When the tech market imploded in 2002, so did LizardTech. Deal took the top marketing job at the satellite earth-mapping company Space Imaging and within a year was trying to put together a deal to buy the company, but at the last minute the financing fell through. Deal then turned his attention to wind power. But when that venture fizzled, Deal lost his home and wound up hauling boxes for UPS to make ends meet. Los Alamos soon took him back as an entrepreneur in residence, at which point Deal came across the mini nuclear power plant.
A passion for clean water may seem like a strange motivation for a salesperson. But it could be one key to what helps Deal break down people's defenses during the sales process. "Passion can make up for a lot of sins," he says. "When you're convinced it's important, other people see it in that light, too." Deal tells me about the salesman at Nordstrom who manages to sell him expensive suits, even though he doesn't often wear them. "He thinks he's changing the world by getting people to appreciate how a suit can flatter different body types, how to make sure your suit travels well. He'll spend half an hour talking about the history of suits. He's really interested in this stuff, and it's changed the way I think about it."
Not that passion alone will move product. Far more important is the ability to think critically, says Eric Shaver, a former superstar software salesman who is co-founder of a sales training and consulting firm called Kensei Partners in Needham, Massachusetts. "You can teach a rhesus monkey to execute the basic techniques of sales," Shaver says. "But the great salespeople can look at a scenario and analyze what it is about what they're selling that can have an impact on the customer. They figure out how to create opportunities that others can't see."
Deal is a rare example of that combination of passion and problem solving, say those who have worked with him. "Whatever it is he needs to know, he's consumed it and thought about it, and he's going to feed it back to you with a lot of energy, honesty, and credibility," says Todd Packebush, sales director of the Littleton, Colorado -- based software-development firm Info-Fusion and a former employee at LizardTech. McCorkle of Technology Ventures says Deal connects with people not merely on an intellectual level but in terms of what McCorkle calls "emotional knowledge." In other words, says McCorkle, Deal doesn't merely provide information; he alters beliefs.
We've barely cleared security at Parliament's Portcullis House, located in the shadow of Big Ben, when Deal's mobile phone starts ringing. The call is from Lady Barbara Thomas Judge, chairman of the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority, one of the agencies that oversee nuclear power in Britain, and a member of Hyperion's advisory board. (She's "Lady Judge," by virtue of being married to a knight.) Deal explains to me that Judge dislikes using e-mail, which means he gets a lot of calls from her. (Speaking of phones, Deal won't sell over the phone, because the delays and poor sound quality are too distracting. Nor does he do dinner meetings. He won't converse in crowded rooms, either.)
This time Judge is calling to provide some last-minute intelligence on the Right Honourable John Hutton, the Member of Parliament we are about to meet. Deal cuts the call short as Hutton shows up to greet us. Suave and chatty, Hutton sweeps us into Portcullis House's massive atrium, where we are served tea in a café alongside a substantial indoor forest. Charming as he may be, Hutton is a formidable character. Until last year, he served as the U.K. Secretary of State for Defence and before that as the equivalent of our Commerce Secretary.
Deal is hoping that Hutton might become another high-profile adviser. His name would be an impressive one to drop in the U.K., and Deal needs all the clout he can muster there. The U.K., like most of the world, is friendlier to nuclear power than the U.S., which remains resistant. Much of Europe -- France in particular -- and Asia have continued to plan for and build new nuclear power plants, without significant incident. But launching a Hyperion plant in the U.K. will require approval from the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. Getting the agency to process the application quickly and skip some of the red tape with which it could bury Hyperion will be critical to success. Deal hopes he can persuade Hutton to help.
Deal seems relaxed and confident. But given that the meeting is likely to be a quick one, he gets right to the point: If the U.K. embraces Hyperion, it will be gaining access to $200 million worth of the leading-edge nuclear technology for relative peanuts. The U.S. government is only too happy to hand it over cheaply, Deal says, eager as it is to commercialize the output of its otherwise costly national labs.
Hutton listens politely, but it's clear he's not impressed, and he apologizes for the time being short. Seemingly unfazed, Deal changes course and punches a different point: Given that few new nuclear power plants are scheduled to be built in the Western Hemisphere within the next 10 years, there are a lot of underemployed people and assets in the industry, many of them in the U.K. With government approval, Hyperion could start putting a lot of people to work within a few years, and most of the construction could be outsourced to British companies.
