Here is a good post from Ed McLean on his Sales Itch blog – Sales Dilemma No.1:
There€™s a story in sales job hunting folklore where the smugly smiling interviewer plucks out a pen from his jacket pocket and say, €œSell me this pen€. What would you say? Here are the options I came up with:
You will have to read the post to view Ed’s excellent options.
Believe it or not, I actually encountered this interview approach when I was a young sales rep. I sat in the office of a salty old sales manager who told me to look under the chair I was sitting in. There was a box with many little trinkets and I was told to pick an item and sell it to him.
I picked a pen and attempted to qualify him. He, of course, did me the favor of being the worst prospect ever (which means he wasn’t a prospect). I worked through the qualifying and determined he had no need for my unique pen and its qualities. I got to the end of the qualifying discussion and told him I had reached the conclusion that he was not a prospect and I was moving on. The sales manager was not impressed and my interview ended right there.
At that point, I was glad I didn’t have to waste any more time with him. And I suspect that was his view of me.