How To Manage A Security Sales Organization. Lou Sepulveda CPP

and closing only 33 1/3 percent, which clearly can be beat by top salespeople, earns an individual $80,000 per year or more.

      “If this sounds like an opportunity you are interested in pursuing further, please raise your hands so I can move you on to individual interviews. The rest of you can leave now and I thank you for coming in.”

      If you’ve seeded the room with one or more members of your existing team, this is when they raise their hand and say, “I’m interested,” which makes it easier for others who are similarly interested to do likewise. It’s kind of like the first couple to get up and dance. Once they have, everyone else who wanted to, but were afraid to be first, gets up to dance.

      Why use a group interview instead of a traditional one-on-one process?

      The time required selling for my company and opportunities for advancement, then allowing time for the salesperson to sell himself to me, is easily thirty minutes or more. And since every interview could be with the best salesperson that has applied, I want to make sure I do a great job selling what I have to offer. I have to sell the opportunity with conviction, excitement, and enthusiasm.

      Consider what will happen if you have to accomplish all of these key goals thirty times on the same day. How enthusiastic will you be the tenth, fifteenth, twentieth, or thirtieth time you tell your company’s story? And if your enthusiasm wanes, as I’m sure it will, what if your best candidate turns out to be the thirtieth interview? What are your chances of hiring that person when you are tired and not at your very best?

      When you do a group interview you make your presentation one time. You can pour all of your emotion into that one presentation and then focus on the one-on-ones afterwards, which will likely be with fewer people—the ones who were sold by your presentation.