Selling 9th Edition by Stephen Castleberry,John Tanner

Exercise 12

At 8:45 a.m., Mandy Baker arrived at her campus placement center for a 9:00 interview. She was surprised to be greeted by Caleb Washington, whom she had known in a marketing class. This conversation followed:
CALEB: Mandy, good to see you! I see that you are interviewing with us today. [shakes Mandy's hand and offers her a chair in the lobby]
MANDY: Caleb! Hi, how are you? I didn't know you were with HealthSouth. I've got the 9:00 spot.
CALEB: Great! I started with HealthSouth right after graduation, and it has been a great six months. Tell me, are you interviewing with many medical firms or just with HealthSouth?
MANDY: I'm very interested in pharmaceuticals, but I know that HealthSouth is doing real well. So I thought that I should consider all medical companies. One of the physicians at a sports medicine center recommended HealthSouth. She said that your company does a lot of the rehabilitation services for the NFL as well as here at the university.
CALEB: That's right, we do! I'm glad to hear that others agree we are one of the best. [leans a little closer] Look, just relax in the interview. HealthSouth really likes to get people from State, and I'm sure you will do well. [looks up at the entrance of an older woman] Oh, here's Erin Rogers, my sales manager. She'll be interviewing you today. Erin, here's an old friend of mine, Mandy Baker.
ERIN: [stepping forward and offering her hand]: Mandy, it's nice to meet you.
MANDY: [shaking her hand firmly]: It's nice to meet you, too, Ms. Rogers. [turning to Caleb] Caleb, it was good to see you again. Perhaps we'll talk some more later. [Mandy and Erin seat themselves in the interviewing room; Erin has her iPad open with a small keyboard]
ERIN: Tell me about yourself, Mandy.
MANDY: I'm the oldest of three children, and we were raised in a small town in the eastern part of the state. As a kid, I was very interested in soccer and wanted to be an Olympic soccer player. But an ankle injury ended my soccer career. Still, I learned a lot about self-discipline and the importance of hard work to achieve success, and I am still involved in soccer as a coach for a youth team. In fact, I rehabbed my ankle at a HealthSouth center. Anyway, I chose State because it offers a strong marketing program. Marketing, and sales especially, seems to me to be a place where your success is directly related to your efforts. And I believe that more strongly now that I have taken the sales class here at State.
ERIN [types "h"]: I see. [momentary silence as she finishes the notes, then looks up] Tell me about a time when you were the leader of a group and things were not going your way. Perhaps it looked as if the group wasn't going to meet your objectives. What did you do?
MANDY: Let's see. There was the time when we were working on a group project for my marketing research class. Understand, though, that we had not elected a formal leader or anything. But no one in the group really wanted to do the project; everyone thought that research was boring. So at a group meeting, I suggested we talk about what we liked to do in marketing. After all, we were all marketing majors. Each person talked about why he or she had chosen marketing. Then I framed the project around what they wanted out of marketing. When they looked at it as a marketing project instead of a research project, it became something they wanted to do.
ERIN: Did you get an A?
MANDY: No, we got a B+. But more important, we were the only group that had fun, and I think we learned more as a result.
ERIN: I see. [momentary silence as she types] Tell me about your sales class-have you had any opportunity to use what you learned, and, if so, how'd you do?
MANDY: You mean other than this interview? [Erin smiles] I found that I use the questioning skills to learn about potential sorority members. These skills really helped me understand what they wanted in a sorority and whether we were a good fit. And the presentation skills I use with every in-class presentation, but I've not had a sales job, if that's what you mean.
The interview went on for nearly 30 minutes. Mandy thought she had done fairly well. She stopped in the lobby to write down her impressions and record Erin's answers to questions about the company. She smiled at Caleb, who was talking to another applicant.
What did Mandy do right? Why was that right? What did she do wrong? Why was that wrong?