A) Recruiting, selecting, training (Interview sales managers):

A) What types of people are being sought after for the sales position?

Companies:

3 A Pharmaceuticals:

Muhammad Shaheen Khan

Regional Sales Manager

3 A Pharmaceuticals PVT Ltd: we offer a variety of recruitment and selection tools

designed to successfully identify the most suitable candidate for each and

every employment vacancy that your company has. Before you recruit

anyone into a new job it is vital that you appraise the job fully. This

includes revisiting the person specification and the job description and it

should include understanding the job profile. This involves identifying the

behavioural requirements of the job. Our tools are detailed below:

Person Specification

A person specification gives a clear picture of the ideal candidate for the

job. The purpose is to identify the qualities of the ideal candidate by

considering qualifications, personal attributes and the application of these

attributes. The person specification covers:

The skills of the person needed to do the job.

The behaviours and aspirations required of the person doing the job.

A person specification is created after an initial discussion related to the

job content.

Job Profiling

Job profiling allows you to quickly and effectively profile the job that you

are recruiting for. You create a template for the job and this you compare
against the candidate or existing employee who is seeking a job move.

The purpose is to find the best fit.

The job profile is a questionnaire that can be completed either online or in

paper version. There are 24 sentences in the questionnaire that must each

be ranked according to the importance of the job within the organisation.

The results are plotted on a graph to create a template. The template can

then be compared against the candidate or employee profile to assess

how well they would “fit” into the employment position available.

The benefits of the job profile are that it:

• Is user friendly;

• Provides a template for the job;

• Gives an objective view of the behavioural characteristics required;

• Is easily compared with the personality profiles

For sales position in 3 A pharmaceutical we are finding candidates

Requirements for fresh candidates & executives:

Sex: male

Education: Master, preferable MBA, Pharmacist.

Vehicle: Bike / Car

Experience for Executives: 1 0r 2 years

Qualities required for Trainee and Executive:

B) What is their sales job selection process?

SALES PERSON-SELECTION PROCESS

Selection Process:

Job analysis
Manpower Planning
Job discription
Job spacification
Recruitment
Screening
Selection
Job analysis:

It specifies the task involved in particular job and factors which affect job performance

• Type

• Objective of job

• Reporting relationship

• Role

• Environment

• Company rules and regulation

Job Description:

• It gives the detail description of main duties, task, responsibilities, nature of position and
principal accountabilities

Manpower planning:

• The main aim of manpower planning is to determine existing and future staffing levels. It has
both quantitative dimension and qualitative requirements.

Job Specification:

• The main purpose of job specification is to fit the most appropriate to the required job. It is the
purpose of job specification to list the desirable qualities and attributes that a person should
have to do the job.

Some of the characteristics needed for Sales person:

• Confidence

• Intelligence

• Product knowledge

• Competitors

• Market knowledge

• Customer knowledge

• Communication skills
 • Company

Recruitment

• Internal applicants

• Recommended by existing employees

• Advertisements

• Employment agencies

• Educational institutions

Screening:

• Pool of candidates through evaluation.

Selection:

• Application forms

• References

• Interviews

• Physical or Medical

• Psychometric and other tests

C) Have you been through any kind of job interview? if so, did the interview follow the suggestions
and guidelines discussed in the chapter?

The ‘playback’ technique:

The interviewer repeats the last few words of the candidate’s sentence in order to elicit
the reason for what has been said. For example, the candidate might say ‘I worked for
XYZ Company for two years, but I didn’t like it very much.’ The interviewer follows
with ‘You didn’t like it very much?’ Candidate: ‘No, the sales manager was always
on my back, checking to see that I was making my calls.’

The use of rewards:

Obvious interest in the candidate’s views, experiences and knowledge shown by

the interviewer confers its own reward. This can be supplemented by what can only be
described as encouraging noises such as ‘Uh, uh’ or ‘Mmm, yes, I see’. The confidence
instilled in the candidate will encourage further comment and perhaps revelations.
A further method of reward is through ‘eye behaviour’. The subtle narrowing of
the eyes, together with a slight nodding of the head can convey the message ‘Yes,
I see.’ The correct use of such rewards comes only with experience, but their application
is undoubtedly an aid in encouraging the candidate to talk freely.

