John Ilhan's Crazy life

It was fortunate for the Australian telecommunications industry that university life bored John. The real world was far more exciting, and he was bursting with desire to get out there and start making a name for himself.

In 1984, at the age of nineteen, John heard about a job that was on offer at Ford Motor Company’s head office, in its Ford Credit department. Fuelled by grand dreams of wearing a suit every day and working in a corporate environment, he applied for the job. However, it was in vain — John was told the company was only considering internal candidates. As his sister Ayse recalls: ‘He thought, “Okay, why don’t Iget a job at Ford and then re-apply?” Back then it was easy to get a job on the production line, so that’s what he did.’

When he made the announcement to Aliand Nezaket that he would soon be starting at Ford on the production assembly line, they were mortified. ‘They said we work here because we’ve got no alternative, but you do. John said, “Just watch me. I’m going to get that job in the office in two weeks — you’ll see. I’m going to come to work in a suit”’, says Ayse.

John spent one week fitting batteries into cars and another adding door trims at Ford and tired quickly of the monotonous nature of production line work. But then a stroke of luck hit when a junior position became available at Ford’s head office.

John applied immediately and got the job. He could leave the factory floor and fulfil his dream of wearing a suit to work.

Not only would the job be John’s first sales role, but he would also find that he and his new boss, George Stefanou, had quite a bit in common. Like John, George had experienced his own struggles growing up in a migrant family, and both men were very close to their parents. George had also tired of university life, dropping out of his humanities degree at Monash University after a year. They both loved soccer and played on different teams in the same league, sometimes against each other.

George grew up in the western Melbourne suburb of Avondale Heights and came from a strong Greek family. Not only was his father one of the first immigrants to work for Ford in the early 1960s, he also ran panel shops and service stations, and was able to pass on some of his car knowledge to his son.

George had joined Ford at the age of twenty, and like John it was also his first job. George was a few months older than John. ‘At the time Iwas a car jockey. Imoved all of the ex-Ford Motor Company cars from the national depot in Campbellfield, corralled them into one area and prepared them for sale. When Imoved on, Ihad to have somebody replace me.

Between myself and the chap who was the manager at the time, we advertised the job and the person that was selected was John Ilhan’, George recalls.

John’s new role supporting George was in junior sales. Incidentally, George was initially hired for John’s job through the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES), which would later serve John well when it came to employing his own staff.

‘John was a pretty shy sort of young bloke. He was certainly very family oriented and through the job he was able to not only be taught, but brought to the table his own ethics.’

Essentially, John was in charge of all of Ford’s ex-company executive driven cars. He would list these cars for sale, organise their roadworthy certificates, service and clean them, and present the cars for viewing by the staff or dealers who were interested in purchasing them. It proved a very profitable way for Ford to clear out its used car fleet. At the time the company car fleet was part of the dealer development portfolio, and the Ford fleet typically represented about 3000 cars. It had to be turned over every nine months, so anywhere in the order of 12 000 cars were moved every year. With most of Ford’s business in Melbourne the role involved plenty of responsibility.

‘His typical day involved a fair amount of driving to and from head office to what was called the service garage. The service garage out at Ford Motor Company might only be 400 metres down the road, but it wasn’t something that you necessarily walked to every day because you just couldn’t. You were forever going backward and forward in cars’, George says.

Although he was shy when he started, John was always well groomed and punctual. George remembers, ‘He needed a little bit of attention to detail early on but … you only had to say it once, twice at the worst and it was done, and he never went backwards’.

In a short time, John was proving himself and he and George were getting along superbly. Compared with installing batteries and door trims on the factory floor, this was definitely a move in the right direction. He was good at sales, people liked him and he liked people. He would make people laugh and customers enjoyed being around him.

‘We absolutely loved and enjoyed everything we did, including things like playing soccer against one another’, George recalls. ‘We were both playing soccer at the time for different teams and enjoyed comparing notes and taking the micky out of one another on the field when we did play against one another.’

People thought their Turkish and Greek backgrounds would have caused some rivalry or bad blood, but it was exactly the opposite — they would often be mistaken for brothers.

They got a lot of laughs out of the constant mix-ups, which extended not only to customers, but also staff at Ford.

Back then at Ford the cars were purchased using a special scheme, which placed John and George firmly in the spotlight. The cars were offered to staff first with the remainder offered to Ford dealer networks, which could be bought in closed tenders to the highest price. The price could be flexible depending on how long the staff member had been employed or the date they had last purchased a car.

