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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

#41

Post by mseebach »

onion2k wrote: post #36

This 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…

The fundamentals of sales are the same whether you're selling pens or $10m enterprise widgets -- you need to understand the customer and the product and how to fit the two together. It also applies in marketing, a closely related field -- you have to understand the needs of abstract groups of customers, and how pitch your product to those groups.

The pen is just a simple object to arrange a quick role play around.

Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange

#42

Post by microcolonel »

yetihehe wrote: post #39
microcolonel wrote: post #29

This 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.

That's what I mean, he starts by saying that it matters what type of pen is used, which is why I say "why not", as in, if you're going to tell me I need an important person's pen, why stop at the pen I already have?

Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange

#43

Post by huffmsa »

Fuck selling pens.

Give him the pen, then sell his mailing address to a paper manufacture.

Then cap his refills at 1 per 3 months, but for a low monthly subscription offer to give him all the ink he wants, and all the new pen models as they rollout.

Hard selling of ubiquitous consumables in highly competitive markets has no place in the SaaS world.

Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange

#44

Post by salesguy222 »

huffmsa wrote: post #43

Fuck selling pens. Give him the pen, then sell his mailing address to a paper manufacture. Then cap his refills at 1 per 3 months, but for a low monthly subscription offer to give him all the ink he wants, and all the new pen models as they rollout. Hard selling of ubiquitous consumables in highly competitive markets has no place in the SaaS world.

Unlimited ink? How do I ask for a shipment- through a form or a human? What happens when I request to much ink or pens? Do you conveniently forget to place my order?

How hard is it to cancel? What does the price tiering look like? When you are acquired, will I still receive my shipments?

All of these are arguments for why the "subscription market" is absolutely bogus

Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange

#45

Post by simias »

thekevan wrote: post #10

That'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…

He also doesn't say how to react if the person does remember what pen they used. I have a couple of good pens on my desk that I use all the time for everything, that trick wouldn't really work with me. You better hope the CEO likes using disposable pens.

Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange

#46

Post by alfra »

Sales, then and now, 10-minutes exercise comparing two links. How we approach sales in innovation and startups has changed a lot recently, but not for everyone. Enter the "sell me this pen" as seen in "Wolf of Wallstreet". It's a sales classic. You inspire desire in your customer in your sales pitch, and quickly he wants to buy, at any price. I frequently talk to startups about sales, but coming from a product management perspective.

The closest thing to selling in strategic product management is "solution selling". As the name suggests, it's about identifying a problem the customer actually has, then understanding how big the problem is. So when talking to the sales people at startups, we talk about pricing, job-to-be-done, and unmet needs of the customers. What kind of product do you have, in the eyes of your customers? Is it a nice thing to have once the customer learns about its existence, a "Vitamin"? Or is it something the customer really needs, a solution to an existing problem, something the customer already needed before he learned that there is a solution to the problem, is it a "Painkiller"?

If your product is still a Vitamin, it will be hard to sell, you will see a lot customer churn, customers quitting soon, instead of staying for the long run, and no recommending of your product to other people in the industry. To transform your product from a Vitamin to a Painkiller, you need to understand your customer's pain point. That's very close to S-P-I, "situation", "problem", "implication" in the SPIN-selling system that we use in solution selling.

Do this little test: Read a very short description about Vitamin vs Painkiller, and then read through a sales pitch (which is described as "the best" by its author) and note which parts are addressing a need for a Painkiller, and which address the wish for a Vitamin.

- Intro Vitamin vs Painkiller: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230736

- "Sell me this pen" sales pitch: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/best-answer-sell-me-pen-i-hav...

When you compare those two, you will see that the "sell me this pen" pitch is based on a Vitamin product. Most pens are Vitamin products to most customers, no matter how brilliant your sales pitch is. You can't use sales skills to fix a lack of product management.

Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange

#47

Post by huffmsa »

salesguy222 wrote: post #44
huffmsa wrote: post #43

Fuck selling pens. Give him the pen, then sell his mailing address to a paper manufacture. Then cap his refills at 1 per 3 months, but for a low monthly subscription offer to give him all the ink he wants, and all the new pen models as they rollout. Hard selling of ubiquitous consumables in highly competitive markets has no place in the SaaS world.

Unlimited ink? How do I ask for a shipment- through a form or a human? What happens when I request to much ink or pens? Do you conveniently forget to place my order? How hard is it to cancel? What does the price tiering look like? When you are acquired, will I still receive my shipments? All of these are arguments for why the "subscription market" is absolutely bogus

Which is why every major operating system (except iOS) in the world is now free, has free upgrades and updates and if it wipes your system, well tough, that's in the EULA.

Cancel? You can't, you can only revert your account to the unpaid plan.

We also reserve the right to take our pens back whenever we want.

Now, we could setup a special "enterprise-level" plan for you, with onsite production, dedicated management, and pen and ink manufacturing which you'd own after you paid off the terms, but that'll be a bit pricey.

Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange

#48

Post by alfra »

ghubbard wrote: post #28

> Actually. You know what? Just this week I shipped ten new boxes of these pens to Elon Musk’s office. An example of sales people having no issue with casually slipping in outright lies?

Elon Musk sells luxury cars to people who are aware of climate change and also love technology. He uses that money to build more and cheaper cars, moving towards mainstream, because existing car manufacturers didn't really move toward electric. Elon Musk solves a problem for his buyers. It's frustrating to see his name used in a sales pitch that is driven by a "Vitamins" approach rather than a "Painkiller" approach. Fighting climate change isn't optional.

Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange

#49

Post by mseebach »

alfra wrote: post #46

Sales, then and now, 10-minutes exercise comparing two links. How we approach sales in innovation and startups has changed a lot recently, but not for everyone. Enter the "sell me this pen" as seen in "Wolf of Wallstreet". It's a sales classic. You inspire desire in your customer in your sales pitch, and quickly he wants to buy, at any price. I frequently talk to startups about sales, but coming from a product manage…

The examples given for "vitamin" and "painkiller" are poor, or at lease not describing differences in products, but in marketing strategy. Also, the idea that "vitamins" are poor product is betrayed by the success of many, many madly successful "vitamin" products, not least including literal vitamins.

The product-load-feature that is described in the entrepreneur.com article as a "vitamin" mere seems poorly marketed. Keeping your e-business platform up-to-date with your products is very much something that can raise revenue or lower costs (or, if not, it's not actually a product at all, vitamin or not). On the other example, the healthcare payments solution, why would you not expect the provider of the existing invoicing solution to "just" enable some sort of upfront payment to lower bed debts, if this is really a problem?

(Also, dismissing business ideas on the basis that someone else would already be doing it if it's actually a problem seems to be a great way to never be successful in business)

Re: An answer to the “Sell Me This Pen” interview challange

#50

Post by mcphage »

Kiro wrote: post #8

Pretty sure the most common answer to "When was the last time you used a pen?" is "I don't remember.". Then what?

The person interviewing you isn't going to be hostile to your questioning, otherwise what's the point of asking them to sell you a pen?
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