What would you do in this situation?

There’s a story in sales job hunting folklore where the smugly smiling interviewer plucks out a pen from his jacket pocket and say, “Sell me this pen”. What would you say? Here are the options I came up with:

• Wind up the interview and walk out (on the basis that if you get the job you will be working for crappy management with an old school approach)
• Sell it “consultatively” – Establish their situation, identify pains, etc (“How do you currently record information? How would you like to change your current situation if you could?” etc ). This could be an exceptionally difficult sell… it’s likely to be a highly undifferentiated product and if the interviewer decides to make life difficult for you are really in trouble!

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