Rebate my fire

As managing director of Dagenham's sixth-largest ICT solutionising consultant, my days are predominantly spent driving the global brand and macro-level expansion plans of the company going forward.

My schedule of blue-sky thinking, pushing the envelope and high-end strategising leaves little time for the day-to-day stuff, which I leave to our Gordon - stuff like identifying potential vendor partners.

I was delighted when the diligent lad recently presented me with a 10-page dossier containing every piece of pertinent info I could want on a manufacturer - all of which I disregarded, except the bit about them paying a ten-figure sum in rebates to their partners last year. Yowza! Where do I sign?

Now, I'm determined not to be too hard on the lad - there is, after all, only a one letter difference between 'million' and 'billion'. I've assured him he won't be sacked - as long as he sells that £100,000 a quarter of fisheries management software.