Stacking the Deck – Applying your sales skills

If you are looking for a new opportunity, what sales skills can you apply to your search?

So the time has come to find greener pastures.  The process of landing a great opportunity is a sales function.  It’s closing the sale of the commodity that you should know best: you.  Job interviews are nothing more than sales calls.  They are called “prospective employers” because they are just like sales prospects.  Everything that comes before the interview is marketing.  So, I will save that for another blog entry.

So, for whatever reason, someone is interested in your skills and wants to schedule an interview, be it by phone or in person.  Everyone has heard the most common interview questions and it behooves you to prepare for them.  There is no shortage of people that can advise you on some pretty novel ways to respond.  However, many interviewees get through the standard line of questioning, breathe a sigh of relief and forget that there is much work to be done.  They frequently miss out on a great opportunity to set themselves apart, when they are asked what questions they have about the company and the position.

Just as important as preparing your responses to their questions, is preparing a short list of your own.  As with any sales call, it helps to have a few aces up your sleeve when it’s your turn.  This is where you set up the opportunity to connect your skills and talents with the company’s needs.  I suggest focusing your questions in three areas:

1.  What current problems does the company face that will be addressed by filling this position?  The answer to this question will help to determine what is expected of you if you are hired, and if you can be successful in the role.  It will also allow you to assess if the company’s structure and division of responsibilities lends itself to a positive outcome.  For instance, if you are told that you will be given qualified leads to develop and that the marketing department is generating so much interest that the sales department is stretched to its limits, this would be very promising.  However, if you are told that you will be making endless cold calls and expected to send spam email in hopes of developing prospects, you might want to move on.  If the situation looks like the former, you can point out that you work very effectively with marketing and have considerable experience in transitioning leads from an exploratory marketing effort to a sales process that will lead to closes.

2.  When considering the company’s top sellers, what skills or characteristics do they have in common?  This helps to build the case if you share the same sales philosophy, technical expertise or personality.  You might also find out that the most successful people who currently or previously have served in the role have something that you don’t have, then you might need to consider if the opportunity is wrong for you and if your efforts are better spent elsewhere.  Once they have articulated the characteristics that are the recipe for success in their minds, you can ask how you stack up against other candidates that they are interviewing.  It may tell you what you need to showcase to put yourself in the number one slot.

3.  From studying your company and its products, I’ve put together a plan of action for my first several months. Would you like to review it and give me some feedback? Even if you are off base on some things, you will be showing initiative and the feedback you get will help to get a better sense of what your first months would be like.  This is like you offering a trial proposal and will set you apart from most of the competition.  It offers a more concrete idea of what you think you can accomplish.

After exploring these three areas with your interviewers, you could be in a good position to build your case for why you are the best candidate.  You have discovered needs that have been explicitly expressed by the company.  You can review your strengths and abilities that will help to solidify your qualification for the position.  You can point out how you have many of the characteristics common among the most successful to have filled this role in the past.  Lastly, you have demonstrated that you can develop a detailed plan to attack the position, that needs only minor input from them before you are ready to dig in.

By David Phillips
Connect to me on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davidlphillips