The use of silence:

Silence can be a very powerful ally of the interviewer. However, silence must be used
with discretion, otherwise rapport may be lost and candidates may raise their barriers
to open expression.
Its most common use is after the candidate has given a neutral, uninformative reply
to an important question. A candidate, eager to impress, will feel uncomfortable and
interpret silence as an indication that the interview is not going well. In such a situation
they will normally attempt to fill the void, and itmaybe that the onlywaythey candothis
is by revealing attitudes or behaviour patterns which otherwise they would have been
happy to have kept hidden. Alternatively, the pause may allow the candidate to formulate
their thoughts and thus stimulate a more considered reply. Continuing with a followup
question without a pause would have precluded this happening. Either way, extra,
potentially revealing information can be collected by the discriminate use of silence.

The use of probes:

The salesperson who is adept at needs analysis will be well acquainted with the use
of probes. In an interview, comments will be made which require further explanation.
For example, the applicant might say, ‘The time I spent on a sales training
course was a waste of time,’ to which the interviewer might say ‘Why do you think
that was?’ or ‘That’s interesting, why do you say that?’ or ‘Can you explain a little
more why you think that?’ Such phrases are to be preferred to the blunt ‘Why?’ and
are really alternatives to the ‘playback’ technique mentioned earlier.
Achoice of phrases and techniques allows the interviewer to vary the approach to
probing during the course of the interview. Although it may not always be possible
to guarantee, probing of particularly embarrassing events such as the break-up of an
applicant’s marriage (if thought relevant to job performance) or failure in examinations
should be left until the interview is well under way and certainly not be the
subject of scrutiny at the start.

Summarizing:

During an interview, the interviewer will inevitably be attempting to draw together

points which have been made by the applicant at various times in order to come to
some opinion about the person under scrutiny. A useful device for checking if these
impressions are valid in the subject’s eyes is to summarise them and ask for their
corroboration.
After a period of questioning and probing, the interviewer might say: ‘So, as
I understand it, your first period in sales was not a success because the firm you worked
for produced poor quality products, inferior in terms of technical specifications compared
to competition and you felt inexperienced. But your second job, working with
a larger, better-known company, was more satisfactory, having received proper sales
training and having the advantage of selling a recognised high-quality product line.
Would you say that this was a fair summary?’ Having obtained agreement, the interviewer
can then move to another area of interest or continue to investigate the same
area with the certainty that there has been no earlier misunderstanding.

The use of neutral questions:

Abasic principle of good interviewing is to use neutral rather than leading questions.
The question ‘Can you tell me about the sales training you received at your previous
employer?’ is likely to lead to rather different, less biased responses than, ‘I’m sure
you learnt a lot from your sales training courses, didn’t you?’ Again, ‘What do you
feel about dealing with the type of customer we have?’ is more neutral than, ‘I’m sure
you wouldn’t have any problems dealing with our customers, would you?’

Other considerations:

There are other considerations which an interviewer is wise to bear in mind. First,
they must not talk too much. The object is for most of the time spent interviewing to
be used to evaluate the candidates. Second, part of the interview will be a selling task
in order to ensure that the chosen applicant accepts. The balance between evaluation
and selling is largely based upon judgement and no hard and fast rules apply, but
obviously the competitive situation and the strength of the candidate will be two factors
that affect the decision.
Third, the interviewer must discreetly control the interview. A certain amount of
time will be allocated to each candidate and it is the interviewer’s responsibility to
ensure that all salient dimensions of the candidate are covered, not only those about
which the candidate wishes to talk. Some of the earlier techniques, used in reverse,
may be necessary to discourage the candidate from rambling on. For example, the
interviewer may look uninterested, or ask a few closed questions to discourage
verbosity. Alternatively, the interviewer can simply interrupt with ‘That’s fine, I think
we’re quite clear on that point now,’ at an appropriate moment.
Finally, the interviewer will need to close the interview when sufficient information
has been obtained. Usually, the candidate is forewarned of this by the interviewer
saying ‘OK, we’ve asked you about yourself. Are there any questions you
would like to ask me (us)?’ At the end of this session, the interviewer explains when
the decision will be made and how it will be communicated to the candidate and
then thanks them for attending the interview. They both stand, shake hands and the
candidate is shown to the door.

D) Develop a logical flow of instruction for any task that you know how to do . Assume your trainees
know nothing about the process. Under this condition, is it difficult to avoid jargon?