15 Interview Questions Sales People Should Prepare to Answer

15 Interview Questions Sales People Should Prepare to Answer Each year, more sales professionals lose potential employment opportunities because they are ill-prepared for the interview, than they do for any other reason, including being unqualified, unintelligent or incapable. As a sales candidate, chances are that you have great ideas and a clear vision of where you want to go. Unfortunately, if you can’t convey that vision in a simple, direct and concise manner during the interview, a hiring manager won’t perceive you as credible. Opportunity lost. To ensure you come across in the best light possible during an interview, preparation is nothing short of imperative.  Whether it be for an entry-level position or a Director of Sales role, readiness can and will make or break an interview.It can be the differentiator between a lucrative job offer and a potentially embarrassing meeting. It’s not lack of preparation, rather it’s… Often, when an interview performance is not up to snuff, it is not a result of lack of preparation, but rather a result of the wrong preparation.  Frequently, sales applicants will inaccurately predict the questions that will be asked during the meeting rendering their research a waste of time.  However, if you can  anticipate the right types of questions that will be asked, you will possess a great advantage.  Aside from increased confidence and focus, knowing what an interviewer will ask will enable you to prepare answers in a manner which both highlights your strengths and remains relevant to the needs of the hiring manager.  Because knowing what to prepare is as important as preparing itself, our recruiters have listed 15 questions every sales professional should be prepared to answer during an interview. Answering The Questions That Matter It is highly difficult to predict the exact questions a recruiter or interviewer will ask during an interview.However, if they are thorough and understand business development, job seekers can anticipate that they will be asked some form of the following 15 questions. What did you sell? What was the average dollar amount per sale? How did you find your prospects? What was your quota? Did you meet or exceed your quota in the past few quarters? Why or why not? What was the average length of a sales cycle? (e.g. sales cycle = the length of time it takes to close a contract from initial correspondence with a lead) Who were your primary contacts within an organization? (e.g. who or what division would you sell that product to within that company ex: Director of Finance, CFO or Engineering Team) What industries do you have experience selling into? What formal sales training do you have? How would you describe your sales style? What, if any assistance did you have during the sales cycle? (e.g. sometimes technical related sales will have sales engineers assist with the closing of the sale due to its complexity) Was the selling done face to face / by phone or a combination of the two? How much travel was required in order to meet your goals? Have you ever managed a sales team? How familiar are you with our products and why do you feel you can sell them? What hurdles did you often encounter during the sales process and what strategies did you employ to overcome those obstacles? In the End The overwhelming majority of sales interviews are either won or lost prior to the meeting.Knowing how to prepare and what to focus on will lay the ground for a winning job search. Image: Shutterstock

Writing a Resume Out of College

Writing a Resume Out of CollegeWriting a resume out of college is a growing trend. It's good that a lot of young people are now taking advantage of the advantages offered by it. But it's not very good if you are just 'reading' one and that means even if you have an interesting experience you may have spent most of your time looking for it on the internet.What makes it even worse is that employers are increasingly aware of this and are always looking for people with more experience and some education. If they know that you studied abroad, you are probably going to face some competition. But you shouldn't be looking for a better job after you graduated because that might show you don't take initiative in your job search.When it comes to the reason why a lot of students to pursue a career in higher education, the main issue is usually that they just have the rest of their life to write down their educational experiences. So that they can look back and remember those first years when the y were studying full time and if you get employed in such a field, it's like a clean slate. You are working on things that you had never done before.The other thing to keep in mind is that if you are employed by yourself, the salary should be enough to cover the expenses of your education and of course your living expenses and your financial plan should be in place. A good student should also manage to finish college before taking the years to get married and settle down into a housewife's role. There are plenty of other reasons why you should not waste your time on writing a resume out of college. As much as there are drawbacks, it is still good to look for opportunities like this if you know the right places to look.Try to come up with a resume that would show that you are someone who has learned some of the basics of a job and that you are skilled at it but not necessarily someone who has the full picture of a person who could be a potential employer's right hand. A resume can on ly do so much to impress a potential employer and most of the time it does little.You can add these things, you can update the skill set you had when you were still in school but the old thing that was mentioned above. It may seem tedious but it is still something that needs to be done. The most important thing is that you still maintain your academic and professional status even if you have a stable job and money coming in.So this does not mean that you give up on your goals or your professional attitude. Just make sure that you know what you have to do to enhance your chances in a new job.In order to do this, you need to look for some recent experiences that prove you have learned from your past mistakes and that you are equipped to handle a new position with your abilities. Don't let any possibilities slip your mind.

