Sales Director
Flannery Plant Hire

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My name’s Arnold. I work for Flannery Plant Hire. I’m the business development director

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and working out of the Wembley depot.

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Flannery Plant Hire are a national company.

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We provide operated and self-drive plant machinery

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to anything from a major highways projects – HS2 – all the way

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up to a landscaping project and everything in between.

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So my main responsibility is to grow the business,

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maintain relationships, develop new ones.

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Every day is different.

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I could be going out for lunch with a client or the next minute

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I could be on site, looking at some new works

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we’ve got going on and planning how we can do it.

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Yes, so it’s very varied.

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I have nine direct reports dealing with all of customers across the country.

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Yesterday, we actually had a machine go over to Holland.

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So we’re working everywhere.

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So it’s very interesting.

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Skills and strengths that are useful

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in my role is, I’d say, determination and grit.

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Sometimes I know it’s a bit of a cliche,

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but the harder you work, the luckier you get.

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On my GCSEs I did business,

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PE and technology. It was a decision

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whether to do PE or Spanish at the time.

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That’s the way it was.

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And unfortunately

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I thought that I was going to be a professional football player,

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which turns out I’m not as good as I thought I was going to be.

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So yeah, I did PE. When looking back now I think Spanish would have been

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a better option – being bilingual is a massive plus.

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School is so important in terms

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of being able to write and sell,

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sell yourself really, so

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I think that’s one of the things

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probably when I look back. Again, when I was in business,

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I probably thought it was a bit boring and lost interest

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when the teachers were kind of going through the lessons.

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But now when I look back, a lot of that has helped me in life.

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From school I went to college, so all my friends at

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the time were going to study gas.

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So I thought, yeah, I’ll study gas because I really didn’t know

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what I wanted to do.

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From that, I went to Toyota, got a job with Toyota and I thought, this isn’t for me.

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So from there I went to a plant hire company,

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so I was actually washing diggers, greasing machines, helping out in the yard.

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I started learning a little bit about machines.

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I seen a few of my friends were working in recruitment, earning

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really good money at the time. I did that for a year.

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Someone came in and said

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they were having issues with the plant supplier and so

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He said, “You know what,

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We should be using Flannery’s”. I went in with one of the directors at the time

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and he said, “We need someone in here. What about you?”

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So I started, and I kind of started like a trainee role.

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And obviously as I’ve grown and then it’s a directors role and then,

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you know, making me a statutory director.

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You know, I think in ten years from washing machines to where I am now,

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it’s good going, yeah.

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I wouldn’t worry about getting too fixated

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what you’re going to do.

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I think as long as you get an experience and learning things,

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it helps you in your next move.

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I’m naturally inquisitive

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so I didn’t worry about asking a stupid question.

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So I think that’s what you’ve got to do.

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You’ve got to ask questions and you might you might make yourself look a bit of a dope.

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And then the next time when someone’s talking about it, you know.

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I think if you’re willing to work harder than the next person,

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you’ve got a good chance of progressing.