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Personality of the Week
Page 42
Page 43
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Brian La1( raithwaite
NAPOLEON once slightingly referred to the British as a nation of shopkeepers, but it took a modern writer—H. E. Bates, I think—to point out that with all our nonchalance we are probably also the most thrusting nation not only in our wars but in our business affairs as well. How often We find that in war-time a successful executive slips without any apparent effort into the commissioned ranks and afterwards, with the same ease, regains his position in civilian life, as if he had merely been away for a long week-end.
Which brings me to Brian Braithwaite, Scammell Lorries' sales director. The purpose of these article.; is to present a picture of the " sitters " as seen through the eyes of the writer, and I see_ him as the enthusiastic, non-professional Lieutenant-Colonel he became during the last war. This, no doubt, will come as something of a surprise to him, though why it should I don't know, since he was commissioned in the R.A.S.C., T.A., as long ago as 1931. Of course, when the 1939 trouble began he was in it from the start, serving with the R.A.S.C., then with R.E.M.E., and,
finally, as a Lieutenant-Colonel at G.H.Q., Cairo. .
• Today, as a top-level administrator in industry, he has all that well-tailored trimness and directness which one associates with senior military officers. He talks to his visitors in a quiet, even a self-effacing, manner. He loves travel, especially because it brings him in touch with interesting people (and I believe he prefers the bon vireur with a paunch to the sad-sack with a lean and hungry look.) He delights in taking his car to the Continent and wandering whither his fancy leads him, making quite certain that he misses none of the wine and culinary specialities of the region. .
If in this there appears to be the slightest implication that Brian Braithwaite is not an eminently serious-minded person I am not succeeding in portraying him. When, nearly 42 years ago, he joined Scammell Lorries it was as an indentured apprentice. Three years he spent in the works following the normal apprenticeship course, and then three years'
driving, servicing, learning some of the subtleties of works administration, and so on. In those days one of the leading marks of the young man wanting to get on was that he attended night school (and if you think it was easier then because of the absence of some of our modern distractions you are wrong!). Young Braithwaite therefore attended night school.
In 1926 he was made assistant. to the northern area manager. The emphasis up there in Manchester was to be on sales and service and his area covered Lancashire and Yorkshire. In many ways not the easiest sphere to try one's hand at selling. Probably it was tough in the commercial motor industry, too. But he seems to have got on well with the "straight from the shoulder" boys of the• North, for after three years he was put in charge of the Leeds sales office and spare parts store. After four years of that he was promoted to the position of northern area manager.
• Brian Braithwaite, as might be expected, • has a good many sound things to say on the subject of sales—commercial vehicle sales. In this industry, "patter," which may be vital to salesmen on lower planes of endeavour, gets a man precisely nowhere. . There is no such thing as the " footin-the-door " technique where tippers, tankers and trailers are concerned. Engineering qualifications of a high order are a basic necessity, but are not enough. Knowledge of transport conditions in general are part of your successful commercial motor salesman's equipment. But he must be able to take an even broader mental sweep than that. What is required is not short of a reasonable knowledge of the whole economics of the transport industry, with sufficient appreciation of the special problems of the potential customer to enable him to sit in on a directors' meeting to give them objective advice and, at the same time, influence their thinking in favour of his own company.
He must be personable, likeable and capable of building up so much confidence among potential buyers that when an order is to be placed he will at least have a .chance of making a bid.
During the war years commercial vehicle manufacturers' sales campaigns came virtually to an end. There was one major customer, and one only—the Ministry of Supply.
Anyway, as we have seen, Brian had other things to do in that period. Among others, he was called on to advise how to set about immobilizing some magnificent Scammell gun tractors during one of our retreats, an enterprise that must have caused him no little heart-burning!
Once the war was over, however, very important tasks fell to him. New economic conditions, little understood even by the experts, supervened. The sales organization of Scarnmell Lorries had to be reconstructed in the light of entirely new circumstances. His responsibility was now to re-organize distributorship arrangements, work which somewhat naturally led to that of production controller and assistant to the managing director. The year was 1947.
In 1950 he became general manager, with duties broadly similar to those he undertook when he was appointed sales director in 1955. Sales, service and spare parts are still his concern, as they were in those distant days in the North of England, but now he is in complete control. At one stage, however, from 1956 to 1958, he also operated as sales manager for Leyland, Albion and Scammell goods vehicles at the Group office in London.
Brian Braithwaite's career has clearly been one of sustained progress. How has he done it? Why, starting level with other apprentices, is he now sales director of this great company? How did he get ahead in the race? He answered these questions only in the most general terms, except to say that in his earliest days with the firm he had no inten tion of remaining in the lower echelons. H.C.