Think Like a Brand CEOs in Times of Crisis - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Think Like a Brand CEOs in Times of Crisis - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Tom Peters asked employees of large companies   to think like a CEO as they branded themselves within the organization in the late 1990s. The idea was to contribute to the company in a way that helped you stand out, and helped you take control of your own brand and destiny within your career.   The concept helped launch the personal branding movement of today. Id suggest that todays CEOs need to think more like a brand.   Not all CEOs are in need of a makeover, but judging from the public outcry regarding the financial services industry as an extreme example, CEOs as a category are in big trouble.   If CEOs were a brand, we would label this a full-fledged crisis. Just a few headlines from the news recently: Connecticuts Vote Working Families is offering bus-tours of the luxurious mansions of the AIG execs who are in line to receive gigantic, taxpayer-funded bonuses. A US Senator called for executives and CEOs who received bonuses to apologize and then commit suicide The CEO of AIG said his executive team and other employees were afraid for their lives Granted, some of this anger is pointed at the financial services industry. But you cant deny its getting personal and a little scary.   Whats going on here and how can thinking like a brand help these embattled executives? Brands sometimes find themselves in trouble. Most business schools have numerous case studies about how big brands have responded to crisis in the past: how Tylenol responded to the poisoning crisis in the 1980s; or how Exxon responded to the Valdez Oil Spill.   There are countless examples of whos done it right and whos done it wrong. But those examples deal with companies. Todays tinder-box environment is focused squarely on the CEO and other top executives.   To turn this around, theyre going to have to think like a brand.   And what would a brand in trouble do?   Theyd call in their crisis response team. Crisis response In my Global Marketing course at the UCLA Extension, we spend quite a bit of time discussing the global implications of a crisis on a brand and what to do about it. The list can get extensive but the starting point is clear: Develop an effective   strategy to avoid, or at least minimize, the negative impact of pending or breaking crises Address the needs not only of external stakeholders, but also of employees because every employee is a PR representative and crisis manager for the organization, whether you want them to be or not Develop and prepare a KEY MESSAGE Create and coordinate the online crisis-response activities, to include blogging, etc. Leveraging a CEO brand Imagine if these CEOs currently in trouble with public perception had spent time developing a personal brand. The ability to mitigate the current trouble is painfully evident. Favorably branded CEOs are valuable in good times and in bad. Like a well- respected brand, they are known, desired, and coveted by their audience and able to project calm during unstable times. We could have been witnessing CEOs who were visible and respected leaders leveraging clear and distinctive executive brands. This is a cautionary tale for CEOs in other industries to get busy and build their brand in order to survive any crisis that may come up.   The public is searching for strong CEO brands that diminish confusion and uncertainty. Leveraging the CEO brand is only possible when the CEO has built the value of the brand. This could be an opportunity for that rare executive to emerge with a well-managed brand and not only help restore calm but stand head and shoulders above the competition as time goes on. Author: Beverly Macy is the Managing Partner of YM Partners and teaches a social media class at the UCLA Extension.   She also co-hosts Gravity Summit events.

