Leading Growth

9People

YOUR RESULTS WILL never exceed your sales force's effectiveness. Here we confront the age-old question: Are good salespeople born or made? The answer is yes, some salespeople are born with certain attributes that make selling something natural to them. And yes, salespeople are also made—by training, coaching, and lots of hard work—and succeed even without the indefinable je ne sais quoi of sales acumen.

When I was 19, I had a job in my family's staffing business, interviewing candidates for light industrial positions in warehouses, manufacturing plants, and other positions that required manual labor. Some days I interviewed 15 or 20 people. Later, after I transferred to a larger company in Los Angeles, I interviewed as many as 40 people in a day. Over the five years I did that job, I probably interviewed over ten thousand people.

To be fair, these were not overly long interviews, but I still developed a sense about who would do well and who would not even show up for their assignment. One day, the intimidating senior vice president of my company, Peter Margarita, watched me walk back and forth in front of the conference room where he was meeting with his branch managers. Noticing how fast I was interviewing people, he called me into the room to question me about why I wasn't using the company's approved process.

I explained that I was being courteous by doing quick interviews with some candidates, knowing I wouldn't be able to help them, so I could spend more time with ...