How Peter Groop took HP's, GE's, and IBM's leftover products and built one of the hottest teams in America to sell them.

From: Inc. Magazine, June 2004 | By: John Anderson

"Gianna?" asked the woman on the other end of the line. "You still interested in selling?"

For almost a decade, Gianna Vennari had worked in sales, first with a pharmaceutical company, then with an outfit that sold nuclear-medicine equipment to small and medium-size hospitals. It was draining work and eventually she had burned out and taken a lab job at an outpatient cancer clinic. It was a safe, comfortable job as a technician, doing scans of cancer patients. But she was "B-O-R-E-D."

By the late summer of 2001, Vennari had been out of sales for almost two years. So when Fusion Sales Partners recruiter Diane O'Brien called to ask if she was interested in getting back into it, Vennari was surprised. Fusion, O'Brien explained, is "a pure sales" company. It takes other companies' neglected product lines and sells them utilizing its own sales force. While Fusion puts its new salespeople on a draw for their first six months, they are on their own after that. If you don't sell, you don't get paid. In fact, Fusion doesn't even cover your travel expenses. A salesperson could make a lot of money selling that way--or nothing at all.

Intrigued, Vennari agreed to fly to Baltimore and meet the boss. Having been a superstar salesman himself, Fusion CEO and founder Peter Groop liked to sign off on all new hires. Vennari, for her part, wanted to know what she might be getting into. The day they chose for her interview: September 11, 2001.

Vennari was in the lobby of a Baltimore hotel watching ABC's Good Morning America when she heard that an airplane had slammed into the World Trade Center. Groop, that day, was distracted not only by the unfolding terrorist attacks but also because his mother was dying of cancer. Nonetheless, he managed to discern that "there was this special person in front of me." There was something about Vennari that Groop just liked: her energy, her self-effacing humor, the fact that she was organized and experienced. More than most, she seemed to know what she was getting into: the long hours, the cold calls, the loneliness of driving country lanes.

Still, hiring a new salesperson could be a seat-of-the-pants decision for Groop. While he believed the world was "full of good, steady B-grade salespeople," he only wanted the "hungry ones." Exactly what made an A-grade salesperson was hard to say. But after all these years, Groop knew it when he saw it. And right now, he saw it in Vennari.

All the while Vennari was thinking, "How am I going to get home? There's not a plane flying. I don't have a hotel room for tonight. And I sure didn't tell my bosses back home what I was up to." Not to worry. At the end of the day, Groop arranged to have a car service take his new salesperson home to Kentucky. It was the only way he could get her there in time for work the next day. The price for the ride home: $1,400. "It might have been," Groop now says, "the best $1,400 I ever spent."

Today, Gianna Vennari is one of the hottest salespeople on what is arguably one of the hottest sales forces in America: Baltimore-based Fusion. In 2003, Vennari earned close to a half million dollars in commissions, making her one of the top salespeople in the 125-person company (of whom no fewer than 100 are engaged in sales). Groop, of course, made many times that, thanks to Vennari and a highly motivated force that thrives on taking GE's and IBM's smaller-ticket product lines--mammography units and IT security systems, respectively--and turning them into high-yield performers. Fusion also takes its clients' big-ticket items and sells them in out-of-the-way places. In the past five years, Fusion's annual client sales have grown from $10 million to more than $300 million annually. Of that $300 million, Fusion keeps about 10%.

Fusion's operating thesis is simple and provocative. If you have a product line you can't move, Fusion will move it for you--using its own sales force, working on 100% commission. The company's promise: "Fusion collects a commission based on the revenue it drives--if its staff doesn't perform, its clients don't pay."

And, of course, its staff doesn't get paid. Those who argue against rewarding sales folk with straight commissions claim that such a system leads to special treatment for the superstars, breeds conflict between them and the rest of the team, and sets up a mindset in which the only thing that counts is making money. "That's gotta be the stupidest thing I ever heard," snorts Groop. "Do you want a plow horse or a racehorse?" Straight commission, he claims, "is the only way to attract and retain superstar salespeople." What's more, "they deserve special treatment." He loves writing out those big checks to his superstar salespeople, says Groop. "After all, it means I got one too. They get a big check, I get a bigger check."

Born in Queens, N.Y., almost 48 years ago, the young Pete Groop joined the Hewlett-Packard sales team fresh out of college, peddling medical systems--EKG machines, defibrillators, critical care equipment--to major New York City-area hospitals. A natural, Groop did well at his work, maybe even too well.

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