SELL MY JOB TO ME

Steven Cesare, Ph.D.

An aggressive business owner from Oklahoma called me the other day to talk about his company’s annual strategic plan. While notably successful, the business owner, like many in the green industry, is extremely optimistic about the future economic condition of the country and is actively contemplating key initiatives to propel his company into even more growth, profit, and value. Naturally, as you would guess, first on his list is increased revenue.

Business owners have traditionally viewed sales employees with hopeful optimism, wanting to believe the salesperson will consistently exceed annual sales goals, while simultaneously being inveterately hardened by historical frustration. Indeed, business owners are fatalistically prepared for their sales employees’ inevitable underperformance, juxtaposed by short-term tenure peppered with a long list of hackneyed excuses. To wit: In most cases, sales employees have an average shelf life of 3 years with an employer.

Given that routine revolving door, most business owners predictably place job postings, partner with head hunters, and hope the unicorn resume will miraculously appear on their desk. From that point, the standard interview process takes place, replete with memorialized questions like what large jobs have you sold, what is your greatest annual sales volume, how do you gain access to new clients, what types of client research do you typically conduct, other than price what is the singular element of your sales pitch that you believe is most instrumental in winning a new contract, etc.

As a capitalist, I told the Oklahoma business owner that I have long advocated for a more verifiable and applied approach to assessing a sales applicant’s potential. In specific, at the time of the telephone call to schedule the interview, I tell business owners to inform the sales applicant that the interview will in large part consist of him/her making a formal sales pitch to the business owner, supplemented with all the sundry components (e.g., hard copy proposal, market research, job quality audit, pre-post photographs) that normally accompany such an event. Naturally, just like a standard sales meeting, the interview will also contain a lively Q&A session addressing issues like immediate horticulture needs, safety hazards, enhancements opportunities, and so forth.

At that point of the telephone conversation, the business owner will tell the sales applicant of the job site to be highlighted as part of the sales proposal.

Unbeknownst to the sales applicant, the targeted job site of the interview is actually one of the business owner’s current jobs.

With the interview preamble now underway, the sales applicant will be forthrightly directed to have absolutely no contact with the current job site owner, property manager, or resident, and not to disrupt the job site in any way. Failure to abide by these restrictions is a clear indictment of the sales applicant’s integrity, confidentiality, and ability to follow orders.

Business ethics. For a salesperson? Hmm.

Contextually speaking, this interview format puts the unsuspecting sales applicant’s entire skill set on detailed display: personal appearance, proposal quality, degree of research on the business owner’s company distinguishing it from competitors seeking to secure this same job site, job estimating skills, field labor considerations, business acumen assumptions (e.g., gross margin, travel time to/from the company yard, indirect costs), service cost and related terms, proficiency with presentation/research tools (e.g., PowerPoint, Google Earth, Property Intel, SiteRecon), as well as the ability to respond to rigorous questions from the prospective client (i.e., the business owner) spanning current and prospective landscaping, construction, enhancements, irrigation, tree service opportunities, and/or follow-up issues.

This type of interview format will hopefully assist the Oklahoma business owner in discerning actual sales skills from those merely stated verbally and unverifiably by the sales applicant. Failure to do so will simply result in the business owner’s continued frustration, disappointment, and repetition.

If you really believe in unicorns.

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