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Of all the positions LearnInMotion had to fill, none were more pressing-or problematic-than those of the company’s salespeople. The job was pressing because the clock was already ticking on the company’s funds. The firm was already paying over $5,000 a month in rent and had signed obligations for a wide range of other expenses, including monthly computer payments to Compaq [$2,000 a month] , a phone system [$800 a month] ,a burglar alarm [$200 a month] , advertising [required by their venture capital fund, and equal to $4,000 a month], their own salaries [$10,000 a month], high-speed DSL lines [ $400 a month], and the services of a consulting programmer [$4,000 a month]. As a result, even “doing nothing” they were burning through almost $40,000 per month. They had to have a sales force. However, hiring good salespeople was becoming increasingly difficult. Hiring people like this should have been fairly straightforward: LearnInMation’s salespeople have to sell to basically two types of customers. They have to try to get potential customers to purchase banner space or button space on LearnInMotion’s various Web site pages. To make this easier, Jennifer and Mel had prepared an online media kit. It describes the Web site metrics-for instance, in terms of monthly page views, and in terms of typical user metrics such as reported age and income level. In addition to selling banner ads, salespeople also have to try to get the companies that actually produce and make available educational CD-ROMs and courses to make those courses and programs available through LearnInMotion.com. None of these are “big-ticket” sales: Because the site is new and small, they can’t really charge advertisers based on the number of users who click on their ads, so they simply charge a quarterly fee of $1,500 to list courses, or place ads. Content providers also have to agree to split any sales 50-50 with LearnInMotion. The Web surfer and office manager spend part of their time scouring the Web to identify specific people as potential customers. The salespeople then contact these people, “take them though” the Web site to show its advantages and functions, and answer the potential customer’s questions. This sales job, in other words, was fairly typical, so it shouldn’t have been so difficult to fill, but difficult it was. Perhaps it was because it was a dot-com, or perhaps they just weren’t offering enough compensation; whatever it was, the two owners were finding it extremely difficult to hire one, let alone two, good salesperson. Perhaps the biggest problem here was deciding which of the personable candidates who showed up actually had sales potential. Jennifer and Mel did learn a couple of interesting things about interviewing sales candidates. For example, when they asked the first what his average monthly sales had been in the past 6 months at his former employer, he answered, “Oh I got the award for highest sales last month.” That seemed great to Mel, unit later Jennifer pointed out to him that that answer really didn’t answer their question. Things got even “weirder”-to use Mel’s term-when five out of six of the next sales candidates gave more or less the same answer: “I was the top produce”; “I was one of the top three producers”; “They sent me to Las Vegas for being the top sales producer”; and so on . Getting applicants to actually divulge, specifically, what their average monthly sales had been in the past 6 months was, as they say, like pulling teeth. Given that fact, and the relatively few sales candidates they have had, it has become increasingly obvious to the owners that basing their hiring decision solely on the person’s experience is not going to work. In other words, they have to some way to ascertain whether the candidate has sales potential, and whether he or she has the cognitive aptitude to discuss LearnInMotion’s services with what were, in fact, quite sophisticated customers. They want you, their management consultants, to help them. Here’s what they want you to do for them
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