Sales Interview Questions
Any product making company's success mostly lies is the ability
of its sales team to promote its product. To build a certain
amount of trust in the customer's mind is vital to ensure a
steady sale of the product. And that's exactly the job of every
sales man associated with a particular company. But selling or
marketing a product requires some amount of a talent. To talk
and convince a customer is a different ball game altogether. It
further implies that the sales department of every company makes
it doubly sure that each sales or marketing personnel they
recruit is the best available among the lot. That brings us to
the technical aspects of sales interview and hence sales
interview questions.
Sales interview questions are exquisitely planned to judge the
real material of a prospective candidate. Let us discuss some of
the common but very effective sales interview questions.
The interviewer may typically begin with 'tell me about
yourself". It is a common opener that is meant to set the ball
rolling for the next few minutes ahead. The candidate can score
brownie points here by answering a bit differently, but at the
same time not deviating much from the context.
Why did you select a sales job, what are your goals and how you
plan to achieve that? These strings of questions are meant to
analyze the candidates in and out and also to get a feel of
his/her attitude towards sales.
Had you been in the previous company still, what would have been
your next move?? Tricky it sounds and indeed it is! Such a query
extracts details on various levels. Even if the candidate acts
smart in his/her answer, you can expose his/her real reasons or
motives in a secondary or tertiary level of questioning.
Tell a situation in which you were very successful. This is a
way of giving the candidate the chance to boast his/her
achievements. The candidate may recall some instance in a
previous project in which he/she had played a major role. From
the answer, the interviewer can deduce if the candidate is
thinking on his feet at the same time successfully hanging on to
the core details without wavering much.
Why should I select you or how you stand out from the rest? Such
a question tests candidate's confidence and determination for
the sales job. If he is answering in a seasoned manner with
compose, he could be the right person, but a less enthusiastic
response points to the other way.
Tell me an instance where you took some time out to share
coworker's achievement with others. While it shows whether the
candidate is selfless in his approach, the answer also very much
points to his/her attitude towards taking initiative in
motivating others - an important quality a sales manager should
have. If he is doing it to a person, he will do it with
everybody. How many hours do you think is necessary for you to
get a work done? Trickier it is but is shot at the candidate to
get a measure of his/her work ethics, and the person's
inclination towards putting more hours at work for the sake of
the completion of the project.
And the trickiest of the lot - how long you may take to reach a
decision? This stumper is meant to gauge the analytic ability as
well as his/her agility of mind.
Also, the interviewer can ask about his/her strengths and
weaknesses, will to travel - that is necessary if the position
demands a lot of travel - and any future career plans. The last
one can help the interviewer judge if the person's career plans
would be of any use for the company in a futuristic perspective.
If to ask questions, there is no dearth for posers. But the
important aspect here is judging the candidate on his merits and
demerits. If the interviewer cannot judge him in few questions,
it is better to continue the procedure until some solid points
evolve. Almost every interviewer tends to make the judgment
about the candidate in the first 5-9 minutes (as studies show).
But this is a wrong move altogether. Ideally the interviewer
should be taking down notes about the guy in front of your table
and later piece together the feedbacks before drawing the
conclusion. Else you may end up with the wrong person in the job
and they are going to fail.