I was interviewing for a junior sales role last year at a startup when I learned this lesson.
It took me close to 9 months to internalise it.
Here’s what happened:
The interview just lasted two rounds over a week. My first round with the junior sales manager went quite well, and on the next call I spoke with the Head of Sales and the first guy combined.
The Head of Sales was a gruff, “take no prisoners” kinda guy, and started grilling me on my background. At a certain point, he started being borderline rude.
I remember saying that I value personal growth over most things in my career- to which his response was – “when you’re doing 50 cold calls a day here, is that what you’ll be thinking of- personal growth?”
That response peeved me quite a lot- and it reflected in my answer.
I said something to the effect of:
“I always like to tie in my daily tasks with the company’s objectives and see how I can contribute to the overall ecosystem. This means I’m always looking to build systems and routines that create more impact and leverage than the typical rep might create- so no I don’t view this job as being just a cold calling monkey”
Guess what? I got rejected and the feedback was that I came across as too defensive.
At the time, I brushed it off as a bad experience with a hiring manager. But- think about it, how many times as a seller will you encounter a buyer that is just plain rude?
I’ve seen many of them. So far in my career, I’ve never been able to handle them as well as I would’ve liked to.
Which is why reading more about objection handling and buyer psychology has been so helpful.
Now, if I were to respond to the guy, it’d be something like:
Thanks, that’s a valid question (followed by the spiel I gave previously)
and I’d wrap up by asking him to clarify further- something like: “I’m sensing you’re concerned about why motivations for coming to this role- is that right?”
…and I’d leave out the cold call monkey part.
The way I’ve rephrased this is essentially is a basic objection handling framework that sales-people use.
Validate→give your opinion→ask for clarification
So- tl;dr- don’t make the same mistakes I’ve made.
Your buyers might be rude, but you need to be like water.
Absorb that energy, give a new shape to their objection, and direct it back to them.