What if Women Pioneered the Work World

What if Women Pioneered the Work World Todays post is by, Holland Banks Had the professional world been pioneered by women rather than men, what would it look like? It’s no coincidence that both the hierarchical structure and social culture in the work and especially corporate environment are structured in a way that seems to benefit men, or at least coincide with their natural tendencies and responsibilities. For women, at times everything seems to be a battle against the self, a constant learning or adjusting process and most notably a push and pull between the personal and professional responsibilities. And that’s no coincidence. Rather, it’s a result of centuries of a general work environment and culture having been molded by and for men and their needs. Men shaped the workplace the best way that they knew how-to accommodate their needs. And who can blame them, why wouldn’t they? For example: Why would men put any thought into maternity leave, or centering work around lifestyle and domestic responsibility if they weren’t also the primary caregivers or keepers of the home? Why would the good ol’ boys or any male dominated staff choose to have informal business gatherings over coffee and tea if there was no woman there to protest whiskey and scotch? Why pee with the door closed if everyone in the neighboring executive conference room has a penis? Yes, it has been done. (Male executives will sometimes go to great lengths to offend high positioned women. Or, if we choose to give those men the benefit of the doubt they may accidentally forget that a woman is there.) They wouldn’t, and they haven’t. I’m still pretty young, only 23 in fact. I spent my first year out of college working in a nonprofit that had much more women than men (granted they were fairly aggressive women), so fortunately ( or perhaps unfortunately) I have yet to be exposed to the real thorns of a blatantly male dominated workforce. Still, I’ve lived long enough to know the characteristics I’m most likely to find within any male dominated work environment. And the overwhelmingly and almost insultingly large slew of magazines, books, articles and television shows instructing women on what they should and shouldn’t do in the workplace, has left nothing to the imagination in terms of where we are “not fitting in” in the work environment. But they rarely tell us why. And many of us are probably regurgitating the same self destructive idea that male dominance often promotes- that we’re just not as good as men in the workplace. Well perhaps it’s true then, that it is harder for women to succeed in this environment that has been structured by men. But would it not be the same for men if women had pioneered the work environment instead? For example: What if work schedules and operations were centered around domestic responsibilities? Perhaps it would further complex the schedules and plans, but it would allow women to succeed in both endeavors. What if business relationships were formed around character and likeability, rather than simply profitability? Would men be capable of putting time into cultivating a relationship before jumping on its benefits? Would there be a different physical environment within business offices that better accommodated our moods and the way we like to relate to one another? Would we be “happier” while achieving professional success? Would it promote less or more competition? Would it promote different types of competition? Maybe it would create better ways to encourage and stimulate employees. What if employees could only rise to the top of a company’s hierarchy if they proved that they could enable even the lowest and poorest performing member of the team rather than if they could bring in the largest individual profitable gain and trump their co-workers? What if everything was different, including the way that outside constituents, the consumer populations, stakeholders and even other countries perceived our companies? And those are only the small changes that we might see. I believe that we could safely assume that a world with a female pioneered and dominated work and corporate world would also mean  an overall society with more female fused values and ideals. Our corporations would probably act differently. Our society would expect different things from us. Don’t be afraid to think big with me here! What if a company’s ability to have the healthiest most cared for employees coupled with financial and economic gain was how they were ranked and gained further economic influence and respect in the markets? What if we as citizens were smart enough to judge, condemn and take down, or encourage and support corporate entities and their success based on their Corporate Social Responsibility endeavors rather than their commercials and trends? What if… a female pioneered business world meant a better world, and we just don’t know it? You see, the innate values and qualities that we think are holding us back are those that if further included in the business and corporate behavior would push it, its players and even the surrounding populations to a higher state of being and operation. We could move beyond what we are now. We could build a more perfect and balanced world that focused more on the good of the whole rather than the profit of the individual. Our larger businesses could become greater contributors to business and society. Where would a man’s place be in that world? I’m sure that we’d have a lot to teach him. He may need to readjust his manner of thinking so that it fit the goals of his female built company. And because of woman’s subsequently larger effect on society, her hypothetical dominant grip on society’s views and values will probably put extra pressure on man to act differently and to learn to view success and appropriate behavior through the lens of a woman. For example, women often do better starting their own business like Noga of Urban Outsource. It would be pretty difficult for him, I’m sure. But in time, he would adjust. And women would find that even though he doesn’t have the exact same innate values, the values that he does have could help them reach the same  desired goal â€" success. If they were smart they would use his natural capabilities and skills to help them all achieve it. My main point? We are adjusting ourselves to view appropriate work behavior, success, culture and values through the lens of the men who initially created these environments and the men who have continued to dominate them. We are not of lesser value or capability because the adjustment is sometimes difficult or nearly impossible. My second and most important point? Men need women just as much as women would need men to create a perfect and more enlightened world. With that goal in mind, in order to reach the end result it doesn’t matter who the pioneers were.

Finding Good CNA Resume Samples

Finding Good CNA Resume SamplesCNA resume samples are available in many of the most popular directories such as the employer's personal website. These CNA resume samples can give a CNA, or certified nursing assistant, an idea of what types of resumes to include on them. You can also get these same resumes in print form for consideration from recruiters and other hospitals or medical centers.If you're just getting started in the health care industry, you might not have much to go on when it comes to resume samples. That's okay; there are plenty of job seekers who have been in the industry for years and who have done their homework for the job hunt. They know how to write CNA resume samples, and what to put on them!It's not that hard to find some good CNA resume samples if you take some time and make the effort to find the right information. To begin with, don't just start from the resume you see on a hospital's website - the CNA resume samples won't show you what works and what doesn' t work for someone who wants to get a job as a CNA.When you're looking for samples for your resume, start by looking at the fine print. Don't simply rely on the example CV/resume the HR department sends to you; instead, take the time to make sure that the samples you see are true and that they cover all of the bases. Include everything - skills, certifications, awards, as well as responsibilities.Also, a good place to look for samples is in local health facilities or health care associations. They often hold regular job fairs and may have a handful of sample resumes you can use to give to recruiters.When you get into print form, you'll find that even though you're using CNA resume samples, that they still work just as well for aCNA as they do for a nurse. Some of the things to include in your resume to include duties and qualifications related to the job of a CNA. A CNA will work the front desk, run errands, or perform other tasks within the facility.On your resume, include details about your education and employment history. You should note if you completed a specific number of credits or if you attended a particular type of training. The more detail you include, the better your chances are of landing the job you're after.The CNA resume samples available are useful, but you have to make sure that you are using them properly. You can't just get into a resume book and throw in a few things to get the job you want. For best results, be sure to spend some time browsing job and career websites.

