Confessions of a Sales Trainer: The Interview

For two years, I worked as a sales trainer for an air cleaner/vacuum sales company. At that point in my life, I seemed to have very few standards or ethics. I made the perfect candidate to be a trainer.

Even though I only worked for one sales company, you can group many of them into this type of category. It does not matter if you talk about Filter Queen, Kerby, Rainbow, Cut-Co., or any of the other few hundred private outside sales companies.

When I started working for Health-Mor, the creator of the Filter Queen, I was singled out immediately as being someone who could make a great trainer. They saw aspects in my personality that would put me at the top.

I was in my mid-twenties, nice looking, and they believed that I was fairly charismatic. Since many of the potential workers that would come through the door were young, I would be someone that they could look up to for support and guidance.

The Interview

On Mondays and Tuesdays, I would hold large group interviews to scope out potential workers. A usual interview would have about thirty people being told that my office was looking for about a dozen workers. There would be about five to six interviews like this over a matter of the first two days of the week.

During the interview, the potentials (or sheep as they would be called) would be told that their job was simply to give presentations. Our office would provide the leads that they needed.

Each presentation, as they were told, would be about an hour in length. They would receive $15 per presentation. If they were to do fifteen presentations in a week, they would receive a $300 bonus. They would be told that it would be simple to receive the fifteen appointments because of how hard our staff worked.

After my thirty to forty minute, "interview," they would be given a number to call between certain hours that evening. As they were leaving, I would tell them, they needed to hand me the folders that they had received on the way in with their resume and application. They would be prepared to see me making marks on their resumes as they left.

The Reality