Looking back at my sales interview, I can certainly say that it did not go as smoothly as I expected it to. There were a couple issues with how I went about planning for the interview.
I WROTE A SCRIPT
You heard it, I wrote a script for my interview. It’s not necessarily a bad idea, as scripts are tools many marketing companies use when deploying new and unexperienced sellers into the field. However, in this scenario, a script was not a good tool to utilize in this interview because of the curveballs that I was not expecting to be thrown. I figured I could just read off the preplanned words I had written down and I would be fine. As made evident in the interview, I could not rely on such a tool. There was another, more glaring issue, with how I wrote this script.
I WROTE THE SCRIPT LIKE AN ELEVATOR PITCH
Big yikes. The resource I referenced off of for my script was a script used by the job I had worked at for a month (rhymes with Hector Marketing). The structure was vastly different than what was taught in our Sales class, despite being a structure that worked a lot of the time. In the script, the seller (myself) did a lot of the talking, but myself and the (potential) buyer were able to physically interact with the products, which was the primary method of “winning” over the customer. So my rewritten script that was loosely based on the structure of a different company felt more like an elevator pitch than an actual conversation with a potential customer.
Thankfully, I realized the mistakes I made, which were few, but large, and fully intend to better myself using the information I learned in this class.
BoweryJE22
Hey Jeffery, thank you for sharing these example of how scripts did not work out so well for you. Its kind of comforting to rely on a script but it much more original and genuine to have your own words right there as improv.
I think it is great you are talking about this. People try and rely on things going planned when in reality that just isn’t life. Things usually never go your way and it is better to just try and adapt how things go. Just like a good sales conversation.
Great insight here! You are taking this “rejection” intellectually and not emotionally as Prof Sweet recommended and it is enabling you to move forward with gained wisdom!