Sales Interview Questions
Looking for a good sales rep but not sure what questions to ask them in the interview? The questions below are a good base of questions to ask. Some of them aren’t related to sales at all and just get a better understanding of the type of person you’re interviewing.
General Interview Questions
- How do you currently pay for your expenses (rent, cell phone, etc)?
- What are your long term goals as a professional?
- If your current co-workers could describe you in 1 word, how would they describe you?
- If you could rate your organizational skills 1 - 10 (10 being high), what would you rate yourself?
- What methods do you use to stay organized?
These questions allow you to see if they rely on others to help them and what their true motivation is.
The rest of the questions will be more sales related:
Sales Interview Questions
- What do you like most about sales?
- What do you dislike most about sales?
- Would you prefer longer sales cycles for a bigger account or several smaller sales cycles for smaller accounts?
- Describe a situation with a client or prospect where you made a mistake. How did you handle the error?
- Describe a situation where the standard approach to a situation wasn’t working and a creative solution was needed.
- What do you think are the most important skills in succeeding in sales?
- What do you feel is the most important part of the sales process? (Opening, Interviewing, Demonstrating, Negotiating, Closing or some other aspect)
- How do you overcome a string of rejections and get out of a slump?
Again these aren’t all the questions in the world you would ask but I find these a more core group of questions that will get the foundation of the rep you are interviewing. Obviously there may be more company specific questions needed for your particular interview.
Please feel free to chime in with a set of questions you like to use when interviewing new sales reps.