8 Sales Interview Questions
8 Sales Interview Questions
Sales professionals are the first point of contact between your business and your customers, and a good impression is crucial in starting the buyer’s journey to close a sale. Asking the right sales questions will influence your company’s profit in the long run. They need above-average communication skills allowing them to explain complex information about a product in layman’s terms to prospective customers. Phone, video, or face-to-face interviews are crucial in the recruitment process.
Interview questions for sales managers and executives
See whether the jobseeker for managerial sales roles can delegate tasks, manage conflict, and motivate people to excel on your team. You can assess their leadership skills by asking questions about how they deal with failure and difficult colleagues and clients, as well as their knowledge of sales software and processes.
1. How would you handle an unsatisfied customer?
What this shows: How they manage conflict resolution. If their answer shows that they were able to give an unsatisfied customer their needs and bring back their good reputation, it is an indicator that they maintain good relationships between the business and its customers that will lead to brand loyalty and constant sales.
2. How would you accomplish a large quota or number of tasks?
What this shows: Their tenacity in accomplishing sales goals. A candidate’s capacity to drive revenue in the face of challenges makes them reliable even during challenging times. When sales and customers are low, it takes a top-quality salesperson with grit and resilience to find new opportunities for the company.
3. Pretend you are talking to a customer. How would you sell a product to me?
What this shows: Projected performance and style on the field. Their answer reveals if the sales strategy and communication style is a match for your company and if they have any new methods to bring to the table. By presenting a real-life scenario that they may encounter on the job, you can see how they may handle that situation should they get the position.
4. How would you break the ice during a cold call?
What this shows is: Ability to build rapport with strangers. Can the candidate get their foot in the door to build new leads for your products? Social skills are the foundation of the sales process, which is essential for a new hire.
5. How would you help teammates adapt to sudden changes in the company?
What this shows: Whether they have leadership abilities. A valuable candidate can help encourage others to adopt a flexible mindset as well. This also shows their ability to easily pivot to help the organisation cope with disruptive change.
6. What are some of your best assets as a salesperson?
What this shows: How they present their product and unique selling points. Salespersons must be charismatic and confident to be effective. Being able to sell themselves to you indicates that they will most likely be able to sell everything else.
7. How do you know when to terminate a cold lead, and when you reopen a closed lead?
What this shows: Their ability to save time and resources. An efficient salesperson knows to select the right leads to optimise resources for more prospects. Salespersons who select the wrong clients could lose time and opportunities for the company, and those who are resourceful enough to get value from what seems to be a dead end will prove invaluable.
8. What was your biggest mistake in your sales career and how did you grow from it?
What this shows: Whether they can recover and learn from their failures. The field of sales is an uncertain one, and your sales team needs to use both positive and negative feedback to better themselves and the company’s sales performance.
Rather than hard skills that can be learned on the job, what you need to know is whether the jobseeker has the right attitude, personality, and soft skills to navigate the world of sales. You will want someone with the right traits if you want to grow your business.