Personality of the Week
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try Pendree
T. HE sales director of the Goodyear Tyre and Co. (Gt. Britain), Ltd., is 60, looks 50, and at th sales his eyes glint and he squares himself : battle. In other words,: Bill Pertdree is every enthusiastic about his job as he must have been mo 30 years ago when:in:tough days, he went on th
for Goodyear. • His office up in Wolverhampton is almost clinim neatness, brightness and economy of furniture, and symbolic of the whole organization—and of the at himself. I did not see the manufacturing processe suppose it must be taken for granted that this efficient Anglo-American producer has evolved degree of automation, At all events,in the humi (and Bill Pendree's work is nothing if not human) it to me that the sales division leaves precious little to that it has got just about as close to autornatio: possible with such unpredictable material as manki
Like every other senior executive on the sales Goodyear, Pendree worked his way up from the r. ordinary salesmen. After submitting to only four of training he was thrown into the very centre market and told to get on with it. That was in 19 knew a little about the way tyres are produced. : received a course of lessons in salesmanship (Art inspired companies are normally most metieuloui grooming their executives, salesmen particularly. or miss methods for them) and, of course, he had measure what every sales director looks for in h enthusiasm for the product, dedication to the job firm resolve to "get cm."
And get on he did, in full measure and rapidly, less than five years "on the road " his merits wert ay management to the extent of promotion to assistant ;er in the company's Western Division, Within the le was divisional manager in Ireland. Less than !I' year was to pass before he was recalled to head to be manager, dealer sales (Giant Tyres). In that post he stayed put from August, 1935, until January, 1937, in which month he achieved a notable step forward: he was now to be divisional manager, Western Division, for some eight years. Then came a spell as divisional manager, Northern Division, which lasted for four years, and in April, 1949, he was at head office again. The Pendree escalator gathered even greater momentum: 1949, assistant general sales manager; 1954, general sales manager; 1957, sales director.
Even a bare recital of the steps in his career suffices to reveal what kind of person Bill Pendree is, and goes some way to showing why he is today sales director. He is a stayer. His mental calibre matches what, from my brief observation, I would describe as a very strong physical make-up. He has been right through the mill and has wrested the last ounce of knowledge, or perhaps I had better say "know-how," from each successive job.
I found it interesting to see how Goodyear have solved one problem which often besets large companies. It is rather like the question: Which came first the chicken or the egg? Is advertising and public relations a function of sales? Ought publicity for tactical and strategic reasons to be incorporated in a sales division? Evidently Goodyear believe so. These activities, fundamental to an organization which makes its living from sales to consumers, move through him to top management. So his is responsibility not only for the company's sales but also, in a very significant sense, for the kind of image the company projects to the public. Which is no doubt one of the chief reasons why Goodyear, by origin American, has so successfully identified itself with the British scene.
Is Bill Pendree exceptional in the company? Has his achievement been unique, and if so is it likely to remain so? Ask him a question like that and he registers horror. The whole Goodyear system is designed to make such a career possible. Of course, in the fullness of time he will have a successor and that successor, as he told me, may well be sitting in one of the offices down Bill Pendree's corridor.
The highly efficient business machine that is Goodyear would be deemed to have suffered a major breakdown if the right man were not produced at the right time. Chance must enter into the matter as in all aspects of human life, but, given just that little extra good fortune, there is no reason whatsoever why a hardworking salesman calling on consumers somewhere ill Britain this very day should not aspire--and succeed—to the director's chair. There is a well-designed, careful system of reporting on personal qualities. Reports are expertly examined at local level and, finally, by top management, great pains being taken to draw correct inferences. There may sometimes be a danger that good men are lost or overlooked in a large organization, or that a square peg never seems to manage to find a square hole, with resultant frustrating diminution of enthusiasm and loss to the company as well as to the individual. Bill Pendree's set-up goes to great lengths to avoid this wastage that no business can afford.
How does he relax? Golf must be a major taste of his, judging from a report about one game in which he played not long ago. He did not tell me this, I hasten to add. T read about it. Playing in the Goodyear Golf Club's President's Day Competition at Hawkstone Park, he became the first player in the Club's long history to achieve the golfer's dream of a hole in one. Bill, a 12 handicap man, holed his tee shot at the 158-yd. third and went to to win the morning round—a nine-hole individual competition— with a net score of 31.
I am prepared to wager that the shot gave him as much inward satisfaction as the first big order he landed, way back in 1929. H.C.