21 Pretty Good Questions To Ask A Potential Salesperson

Overview: It’s probably not too surprising that an article about questions will start with one. Here it is: “If you had it to do over again, would you still hire the same people you have working as salespeople for your company?” Interesting question, isn’t it? The scary thing is how often the answer is NO! It’s pretty well accepted that our industry has it’s share of underachievers working in sales positions, and there’s no question that part of the reason for this problem is insufficient training. But another part of the reason is that many printing salespeople should never have been hired in the first place, pointing to a problem with the interviewing and evaluation skills of printing company owners and sales managers. Interestingly, effective interviewing has a lot in common with effective selling technique. In either situation, if you ask the right questions, you’ll be able to make good use of the answers. This article provides you with 21 questions, which would be helpful while interviewing printing sales candidates. The way I see it, your primary objective in conducting a face-to-face interview is to get to know the person you’re talking with. A resume or application form will tell you some—maybe even much—of what you need to know about a person’s background and experience. Remember, though, you aren’t simply hiring background and experience...you’re hiring a person whom you hope has been truthful about his or her background and experience, and will ultimately be able to put some of it to work for your company. If you look at it that way, do you see how little you might learn if you limit an interview to quickly “going over” the resume or application form? You’re a lot better off if you can identify and confront some of the “success/failure issues” that surround every position and every applicant.

(Is this item miscategorized? Does it need more tags? Let us know.)

Format: PDF | Date: Jan 2003 | Pages: 6