‘So everybody thought that they could get on side of you and maybe manipulate your area in terms of trying to get a car. Everybody basically wanted to know both of us as opposed to us needing to know everybody’, George says.

As it transpired, the rules were being bent long before George and John came along, courtesy of a predecessor who had established a reputation for working under the radar. While their predecessor’s fate was sealed with a stint behind bars, the boys still found themselves continually having their ethics tested.

But they were made of sterner stuff, as George recalls. ‘It was important that we were beyond reproach in terms of what we could do because of the high-profile nature that it had. So that was something that we very, very much prided ourselves on, to the point where, when we didn’t bend for one or two dealers on a specific thing, we were actually accused of not playing the game fair. It wasn’t until we explained to their management what we were being asked to do that we were given full support as to the reasons we didn’t do it.’

Another issue was red tape. George told John, ‘If there was a job to be done, don’t worry about getting four forms signed — just do it’. John was lucky that George and his boss were fully supportive of their staff as long as they were informed about what they were doing. It gave John an early taste for solving problems quickly as they arose.

The two would often reverse roles as well. John would step into George’s administrative shoes while George would move the cars. When there was a downturn  in the market, the boys would come up with creative ways in which to sell the cars, and they would play around with how much to put prices up or down and how often.

But there were times when they had to toe the company line, too, and George recalls passing on advice to John his father had taught him: ‘I said, “Sometimes you’re going to see some things here and you and I will look at one another and say, that isn’t right. If you’re not overly happy about it, express your opinion. Don’t be afraid to express your opinion, but just make sure you’ve got something to back it up with”.’

The strategy worked, and in a short amount of time their results were impressive. ‘The first couple of years that we were together we were actually recording some of the best results we’d had at the time, in terms of not only selling those cars but selling them for more than their reserves’, George says.

In 1987 George was promoted to a marketing position at the regional office. John was overlooked for the position George had vacated, partly because he didn’t have a degree, but more so because a large number of graduates happened to be coming through the system when George moved on. What John did have was a dynamic personality and strong selling skills, but it didn’t equate to a tertiary education.

In Ford’s world, layers of management and bureaucracy thwarted creativity and innovation, and what was left was entrenched with policy and procedure. Again and again John was overlooked, with university graduates being picked for roles he knew he was qualified for.

Ayse recalls his frustrations when he saw so many new starters being promoted above him. ‘His manager at the time had said something about being good enough, but he was always overlooked. Years later he ran into this man, who still works for Ford, at the football, who introduced himself while they were at a corporate box. John reminded him of what he had said and this man went red and was mortified.’

John believed there had to be somewhere that would reward hard work and entrepreneurial spirit. Somewhere he could set his own agenda and work without the harsh rigor of a bureaucratic company. He had spent three years at Ford, and he was ready for a change.

In 1987 a friend of John’s — Steve — was working for a company called Strathfield Car Radio, a specialist, and then market leader, in the burgeoning telecommunications industry. It was a brave new world and the more John read and heard about it, the more he realised that it could be the ideal opportunity for him to really develop his sales skills.

Through Steve, he was invited to join the team at one of the Strathfield offices in Clarendon Street, South Melbourne.

Little did he or anyone else realise that John would not only succeed in his career in telecommunications, but ultimately shape the entire industry.

Back then, however, it was very early days. On 23 February 1987 Telstra launched its MobileNet service. About $10 million was invested in developing the industry to make mobile communication possible, and Telstra pledged mobile coverage for eighty per cent of Australians.

MobileNet comprised about 500 radio base stations throughout Australia, with most covering a radius of fifteen kilometres. In the city areas the base stations were closer together to handle more users. The system worked by the base station receiving a message from a cellular phone, which was then connected to a switching computer before connecting the call. If you moved out of the radius of one base station, your telephone was automatically handed over to another radio base station with a stronger signal.

Telstra’s first products comprised four models — the Explorer, the Traveller, the Attache, and the Walkabout. Costing several thousand dollars, the Walkabout was the most expensive and offered up to one hour of calls between recharges. Compared with the sleek, pocket-sized versions of today, the late-1980s models were heavy, clunky and unattractive. By the end of 1988 Telstra had 31 500 portable phones connected to its network, with the phones retailing for up to $5400. Leading the pack were Strathfield Car Radio, Mobiletronics and Century 21 Telecommunications. John had seemingly chosen a great new career with the backing of a successful company.

