Pardon the…Making – not getting…

Pardon the…Interruption

Whether it’s a team sales call or you’re flying solo, sometimes it can seem like the prospect has an arraigned interruption that’s perfectly timed to disrupt the rhythm of your presentation.

What’s even worse? The situation where the interruption is beyond irritating. Maybe it’s a phone call from his line chef who just quit. Or perhaps the Chef just barged in to angrily announce that the center of the plate item for that night’s menu special wasn’t included in the morning delivery.

Here’s the trap: Being a sympathetic soul, your natural tendency is to commiserate with him. Do that and your pitch is dead because instead of redirecting the conversation back to your idea, you just amplified his angst!

There’s the better idea for dealing with just about any interruption – whether it’s serious or just annoying: Critically, first you absolutely freeze during the interruption and find something on the wall that you can stare at while it goes on. Then when it’s over you look back at him and attempt to resurrect the disturbed mood with, “As I was saying this idea will….”.

Of course if the interruption was really in the catastrophic category, you’ll bow out and let him know that you don’t want to interfere with whatever he has to do dealing with the crisis. But if it’s not in that truly serious category – and you do take those two steps, you at least have a fighting chance of getting the sale back on track.

Making – not getting…That reference call

We all know that checking references before making that hiring decision is pretty important, but we kind of dread doing it. First there’s the difficulty of getting the right person on the other end of that call – by that we mean the person who actually supervised him. The HR department isn’t the place to get that information.

But even if that’s all you have at least it’ll let you verify the employment information he provided. Of course if you’re talking to his direct supervisor, he may be warry of giving you anything more than that the HR department would have. But just maybe if you preface your request with the strong assurance that anything said will never be repeated, just maybe he’ll open up.

And even in the absence of him being less than forthcoming, there may still be a way to garner something of real value. And that’s by explaining the job for which you’re considering his former employee and asking him if he thinks that position would be a good fit for him.

You could preface that question with, “I’d hate to put Jim in a position where he wouldn’t succeed. So your opinion about the matchup of his skills to it would really help”. If he’s willing to offer an opinion (either way) you can ask why he thinks that’s the case. And even if he doesn’t, you’ll have another piece of the puzzle to help guide you.