Mark Forchette walked into a campus interview at Auburn with no sales experience but genuine enthusiasm for Armour Dial's products. When asked how well he knew the brand, he described his daily lunch of Armour Vienna sausage, saltine crackers, and Miller Lite beer so vividly that the interviewer hired him on the spot. Passion, he learned, beats credentials.
Chapters
You must have passion. Now, for this lesson, I'm going to go back to when I was interviewing on campus at Auburn, and every week companies came in and they'd put their names up and you'd see who you want to interview, sign up. And I saw this company, Armor Dial. This was, you know, in the early 19 armor dial. Wow. I love their products. I want to interview. So I signed up and I went into the interview and shook the guy's hand. I sat down and he started asking me the usual questions. In about midway through, he said, how much do you know about our company? And I said, are you kidding? I love your products. I use them every single day. And he said, really? How is that? And I said, well, every day that I've been a senior here at Auburn, for lunch, my lunch has been a can of Armour Vienna, six saltine crackers and a Miller Lite. And he kind of laughed and he said, you mean you really eat this stuff? And I said, not only that, I absolutely love it. I would love to sell your product. Now, I knew nothing about sales at that time, absolutely nothing. But I had a lot of passion for Vienna sausage and beer. And so that passion got me my job. That was a really big lesson for me when I learned that. And that enthusiasm has a big role.
