Sales People: You Really Can't Sell "Anything"

This comes up a lot when we work on high level sales positions. Normally I like to source through my network, work for referrals (I am currently 7 referrals deep with some of these people) and sniff out people from competitors.

Well, last week we got a very urgent search directly from the CEO of a hardware company. I wrote the job description and because our time table is so constrained, I put it on a couple of job boards.

In a nutshell, we need a VP of sales who knows computer hardware and how to sell through retail channels. The job is here in Austin - you either need to live here or move here.

Despite the clear description of the product line and the type of sales and the level of the position, I have received over 100 resumes and not a single one of them has been qualified enough to present to our client. I have people selling everything from diesel engines to time shares to paper bags to bathroom fans and everything in between. I have called a few of them - partly out of courtesy and partly out of curiosity and one or two because I thought their resume might just be unclear.

The response I get is almost universal: "How hard can it be? I can sell anything!". Whether it is true or not, it is not a credible statement.

I realize this post is in danger of becoming a rant. I do think it is important for people looking for a job to understand how they present themselves. Telling a recruiter you can "sell anything" completely misses the point that it does not matter what you think - it matters what the hiring manager thinks. Hiring a truck sales person to sell your line of new fangled nano blade servers is paramount to career suicide.

When I talk to people who are qualified to do the work, they ask questions. They consider and they muse. Pretty soon, I start selling them (just a little). They resist. They are currently successful and a move is always risky - the wrong move could set their career back by years and cost them hundreds of thousands in lost income. Most of them take the graceful way out and refer someone. I walk away impressed and the search continues.