Job Search Preparation 10 Non-Negotiables

Job Search Preparation â€" 10 Non-Negotiables Because the employment world has changed so much in the last 5 years, job seekers need to change their game, too. There are no short cuts and no compromises on using the right techniques at every step of the process. Although the list below may look like a list of choices, it is not. You MUST do them ALL; you can’t do some and miss on others. Not if securing your next job faster is a priority. Goal setting: Write down your job goal “script.” Be clear and specific about your desired job title and roles/responsibilities. Tracking: Build a spreadsheet, WORD table, or other useful tool so you track every piece of data you collect during your job search. Sourcing: Based on your goal in #1, list the resources you will use to find your next job. Don’t just rely on one; there are many! Social Media Groundwork: Learn how to maximize social media by taking tutorials specific to job search techniques on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.. Obsessive Research: Spend hours â€" not minutes â€" on every job opportunity prior to applying. Use the Web to research the people, company, division, and function for the position you are applying for. Networking Precision: Prepare to make your face-to-face and online networking most effective by writing out your networking plan. Then practice asking for their support during your job search. Application Preparation: Find one job within your goal description and prepare a draft practice cover letter and résumé. Proof it and ask someone for feedback. Better yet, use a new, more effective application process with my new Cut the Crap (CTC) Candidate Packet, described in Cut the Crap, Get a Job!, my new book. Interview Prep: (Do this in advance, not the night before!) Prepare your best interview attire and fill your briefcase with document copies. Be ready with two alarm clocks. A couple of days before your interview, drive to the location to find parking and the exact entrance. On interview day, if you’re not in the lobby 30 minutes early, you’re late! Phone Interview Excellence: Print hard copies of your notes and the job description, then organize them within arm’s reach. Don’t forget to write 3 bullet points for all of the most common interview questions. Choose a quiet place to take the call and be ready 30 minutes early. Follow Up After Every Interaction: This is the single sloppiest part of almost all job searches. Without a tracking tool and calendar reminders, most follow up is terrible. Every contact you make requires impeccable follow up as a short-term courtesy and for long-term networking! The good news about each of these actions is that there are hundreds of resources out there to help you with every step including my book, Cut the Crap, Get a Job! I not only teach job search tricks and traps from a hiring manager’s perspective, I provide free templates so you can execute your job search flawlessly.

Industry Memberships are Job Search Lifelines - Pathfinder Careers

Industry Memberships are Job Search Lifelines - Pathfinder Careers Industry Memberships are Job Search Lifelines Industry memberships are a critical tool in every job seeker’s job search tool kit. However, they are usually the first thing a job seeker drops due to the cost. What they don’t know is that by NOT renewing those memberships, it actually costs more in the long run, mainly time lost by not connecting to the right people and opportunities. Industry memberships are critical networking hubs. People hire who they know, and by keeping your membership, you are retaining an important referral pipeline. Those memberships represent a circle of like-minded professionals, and you need to keep yourself in that universe. Industry memberships demonstrate to potential employers that you have industry connectedness. Those memberships help you seem relevant to potential employers. Some of the thought leadership going on in those organizations is bound to rub off on you, and employers LOVE this! It also means you understand what it means to be a mover and a shaker in your chosen career field or industry. Industry memberships demonstrate that you take your career seriously. Including current professional memberships on your resume communicates something else to employers as well. It means that you are a dedicated professional who wants to learn and grow from others, and this is a powerful asset for your job search. Think of it from an employer’s viewpoint: Would you rather hire someone who is connected to their industry by showing active memberships and involvement, or someone who doesn’t have any of that? It’s a no-brainer. Industry memberships open new doors. You never know what types of opportunities could land in your lap as a result of an industry membership. It could be a new client. Partnership opportunity. Job referral. There is a strategic advantage to sharing a common connection and you just never know what amazing things can happen as a result. So, before you ditch your industry membership, consider the value it delivers. It’s not a cost… it’s an investment into buying access to people and opportunities that you cannot imagine.