look inside to sell outside

What are job interviews? How difficult they are when you are just starting off?

I remember my first job interviews. It always work when you are confident and you get into the room thinking I don’t really care what happens after this interview. That’s the way you max your interview. You simply tell yourself you don’t need this. but there is a caveat. In the middle of my career I was so high on this that I went into interviews and possibly came across as an arrogant prick. Who wants an arrogant prick?

The key to an interview is not all this – but simply being earnest and sincere. You have to go in confident about yourself. Of course you can’t behave that you want the job, cause that will turn the other guy into an ‘employer’. You want him to turn into a position where he believes that you can actually change his business for him. That’s what I think worked the best for me. I stumbled upon this by chance one day. I was interviewing because I thought I could use a higher pay but not because I wanted the job. So I went and then in the middle of the interview, I asked him about his issues and then tried to explain to him why it won’t work with his current approach and how he could improve. That was the first interview that I think I did exceedingly well. Now I try and convert my interviews into meetings. Friendly meetings where I am trying to genuinely learn about the interviewer and his business. Hopefully we can depart after having an intelligent conversation. That is the best thing to be gained from an interview.

Of course you lose the ones that you have pricks on the other side who think they know it all and wouldn’t be less bothered if their business plan bombed in their face. You don’t want to work with them at all. I like to say a simple thing like you try and play to your strengths because if you do get the job you like to get a job that rewards your strengths. This is actually the best strategy. But try telling that to someone who needs a job change desperately. That one wants to be all the interviewer wants him to be. Then it’s the simple thing of being a great sales man.

I remember some lectures / professors from school. Sometimes you don’t know what made an impact in your life. It takes so much time to know what was the best advice you ever received or the best lecture you ever attended. This one I am referring to my sales professor in b school. It’s a pity that I don’t remember his name.  He started his lecture with a  simple truth – he asked us – what is the most thing that motivates a sales man. After ten minutes of answers that we farted out – the answer came from Cherian – who said – money. I remember the prof calling him and shaking hands with him. That’s it – Money. The other one thing he taught me was that amongst the best thing that a sales man will have is motor mimicry. I am not sure if I get this term right but basically – he talks about the sales man to imitate the prospect. He copies the body language and tonality and almost every mannerism.

On Saturday I was teaching some of this stuff to the kids at college and I distilled my experience in to two words that I thought was very cool. Enthusiasm and Empathy. He first needs to be enthu about his product that he is selling and that has to be translated to the prospect. Only if he is enthusiastic about the product then only is he able to transfer his enthusiasm, because so many times what are we buying? Everything is so similar to each other and there is little differentiation between products and services. And this is especially important if there isn’t a packaged product that we are buying. So we just go by the basic feel of the sales man we are talking to. His enthusiasm is what sells.

Empathy is the foundation of the mimicry that he does. A good sales man is one who feels deeply about his prospect. While he is genuinely enthu about his product, he is also concerned about the prospects life and his needs and his deep unstated / stated desires. This is what makes him want to understand the prospect and then on this understanding is where the enthu builds and BAM… Sales.

This is the same technique in an interview. Genuine enthusiasm about your product or service (Self-confidence) meets Deep empathy (right banter). This is an unstoppable force. I think in many ways Malcolm Gladwell also agrees with me. See below

Free bonus video, the wordings of which are possibly apt for the blog I wrote. It’s a weird connection. I am not saying be selfish but be matlabi in a nice way. There is a niceness inherent in you that you have to harness to get your sales pitch right!

Matlabi, ho zhara matlabi…. I love the song in any case… its got a lovely ring to it!