PROJECT 2: PROFESSIONAL TRAINER INTERVIEW

Professional Trainer
Student’s NameInstitutional Affiliation

Introduction
My name is John Peter, the C.E.O. of Mealtime Company. Mealtime is a technological company which connects consumers to a different restaurant. The firm has created an app and a website which allow the consumers to connect to the restaurant. It has six employees so far. Three of them are salespeople, two are developers, while the remaining employee is the company’s customer care. Mealtime Firm has been in the business for 8 months, and it wants its business to grow to another level. The customers at this time are restaurants. The main problem comes from the sales side because the company is unable to get as many restaurants as it had projected. For this reason, the firm contacted Jeff Mathews, the executive director of GATE Company, to help me and my sales team develop sales skills. He has been my mentor since I started this company. I have watched him train people in TVs. He has a website where he writes his blogs on sales whose link is https://www.hormelfoods.com/, and telephone number is +18005234635.
Interview
I had a phone interview with him, and this is how it went down.
Me: How long have you been a trainer?
Jeff: Well, I have been training for the past five years.
Me: How did you become a trainer?
Jeff: When I opened my company, I had no money to hire salespeople to drive sales in my company and so I used to do the sales and marketing on my own while my partner handles the accounting part.

I won’t say I was an expert in that sector, but I developed a passion for it because it was the only way I could have made my company grow. I pushed myself to the wall and did something that up to now I can’t imagine I was able to do. In less than two years, I was able to take my company to the level that many startup companies take five years or more to reach. I was also patient with my goals. I organized myself well, put a target for each day and aimed at hitting the target. Sometimes I had unsuccessful business days. After several successful sales deals, my company became well known. We employed several salespeople, and I started by training them and showing them the steps I followed to make the company grow. Later, I trained several startups, and my work was appreciated everywhere I went. Since then, I have traveled to different countries to train business people on sales.
Me: What education and certification are needed to become a trainer in your field?
Jeff: Unlike most of the fields that require documents and qualification, sales don’t need those at all. One should understand that the best salespeople are not produced in school but in the field and by training. Most of the best salespeople are naturally talented, and some developed the skills because they had the passion for it.
Me: What are your responsibilities? Who do you train? In what areas/ skills?
Jeff: My responsibility as a trainer is to give skills to the people who have the passion for selling. Am telling you if you are a serious sales person and you have undergone through my training, then believe me you are on another level. I do train employees, and individuals from different business sectors about sales and marketing and I do enjoy doing that especially to those who are eager to listen and learn. The skills which people need are to identify the right client and the right environment, to learn how to approach a client, how to handles rejection and the easiest way to close a business. Once you familiarize yourself with these areas, then you are good to go.
Me: How do you deliver training? Face-to-face? Online?
Jeff: I train both face-to-face and online. When I do face-to-face training, sometimes I don’t get the time to answer all questions. So I tell the trainee to post their questions on my website or send the questions to my email. I also have a YouTube channel where I frequently post videos about sales that are essential to salespeople. Through YouTube, I answer some of the questions that are easily understood on videos rather than on blogs.
Me: What’s the best way to handle a client?
Jeff: Clients are the most unpredictable people, and they are difficult to understand. When you are presenting to a client, talk less. Let the client talk more and by this way, you will able to know there needs. This approach will make it easier to close them since you know what they need. You achieve this by asking them a lot of questions. If you talk more, the client might not understand everything you are saying and they might get a chance to figure out an excuse to push you away CITATION Zol08 l 1033 (Zoltners, 2008).
Me: What advice do you give those who want to indulge in sales business?
Jeff: In any business, you want to get yourself into, you should develop interest and passion. These are fundamental, and if you don’t have them, then you will lose hope when you are faced with challenges. You should learn that when you overcome a problem, then it’s an opportunity for you to win and go to the next level.
Conclusion
In conclusion, people succeed in business because they are passionate about it. Most individuals fail because they do business just for the sake and not because of their interest. Notably, a company takes time to grow, and sales skills are essential for taking a business to the next level. In this case, the trainer took time to make his business rise to the level that he wanted it to be. From his speech, one can tell that he knows what he is doing which reduces the level of laxity while selling. Sales and marketing is a good job that can take an individual to places just like what it has been doing to the trainer. From what I have learned from the interview, it is evident that passion builds a great business. As a professional trainer, it is important to identify the areas of weaknesses among trainees, their potential, and existing skills. It is at this point that an individual can identify the areas that need training and the duration required to complete the training successfully. Therefore, I am going to apply this to my company and train my employees on that. This interview is inspiring, and I am going to take this to the other people who also want to develop skills in sales because this is the sector that makes businesses grow.

Reference
Zoltners, A. A. (2008). Sales force effectiveness: A framework for researchers and practitioners. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 28(2), 115-131.