interview
Business Interview M & W Building Supply is a company that is involved in the manufacturing, wholesale and retail of pole barns. They mostly do business with contractors, however, from time to time they do personal requests and that is where the retail portion of their business comes into play. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to interview the company’s President as well as Business owner, Jim Betonte. I met with him on Tuesday, June 1, 2004 at 1:00pm at his company’s establishment, which is located in Canby, Oregon. Following high school graduation, Jim attended Ohio University, where he received a Business Degree as well as a Teaching Certificate in Business. With these academic achievements Mr. Betonte went on to build his own company from the ground up, which is known as M & W Building Supply as stated before. Jim has been in the business market for many years and had a lot of valuable and knowledgeable information to share with me. There are many traits and characteristics that are needed in the Sales and Marketing industry. I asked Jim what he felt were the three major personal traits needed in Sales. He followed up that question with some great feedback. Self confidence is a trait he believes is most important in the industry in order to succeed, followed by knowledge of your product and the gift to communicate. I then asked Jim in his opinion what are the three major professional traits needed to be a good sales person in the industry. He immediately went into the self confidence factor, feeling he couldn’t stress it enough on how truly important that characteristic is. In his opinion confidence is everything; you need to be confident in yourself and your selling abilities, as well as in your company and the product they are producing. In fact he stated, “self confidence in being an entrepreneur is, believe in yourself and it will happen.” The second attribute he expressed, that he felt goes hand in hand with confidence, is determination. You must have the determination in order to have the drive to remain on task so you don’t remain on the bottom of the totem pole forever. It is another key to success because if you look at the statistics 1 of every 800 companies that are started each year actually make it through their first year and on to a more successful position in the industry. Although Jim knows that education in business is very important, he believes that the third professional trait is practical experience. We learn from our mistakes, and what better way of gaining knowledge than having the opportunity to have hands on experience to grow as an individual as well as a salesperson.