The 10 Commmandments of Hypergrowth

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Bingo. Not long afterward, Kelly announced that PSS, a Florida-based company with only a handful of branches, would become the first national physician-supply company. In an industry of local and regional players, it would be the big dog.

That was the beginning of PSS's hypergrowth. From then on, the mission appeared on every company document. Big banners trumpeted it from warehouse walls. Kelly mentioned it every time he got the chance. The effect on the troops was electric. Young hotshots such as Gene Dell, now a regional vice-president at the age of 34, eagerly set out to open new territories. That was PSS's mission, wasn't it? Thanks to the goal, nervous acquirees felt they might have a future with PSS. "They weren't very large then," recalls Nick Pecoraro, who in 1988 was a sales rep for a New Orleans company that PSS bought and who now is general manager of the New Orleans facility. "But they had that goal of being a national company. I liked that."

Today PSS is indeed the first national physician-supply company, thanks in part to its merger with Taylor Medical. Kelly has hardly paused: last year he announced that PSS's new goal was to be a billion-dollar company by year-end 2001. The company hit his first goal, so no one seems to doubt that it will make the second one, too. "Oh, yes," says Cyndi Aszklar, operations manager at the New Orleans branch. "When we say we're going to do something, we do it."

II. Grow Your Own People . . .
Ordinary companies can get by with ordinary people, the kind who do their jobs and go home. Hypergrowth companies need extraordinary people, the kind who work their tails off in pursuit of growth. So where does Kelly find them? He doesn't. He develops them.

Kelly's two partners at the start, Clyde Young and Bill Riddell, were both experienced medical-products sales reps. As PSS grew, Kelly added a few more. Sales, after all, was the company's backbone.

But Kelly found that competitors were fighting hard to keep their best people. If he lured one away, the jilted ex-employer would likely slap PSS with a lawsuit. In the past Kelly had had good luck hiring kids who were scarcely old enough to buy a Budweiser. Now he decided to pursue that strategy with a vengeance. He and his lieutenants began visiting local colleges on Career Day, searching out seniors with a go-get-'em personality. Over time they refined their interviewing techniques to home in on just the kind of person they were looking for. (See "The Foolproof Interviewer's Guide," Good Form, December 1991, [Article link].) Experience didn't matter. Attitudes and behavior did.

Today the average age of the sales reps hired and trained by PSS is 27. The strategy has paid off in any number of ways. Young people are mobile, so the company rarely has trouble finding salespeople for a new facility. They don't mind starting at low pay and earning their advancement. They don't have families, so they can work nights and weekends when necessary.

Most of all, young people can be fired up. PSS's message to them is simple and succinct: You'll have to work harder than you ever imagined. But you're part of a company with a future, and we'll put no barriers in the way of your success. The company communicates that message by rigorously promoting from within, regardless of age or seniority -- and by not batting an eyelash when youthful high achievers earn outrageous sums of money. All the regional vice-presidents (excluding those just joining from the Taylor Medical merger) are homegrown. Charlie Alvarez, vice-president in charge of the eastern region, will oversee roughly $72 million worth of business this year and will earn in the neighborhood of $130,000.

Alvarez is all of 27 years old. The message isn't lost on his peers.

III. . . . Train Them Within an Inch of Their Lives . . .

High-speed growth requires people who not only work hard but work effectively. Since most of PSS's salespeople are fresh out of college, they need training, training, and more training.

Right from the start, PSS's sales trainees learned the business from the ground up. Days, they'd pull products from one of PSS's warehouses and deliver them to doctors' offices. Nights, they'd get instruction in sales techniques from the branch manager. In between, they'd study product lines in preparation for written tests. "You had to come in early in the morning or late in the afternoon," remembers Rebecca Witt, a University of Florida graduate who trained in the Savannah, Ga., branch. "You'd walk around the warehouse, do your work sheets, call manufacturers' 800 numbers and ask questions."

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