By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
This is really “Tell me about a time when you failed” in disguise.
You Don’t Have a Lot of Experience With . . .
This is a behavioral interview question that would obviously be asked of a salesperson but variations of this are asked of people in the c-suite or a manager level and above to talk about situations where failure occurred because this is really what the questions is about.
Tell me about a time you failed.
Now the key thing to always to remember is that the goal is not to blame others for the failure, even if. it was a part of why it failed because, ultimately, you’re responsible.
As a sales person as someone in the C-suite, it is really hard to admit that you had a part in the failure. So, understand, what firms are looking for is dissecting and doing the post-mortem of the mistakes that occurred on the sale.
So, you can start by saying, “look, I want to be very clinical about this and break down exactly how the mistake occurred.” Then, you kind of go through the sales situation. One of my favorite things, especially with salespeople, is to point out reflection.
“And, you know, one of the things I made the mistake of doing,” and you get you soften your voice and you think theatrically and put together the situation in a way where you say, “You know, one of the things that happened here is that. . . . I believed the client when they talked to me about their pain points and what their issue was and I shortcut my process because, you know, frankly I believed what they had to say, but there was a secondary issue that was almost as important as the first that I missed. As a result, another firm was able to beat me on the deal.”
“You know, it was a terrible mistake on my part. You know, there’s just something where I felt connected to the interviewer or to the client. I thought they were giving me everything I needed and I have learned from this to go through my process of Investigation no matter what. And I can make jokes about it where I’ll say, ” Hey look, you’re very clear about what you want but just bear with me a little bit because, sometimes, there are secondary things I just want to make sure I address those issues as well that our product or service can satisfy, too. I don’t want you having any doubt about our ability. “
So, it’s always about you and the mistake you made and if you want to sales leadership role, it’s not about the junior staffer and the screw up that they made. It’s about not giving them the resources, not managing them effectively so they don’t take shortcuts. Not inspiring them sufficiently to hit their numbers. You get the idea of where I’m coming from with this
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