- What motivates you? …
- How do you handle rejection? …
- Have you consistently met your goals? …
- What is your knowledge of our company? …
- Which is more important: strong visibility of a product or closing the deal? …
- Why do you want to work in the sales and marketing industry?
SALES INTERVIEW Questions And Answers (How To PASS Your Sales interview!)
16. What made your best manager your best manager?
They want to know if they’ll be able to offer you a situation where you can thrive.
Be specific! Name one or two specific things your manager did to help you reach your goals at work. Maybe they set aside time to help you develop a new skill, frequently gave helpful feedback, or never let a win go unrecognized.
Think about what matters most to you and let it shine through in your answer.
14. Over the last several years, have you been working from home or from an office?
They want to understand which environments you’ve worked in.
Workplaces are in flux right now all over the world. Some are back in the office, others are fully remote. Some offer certain days of the week in office, others offer certain teams to be in the office. Some require vaccinations, and some require masks.
Don’t be afraid to be honest about your preference, but if being flexible is an option, make sure they know that.
If you know you will only succeed in an office or working from home, it is important to talk about it upfront.
9. Walk me through your resume/background
They want an easy recitation of your relevant experience so they can start to assess fit. And they also want to see if you can hit critical and relevant points of a story in a short time.
Spend time on the elements of your experience that are most relevant: A club at school? Athlete? Door to door sales? Lemonade stand? Waitress?
They don’t need to know everything about each role; they’ll just want to hear the skills that you learned that will help you excel in sales.
“In my most recent job experience, I managed the front desk with a busy multi-line phone system. While being responsible for multiple tasks, like greeting guests on arrival and receiving and sorting mail to 100+ employees, I learned how to comfortably handle communications (in person and on the phone) and balance that work my other responsibilities. Before that, I interned at a public relations company and got some great exposure to how businesses position themselves in the market.
It was important to keep a positive attitude even when the external environment was hectic and ensure that the customer and their needs were always top priority. I believe both of these experiences are relevant and set me up for success in the fast-paced role of a customer-facing sales rep.”
The Critical Components of Sales Interviews
The job seekers who fill sales positions are the ones who nail three key components in a sales interview:
- Highlighting their relevant qualifications
- Using those qualifications to sell themselves to the interviewer
- Closing the deal (getting hired!)
All three of these are critical parts of landing a sales job and require a bit of prep and some pre-strategy before the interview, starting with identifying exactly what characteristics are common to a sales interview.
Unlike other jobs where much of what you are hired for can be highlighted in a resume through bulleted descriptions of technical skills and abilities, sales interviews require the interviewee to clearly demonstrate their sales skills and abilities through concrete examples and anecdotes from past work history.
When going into a sales interview, be prepared for not only traditional questions but behavioral and situational as well.
