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An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
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Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#32Pretty sure the most common answer to "When was the last time you used a pen?" is "I don't remember.". Then what?
That's the point of the question, isn't it. Finding an opening with the potential buyer before even working on the product. If the buyer does not care about the pen, you will try selling him how cheap, light and not leaking the pen is, so he can buy a box of ten, leave one in each of his jacket and always have a pen ready when he needs it.
In this exercise, you know nothing about the pen, so obviously it is not about the pen - you will not sell the pen if you focus on the characteristic of the pen, you need to find a need for a pen within the interviewer which is the 101 of a sales position. Like those programming questions - of course there are better way to find prime numbers or whatever you need to code - you are not here to discuss the math stuff, you are here to show you can write a few lines of code with a structure, solve a problem, ask the right question, ...
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
On top of all of that, it's titled "The Best .. I've Ever Seen" and it's his own anecdote. That's up there with Trump's "I have the best brain." crap. Terrible.
> it's titled "The Best .. I've Ever Seen" and it's his own anecdote Obviously "the best (his) ever seen" would be "his own anecdote". How else could it be?
What? First of all, ignoring the semantic argument of whether saying you've "seen" your own anecdote is proper; if you refer to yourself as the best ever for anything you better be world champion class at that thing or you're either a liar or really ignorant.
Based on the anecdote, the author one of the last two.
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#34That's a terrible answer and to be honest, I don't particularly believe this actually happened. I was once asked to sell a pen to an interviewer and the first thing I asked them about was their pen use. After that, I pointed to things on the pen and told them about the benefits of it and why it was a good choice. he stopped me and said he heard enough because I established need, and then translated real features of t…
I don't see the difference between your answer and his? Both asked about recent pen use, both responded based on that?
His account talks about his overly verbose question and answer session and a bit of a click-baity "when they heard his response, they were floored!" ending.
Mine was a bit of I ascertained their need, talked up some of the benefits and the interviewer was like, "cool, you passed, we'll keep speaking". It wasn't an epic revelation that floored people. It was just, "okay, you have some sales skills, let's keep going."
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#35The page is not loading. 25 years ago, a response could be: you don't need a pen, you need a 3000 USD IBM-compatible PC! :-)
I was kind of hoping for a response where they talked the pen up a bit, gave the interviewer the pen, then used the gained social capital to get the interviewer to listen to their real pitch (ie. why you should hire me.)
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#36This is a lovely anecdote, but it's largely irrelevant to modern sales. There's no margin in consumer goods to sell directly any more. The cost of each sale would be too high[1]. If it was an enterprise product the person buying only really cares whether it works better than the competitor product and how much it costs, so a personal approach is a waste of time (beyond getting the customer to talk to you in the first place).
[1] Every sale would end with "What a brilliant pen. You've made it sound incredible. But I won't buy it right now; I'll check the price on Amazon when I get home."
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#37Seriously? All he managed to sell was the aesthetics feel. It's like selling email marketing software solely for the design. How about selling a pen by pitching the frustrations
it solves? Pens get lost. Pens stop working randomly. Pens finish without much of a warning. If you're using it after a while, you have to rummage for a paper to scribble before you use it.
It's hard to recall any pen which solves any of these. So, in the end, selling a pen becomes a marketing problem, not a sales problem.
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#38Pretty sure the most common answer to "When was the last time you used a pen?" is "I don't remember.". Then what?
Well, didn't you need to sign anything? A check?
Do you take notes?
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#39This is a limp answer, he seems to be selling another pen , not the one in his hands. After all, if it's really important what pen you use to sign contracts, why would the one on the desk suffice? Why not get a beautiful bimetal nib fountain pen with navy ink?
> This is a limp answer, he seems to be selling another pen, not the one in his hands.
This answer is not enough "out of the box".
> Why not get a beautiful bimetal nib fountain pen with navy ink?
This answer is too much "out of the box" for most CEO's.
Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange
#40Pretty sure the most common answer to "When was the last time you used a pen?" is "I don't remember.". Then what?
Right, the strategy is very depended on answers that the candidate is going to get and it is hard to see how to continue with less favorable answers: * Q: Do you remember what kind of pen that was? * A: Yes, it was my favorite pen that I got from my wife for our anniversary * Q: Do you remember why you were using it to write? * A: I signed a credit card receipt in Walmart.
This is a special pen, and you just carry it around with you at Walmart? I shudder to think what would happen if you were to drop it -- that happens all the time, people drop pens and stuff, and they practically never get it back! See, this is the BIC Premier. It's a nice, classy pen, it writes smoothly with no clumps or leak -- and it's $14.95 for a box of ten, so you can just have a few in your pocket, in your bag, in your glove compartment, always a nice, good pen to hand, and you can leave your anniversary pen in the place of honour on your office desk where you can use it to sign the all-important contracts that befits a pen of that stature.
Easy-peasy.