If you're in sales, and just accepted a new job, you may recognize the feeling: About two weeks after starting, you begin to doubt your decision. You detect a gap between what the hiring manager told you and what's actually happening. And it keeps getting wider. You hear yourself saying, "I think I made a mistake," after being on the job for only a month.

When it comes to selecting the right job, salespeople seem to be more prone to making mistakes than other professionals. Since it's their business to stress the positive and minimize the negative, it's possible they apply this approach when evaluating openings. Or perhaps salespeople are good customers who respond to a solid sales pitch. Even though they know they're being fed a story, they may be swayed more easily than those outside the profession.

Fortunately, you can take these steps to avoid accepting the wrong job. Start by asking yourself and others, including the sales manager, these 10 questions.

You're the only person who can answer this question. Addressing this issue is important because sales managers often are known for their well-developed, and sometimes oversized, egos. If the person you'll be reporting to makes you feel uncomfortable or inferior during the initial interview, just imagine how you'll feel once you're on the job. Is it realistic to think it will be different in a month or a year? If you're uncomfortable at the start, it isn't going to change.

"I once was in an interview with a person who took what she said was her fifth migraine tablet for the day," says Thomas Hartman, regional vice president of strategic sales at DoubleClick Inc., an Internet advertising service provider based in New York. "It clearly was a signal that I really didn't want to work there."

The best way out of this situation is to tell the sales manager that you appreciate the offer but you're not ready for "such an outstanding opportunity." You can smooth over any ruffled feathers by saying you need to learn a lot more before you're prepared to take on this level of responsibility.

2. Can I learn more about you?

Express interest in the sales manager and ask to see his or her resume. This isn't pushing the envelope because the manager will be so impressed by your personal interest the resume will almost jump out of the file.

Look for the manager's employment track record. If the resume reveals a lot of job hopping, hand it back quickly with the biggest smile you can muster. Then get out the door as fast as you can. This manager is probably unstable and ineffective or doesn't know what he or she is doing.

This may be one of your most important questions. If the answer is indefinite, garbled or at all unclear, you can be sure there's just one way you're going to get your leads: on your own.

If you want to spend all your time trying to figure out where your next prospect is coming from, that's fine. Take the job. But you'll never get very far because your time will be spent prospecting, not selling.

If you see yourself as a professional salesperson, never take a sales position unless there's a well-defined, continuous lead-generation program. It's the company's job to market its products or services in ways that produce prospects. If not, you'll become a canvasser, not a salesperson. Don't fall for the story that the company has "a great new business development program in the works." It doesn't.

What should you look for in the sales manager's office? If you see a "sales scoreboard" on the wall, get out fast. This company isn't interested in developing customers, it wants to push product to meet quotas. Your only value will be in terms of where you stand in the weekly, monthly or quarterly ratings. If you're at the top, you're great. If you're at the bottom, you're gone. What you do to retain customers, grow accounts doesn't count.

Ask to see the company's sales materials. The interviewer will be impressed with your interest, but your objective is far more important: to learn the company's attitude toward marketing.

If the promotional materials are customer-focused you can be confident the company is committed to understanding and fulfilling the needs of those it serves. If the brochures are company-centered, publicizing the wonders of the firm and its position in the field, head straight for the elevator and push "down." You don't want to work for a company unable to see beyond its owns interests.

6. When are the slow times?

This question dramatizes your grasp of how a company operates. Because the question catches the sales manager off-guard, you'll get a straight answer.

Assume the answer is "May and June are never very good. And we just write off November and December." This seemingly innocent piece of corporate intelligence reveals far more than the company's "slow times" of the year.

You also have learned down periods are an entrenched tradition around the place. Everyone has come to accept sales during one-third of the year are going to be lousy. You might guess the employees have come to look forward to these peaceful, quiet days of spring and fall.

But you also know no one has ever thought of developing a marketing program to change this pattern. Remember, when sales enter a valley, someone's eventually going to have to scale the mountain--without a rope (other than the one around your neck).

7. May I go with you on a sales call?

This question shows you're willing to take time and go along on a sales call to get a better feel for the operation. You have a deeper objective, though.

Once you're in the customer's office, listen for what can be called the "90-10 test." It's simple. During the call, the customer should do 90% of the talking and the salesperson 10%. If the sales rep's mouth is open most of the time, this is probably a product-pushing sales organization, not one that values customer relationships. If so, don't bother going any further. Bail out now.

The head of direct marketing at a New York-based firm says she wants to hear first-hand what type of rejections salespeople at her prospective employer receive. She needs to satisfy an internal question: "Is this going to be as easy a sale as they're telling me?"

Your objective is to discover if this is a price-driven sales operation.

What's the sales manager's philosophy? Is price all that sets the company apart from its competition? Will you lose orders if you don't have the lowest price? If that's it, this isn't the company for you. The only way you'll keep a customer is to push prices down as low as possible--and then some. Your customers won't see you as a competent professional but simply as someone to threaten and intimidate. If you don't have the right price, you'll lose.

When you're waiting with the sales manager to meet a senior-level executive, quietly ask what the manager can teach you.

Since sales managers tend to be made from the same mold, your flattering question may trigger something like: "Hey, you're OK. If you come with us, I'll teach you every trick in the book and then some. I'll make you great." What an offer.

But without realizing it, the sales manager has revealed that clever techniques and tricks are what make sales. "It's all a matter of orchestrating the customer," the manager whispers. "I'll show you how to do it."

At this point, announce your mother is very sick and you must return to your home in the Fiji Islands immediately. You'll call him in a month or so.

10. May I visit your marketing department?

If someone directs you down the hall and says, "Turn to your right and it's the second door on your left just beyond the restrooms," you'll know that the marketing department is the closet where sales literature is stored.

If the answer is, "You've already met Judy, haven't you? You know, our receptionist. She sends out requests for information. She does a good job although she can be a little slow at getting our work done," then you've discovered this company doesn't understand or value marketing. At this point, don't delay your escape. Just get away as quickly as possible because this outfit is hopeless.

"The first thing I look for is the energy level. Salespeople work best if the energy level is high," says Mr. Hartman, a former director of advertising for Vogue magazine. When he interviewed for his current job, the office door was left open, and he was immediately scheduled to meet other executives in sales and other departments. These cues were meaningful to him. "I realized the environment wasn't about secrets. It was about communication," he says.

The answers to these questions will give you the information you need to make an informed decision about working in a company's sales department. Selling should be demanding and challenging, not painful and abusive. Ask the right questions and you'll find yourself in the right place to be successful.

--John R. Graham is president of Graham Communications, a marketing services and sales consulting firm in Quincy, Mass., and author of "203 Ways To Be Supremely Successful In The New World Of Selling" (1996, Macmillan Spectrum).