John loved the dynamic nature of the phone business, and eagerly threw himself into his new role. He took up where he had left off at Ford, endearing customers quickly with his natural communication skills and willingness to listen to their concerns. Often the first to arrive at the shop and the last to leave, his down-to-earth manner was a godsend in a technical market, and customers were relieved to hear him untangle and simplify the confusing jargon.

Finally he was with a company that rewarded hard work regardless of qualifications, and to top it off, there was a sales incentive scheme, so he could work towards achieving both store and personal goals. Of course, he invariably qualified for the bonuses because clients were referring him to their friends and he was receiving multiple repeat sales.

Strathfield was keen to cement itself as a serious player in the industry and, recognising the importance of brand presence, decided to open a second store in 1990 in Sydney Road, Brunswick. There was just one problem. Not long after the store opened, the customers were not buying, and not only were they not buying, but the store was quickly losing its justification for existence.

Always one to keep an ear to the ground, John found out about the woes of the Brunswick store on the corporate grapevine. Quick as a flash, he raised his hand and asked if he could manage the store himself. The fact that the store was a lot closer to his home in Jacana meant that he wouldn’t need to battle the city traffic each day. It was a convenient step up for him too; he knew the business and he was making consistent sales in his present job. But most importantly, it represented a challenge. John never did anything that wasn’t hard, and this was certainly another level higher.

He was put on a trial as the manager of the Brunswick store. Staff were on either a morning or an afternoon shift, where the morning shift involved working in the store and the afternoon was spent on the road, or vice versa. Key to his approach was talking to the public, and John would walk onto building sites and around Brunswick chatting and telling people about the shop and what deals were on offer.

‘It wasn’t difficult. I got good people to work with me. I would build relationships with people, so they would see me around and we would become friendly. Because of the price of the phones in those days It hought you had to educate people about them. I remember an NEC 9B that was $5500 and yet I had sold a hundred of those to one customer. It wasn’t about sales in the sense of opening a shop and waiting for people to come in. I was active in going out to the public and making sure they knew what was available.

I’d take all the confusion away and open their minds up to the advantages of having a mobile phone — especially in businesses because that was the main market. I concentrated on certain businesses like construction. It was easy for them to understand the benefits and see the benefits on the bottom line by having their guys on the site and the foreman all connected by mobile phone. Sure, $5500 was a lot of money for a phone, but the value and time and manpower savings of being able to keep in touch with the site foreman and crew was bigger than that’, John recalled.

‘I also started to advertise in the local paper so that I would get even more recognition in the area. Once I built up a name, people trusted that I knew what I was talking about and I wouldn’t bamboozle them. I was making about $5000 commission in a month. Mind you, it wasn’t until later on that I realised how much the dealer was making. On that 100 phone order, for example, the dealer would have made something like a $70 000 margin. Not many of the other store managers were being as proactive as I was.’

Not one to rest on his laurels, John stepped back and looked at the bigger picture. ‘When I look back on the decisions I’ve made in my life it’s easy to see the junctions, those pivotal moments that changed the future. For me, the first one was managing the Brunswick store. I had no management experience, but I knew how to sell and taking that chance was the first step. Once I had proven I could manage a store and make it profitable I knew that there was no limit to what I could do!’

In three months John turned the Brunswick store from the worst-performing in the chain to the best-performing store in Victoria. Every month he was coming home with plaques and topping the sales list, selling three times more than his counterpart on the next rung up. Strathfield’s biggest gesture was rewarding John with a Honda Prelude complete with leather interior.

However, Strathfield’s well-intended incentive scheme was not so well structured. When it came to payout time, John found himself arguing about an overdue bonus of $1100 from the previous six months. Despite all his hard work at the Brunswick store and the profit he had generated, Strathfield still held out on paying him. He found himself once again angry and frustrated with his employer — simply as a matter of principle. He knew he was right, and couldn’t tolerate bad management practices. John told Ayse, ‘If I’m going to work so hard, I might as well work for myself ’. So at the age of twenty six, he quit.

Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd. from John Ilhan: A Crazy Life, Copyright © 2009 by Steve Dabkowski& Annie Reid. Available now from all good booksellers RRP $34.95