Question

What made you pick sales as a career?

What past experiences do you have that you think can help you in this position?

What qualities do you obtain that you think will be benifical in this position?

How would you deal with a rude or unpleasant customer?

Answer 1

Why sales?
If you look at a business, you can see there are various departments like production, finance, logistics, HR, etc. but what these departments are good for if the business is not able to make any sale? The success of a business will depend on the skills of its sales department. That means it is extremely important for the business to keep its sales department well trained and motivated. So let us discuss some of the merits of choosing sales as a career.

1. Money: Definitely the first motivator will be money. You are certain that you will make more money than any other administrative jobs. There is minimum pay, there is pay linked to the sales you make and if you sell more than the target then there might be commission on the excess sale and so on. And of course these will be different for different companies, but we are discussing the scope here, right?

2. Low probability of discrimination in hiring process: Since this job is purely based on skills, the hiring department is less likely to use any discriminatory practice in hiring you. A manager will always chose a person who will help the company to make more sales. Since the health of a company depend on the turnover/sales.

3. Job Security: If you lose your job, its very easy to get a new job. Now think about starting your business. If you have the skill then you can sell anything.

Now some other factors are, say if you are a person who loves to meet new people, then its the best job for you, because you will be interacting with a lot of new people on daily basis. And in some companies you get to travel a lot on the expense of the company.

Past experiences that will help you in this position.

Any job experience which required a direct contact with the customers will help you huge in this position. To be specific some of them are as follows:

1. Telemarketing: An experienced telemarketer understand the clients better. This will help you largely in sales.

2. Retail: Working as a sales assistant of a clothing retailer can be a great way to develop interpersonal skills, product knowledge, and organizational skills demanded of a person in sales.

3. Advertising: An experience in this field will also help you excel in this position.

4. Extracurricular activities: If you are in college and you want to work in sales, extracurricular activities in college like singing, drama, sports, etc will make your resume look better. This is because extracurricular activities need a lot of interaction with other people. This will help you deal with different kinds of people, which in turn will make your management skills, communication skills, team work, etc better or sharp.

Qualities Required which will be beneficial for this position.

1. Listening and communication: The most important quality required for person in the sales. Unless you listen how can you understand the need of your customer? Unless you communicate how can you introduce your product to your customer.

2. Integrity: You must be honest, trustworthy, dependable and transparent, then only people are going to buy your products. In today's market price is only the secondary factor to influence a customer. Customers always look for the above given qualities.

3. Positive attitude: You must have a positive attitude.

4. Availability: Always be available.

5. Continuous Learning

6. Passion

How to deal with a rude or unpleasant customer?

Now this calls for Emotional Intelligence. If one customer talks with you rudely or in an unpleasant manner, what will you do? Will you deal with the situation or look for another job? If you chose the second part then this is not the job for you. It is a beautiful and rewarding job but that doesn't mean customers are always easy to deal with, its the part of your job. The situations are different for different scenarios. But following are some tips in dealing with such customers.

1. Keep your temper: If you lose your temper you lost your customer.

2. Listen: Do not argue with your customer. Listen to what they say, even if they are not right. In this way you can create a rapport with your customer.

3. Always keep a calm voice: Do not let the emotions control you, and never let the customer know that you are angry.

4. Never take it personally: You do not know the customer, all you have is the professional relationship. They might be showing the frustration towards the company to you as a representative of the company. That means the customer is having the problem with the company and not you.

5. Always document the interaction with such customers. This will help you to deal with such customers in the future.  

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