Andrew Rudin

Can I have your order?

Dumb question, if you're asking it just before shaking hands with a prospect for the first time. But questions aren’t dumb. Poor timing, improper context, and wrong intent make them seem dumb.

Asking for an order before taking any time to establish trust and rapport, let alone to even learn about a prospect's challenge, will surely generate reactions--none of them good. But at a more opportune moment, the same interrogative becomes a Super Sales Question.

As Jeffrey Gitomer wrote in a recent blog, “Salespeople become known by the questions they ask.” How do they avoid embarrassment?

Answer: it's not easy. The most innocuous questions can be branded as dumb. One blog, titled The Top 10 Dumb Sales Questions During a Bad...

At a steamy open-air market, a young street vendor pushes a heavy wooden cart weighted down with forty 12-inch blocks of ice. He urgently calls out to others to buy his inventory before it melts into worthless water. A scene from a Charles Dickens novel?

No. Actually, I saw it just last week in Hyderabad, India. “He sells the ice to the other vendors,” my driver told me. “It’s how they keep everything cold.”

We have kept things cold that way for generations. Wouldn’t you think that somewhere in Korea, Samsung has a team of engineers feverishly working on a mini-fridge for him to sell? I wouldn’t bet on that happening anytime soon. I predict the ice block vendor will continue to need his ice tongs.

India has rich examples of old—even ancient—technology working alongside the new. Ice refrigeration in place of electric freezers. Human-powered rickshaws next to motorized ones. Manually cranked sugar-cane mills next to machines that are power-driven....

Some customers are notorious for beating up on unprepared salespeople. So if you want to know whether a sales candidate has enough mojo to handle the abuse, inject a dose of stress into the job interview. “Particularly in the first interview, your strategy should be to make the candidate uncomfortable,” one blog advises. Top-performers don’t perspire, get tongue-tied, or act weird when the heat is turned up.

You could put a thumbtack on the candidate’s chair, if it weren’t a waste of a perfectly useful thumbtack. You see, when we’re waiting at our desk for our 1:00 pm interviewee, it’s easy to forget that he or she left a colicky baby at home with a frazzled spouse because the nanny didn’t show up, just learned a close relative was diagnosed with cancer, and...

Everyone loved the sales candidate you want to hire. He had a great resume, and was so money-motivated, he made Scott Boras look like a pushover. With a jawline like cut granite, and sideburns white as the driven snow, he could double for Mitt Romney. He had everyone at “hello.” Make him an offer quickly, before your competitor snatches him away.

Not so fast! Your HR director told you she just discovered a crude rant on his personal blog, along with some zesty photos that would make his mom blush. Hire him, regardless?

Some people would have little compunction, according to a conversation on Focus (...