From the course: Interview Tips for Sales Professionals

Sample role play and feedback

From the course: Interview Tips for Sales Professionals

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Sample role play and feedback

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- Angry customers are never fun to encounter, but certainly something that all sales people will run into from time to time. When you're going after a sales job, your interviewer will likely want to know how you diffuse the situation when a customer gets upset. You might even be asked to participate in a role play where your interviewer plays the angry customer so she can see how you roll when the heat is on. In fact, let's do one so you can get a feel for what you might expect. I'm going to be the angry customer in this example. So pretend that I'm the head of operations for a food manufacturer, and I've just learned that a big piece of equipment that we bought from Susanna's company is slowing down my entire manufacturing line. I'm on fire over it, and I've just showed up at her office to discuss. Take a look. Susanna, we have a real problem here. - Oh, goodness Jenny, I'm sorry to hear that. Can you tell me what's going on? - Our vacuum packing equipment, it is malfunctioning again, and it's making every bit of our production line slow down. This is costing us thousands of dollars and I need somebody on your team to get this back up and running or I'm going to take every one of your machines out of every one of our production facilities. - I absolutely understand your urgency, Jenny, and let me get some more details on exactly what's malfunctioning so I can share that information with Dwayne Rogers. He's our sales tech manager and we will get a team out there to take care of that as soon as possible. Can I get a few more specifics? - The vacuum pump is making this loud nose like eee and we're ending up with all kinds of air bubbles in all of our products so we're having to scrap a whole bunch. It's a mess. - Definitely sounds like a timely manner, and I will make fixing this my highest priority. - You know what, if you're thinking about sending that same tech that you sent the last time, think again. That guy didn't know a vacuum pump from a vacuum cleaner. - I completely understand your frustration, Jenny. I'm so sorry this is happening, and I will take care of this for you right away. So let me get this information to Dwayne, and we will send out our most experienced technician, and we'll take care of that. Also, Jenny, once we take care of this initial situation, I would love to send out our director of engineering and our installation manager to the site just to prevent this from every happening again. - That would be great. - So you'd be open to chatting about this once the dust settles? - Yeah, I would appreciate that. This was a perfect example of how a sales professional could and should handle themselves when confronted by an angry customer. I was really hard on her, and she did a great job. She didn't get defensive, she didn't interrupt, even though it's never fun to get yelled at. She also demonstrated accountability and empathy and offered to pretty much drop everything to fix the situation as fast as she could. I also liked that she said she'd be right back in touch with me. This goes a long way with a customer who's already really stressed about the impact that this issue is having on the company's bottom line. Finally, I noticed that Susanna used my name several times in that short conversation. She may not have realized she was doing it, but that was a good move. People feel heard when you use their name when you speak to them So as you interview for your next sales role, keep these techniques in mind, and assuming that your similarly skilled in handling angry customers, be ready to share both your formula and examples with your interviewing team.

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