I am the worst comedy movie critic you’ll ever meet — ask my wife, Leah. These days most comedies are about high school sex or marital infidelity. I usually get up from the couch or walk out of the theater in the first 20 minutes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not prudish; I just think common culture is, well, so common and low class these days.
But as a sales guy, the movie, “The Internship” teaches us a valuable lesson about what makes the “Sales Personality Style” critical. And, given that Google had a hand in the movie it shows even the great and mighty Google is fairly clueless about what makes salespeople critical in growing sales.
The plot of the movie is that two sales guys get blown out when their company closes down. In the course of figuring out their next move, the character played by Vince Vaughn has an insight that he wants to go work at Google. This is an important characteristic of the Sales Personality Style.
The Sales Personality Style has the ability to comfortably imagine far-fetched scenarios. This is not to be overlooked when you go about staffing your sales team — and is the first and foremost reason why you need to make sure you’re only bringing Sales Personality Styles in to be interviewed.
When they are interviewed it is by video. This is a concept we’ve encouraged our clients to implement. Interviewing by video is simple these days. As a Founder and CEO I work with software developers. Given the size of our company — and since most developers are located remotely from my two offices in Norfolk or Nahariya, I use video interviews.
Video interviews are efficient and can give you 90% of what an in-person interview gives. Today with Google Hangouts or Skype you can get more done in less time. Perhaps for the last interview you’ll want to make it face to face.
In the movie, where the two 50 something sales guys are in way over their head in Google’s core business, which is coding and developing software, they shine when it comes to people. Salespeople, as it turns out, even at the great and mighty $48 Billion a year Google are invaluable when it comes down to what makes Google great — revenue generation.
Haven’t seen the movie, so I’m interested in your comment here, “Google is fairly clueless about what makes salespeople critical in growing sales.” What do you mean by that? You mention Google had a hand in making the movie. If they contributed did they intentionally wish to give that message?
Hey Doug, according to GeekSugar.com Google had a hand in the movie, although they did not have any right to the final cuts. The movie conveyed the sense that Google realized the value of the human touch. GeekSugar said, “Trying to reach a human being at Google is well-nigh impossible, and deliberately so. That kind of customer service just doesn’t scale.”
Regarding “Google is fairly clueless on what makes salespeople critical”, let me be a bit long-winded.
As readers of this Blog know, I am enrolled in a Northwestern University Department of Journalism course “Google and the Media.” I’m back in college and am reading a lot about what makes Google tick. I certainly respect a company that generates $46 Billion. Yet, what I’ve found is they really just leach off the work of companies that have to pay to create content. There have been numerous lawsuits against their leaching, but with $46 Billion they buy a lot of influence and legal protection.
There is a growing question, for example, on how GoogleNews, which provides fresh up-to-the-minute news content without any reporters on the payroll, will survive. Why? Because it is simply leaching the content of newspapers. These newspapers pay reporters to find the news and report on it. And as ad revenue becomes slimmer and slimmer for these newspapers due to the competition from Google, where will Google get enough content for free?
They have a history of buying companies who have sales teams. They incorporate the product into their inventory of items for sale via their web interface algorithm-driven sales page. Then, they fire the sales team. They’ve done this in two companies that I have personal knowledge: travel and auto advertising.
Finally, you were in radio sales, Doug. What do you know about Google’s sales teams?????? They’re kind of big right? Why don’t you know about their sales team? Because they basically don’t have one, nor do they see the need for one.