Speaker B tackles the classic interview question by asking discovery questions to uncover a pain point: the interviewee loses pens constantly. Christian Polk coaches throughout, breaking down the sales approach and flagging when Speaker B veers off-script to pitch an unrelated product instead of staying focused on selling the pen.
So, uh, can you sell me this pen?
Yeah, of course. But before I do, can I ask you a couple of quick questions?
Yeah, sure.
When was the last time you used a pen?
Um, well, it was actually this morning. I was signing some documents.
Perfect. And what happened to it? Did you still have it?
Uh, to be honest, I'm not really sure. I think I left it somewhere, or maybe someone took it.
Right. So you needed a pen this morning, and you used it, and now it's gone. How often does that happen to you?
So she's doing a really good job of asking questions to find a need, like widen the gap in their mind of how important a pen is to him.
Honestly, all the time. And yeah, I'm pretty bad with pens. I lose them constantly.
And when you can't find one, what do you usually do?
Yeah, I just ask someone to borrow one, or I just run to the shop and buy one.
Okay, so it's fair to say this is something that happens pretty regularly and ends up wasting your time.
Yeah, I mean, I guess it does.
Well, you know what? I'm the same. I hate doing things the long way. It's been like that when I was applying for jobs and I've used Sprout to just auto-apply with tailored resumes and cover letters instead of doing everything manually.
Holy fucking product placement. What was that? Why are you inserting your product placement when you're pitching a pin? I don't even wanna react to the rest of that one. That would totally caught me off guard. What she does well is she's very like calm, collected. She's asking questions to understand like what's even going on. Now, what she can improve on is the tone. If you notice, it's fairly monotone throughout. The questions sound the exact same every single time. And what this can lead to is the attention not really being there. It's gonna be harder for somebody to focus when you just talk like this. Number one. Number two, if everything sounds the same, then there's no importance to any particular thing that you're saying. Just notice how I said that sentence. Any particular thing, right? I'm adding emphasis to certain words so you understand what to listen to. So tone is super key. It's not the most important thing, but it's a key. And if you don't have it, it can be pretty painful.
