’. A year later, his old man had been given his cards. That had killed him. Without a job at fifty-eight, he’d just withered away and died.

Determined to prove something, Dean had got himself a commission-only job with LuxGlaze Windows, but it had been a slog, and the product hadn’t been all that, and LuxGlaze always sent him to areas where the homeowners had been pre-pissed off by LuxGlaze’s carpet-bomb approach to telephone pitching. Twice, Dean had been chased off a plot by dogs, once by a man with a rake.

He’d switched to VariBlinds, then to Welshview EcoGlass, then back to LuxGlaze again for one awful, thankless, six-week effort to get himself a proper patch and actual customers.

There had come a time when Dean had started to think that maybe he wasn’t ‘a lad with good selling potential’ after all.

Then he’d got his break, and found his feet, and these days he was in business for himself. He stuck to his old man’s basic rules of salesmanship: presentation, clean nails and a nice pen. He’d always had the patter too, the charm factor that his dad had set plenty of store by. But Dean had something else, something his dad had never had. Dean knew the real secret of selling, and it turned out it wasn’t clean fingernails.

Dean Simms had the real secret of selling in his briefcase.

He checked himself in his rear-view mirror, checked his teeth for specks of food, checked his nails, checked his tie and got out of his vehicle. Game on.

The street was quiet. His vehicle would be all right where it was for an hour or so.

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