Sales Interview Role Play
How to succeed at a sales role play interview
You can use the following steps to prepare and perform effectively for your interview:
Why employers use this style of interview
Interviewers use role play interviews to assess candidates sales skills in real-time. They may present the candidate with a brief to review for the simulation or provide an improvised situation. These simulations can provide interviewers a true sense of how candidates act under pressure and interact with potential customers. They may test candidates on particular skills, such as managing objections or performing cold calls. As a result, the candidates performance during this interview may demonstrate their performance as employees.
Ask questions
Asking questions is an essential component of sales conversations. You may begin your role playing scenario by asking the “customer” a series of probing or pre-qualifying questions to build rapport and understand their needs. Ask open-ended questions that allow you to gather more insights about them. You can use their responses to guide your sales approach.
For example, say that the company you are interviewing at sells desk chairs. The question, “How many office chairs does your organization need?” serves as a general question that does not offer many details. While you can ask it, you can build off it with questions such as, “Why is your company looking to purchase new office chairs?” or “What qualities or features do you want in an office chair?” These questions help you gather details about the customer and their needs, which you can use to build your sales pitch.
Here’s How to Ace Those Role-Play Sales Interview Questions
Role-play sales interview questions are still serious prompts. No matter if it feels silly or not, you’re being tested by the interviewer. So, get into character before you give a response. It should feel like you’re switching into a different mentality. However, you’re likely still playing yourself in this situation.
Your character should reflect how you’d behave in the workplace, communicating with others, and navigating challenging sales situations.
What Is a Sales Role Play?
A sales role play is a tool for developing and coaching your sales team. It uses situations that closely replicate what they may experience in real-life selling.
Giving your employees some sales role play scenarios examples is like giving them an improvisation game, allowing your reps to interact with other reps acting out the role of different customer types.
It also gives them a great opportunity to ask questions and learn how you would like them to navigate certain objections and other roadblocks they may come across throughout new client acquisition and beyond.
Consider this fact:
“Quizzing oneself on new material, such as by reciting it aloud from memory or trying to tell a friend about it, is a far more powerful way to master information than just re-reading it, according to work by researchers including Henry Roediger III and Jeffrey Karpicke. (Roediger has co-authored his own book, “Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning.”)”
Aside from being a great teaching moment in enhancing the skills of your team, training them with sales role play scenarios also models preparedness.
With sales role play scenarios examples, they’d learn to prepare for the unexpected — or shall I say, the worst arguments with potential clients.
As for the sales scenario, it’s the sales situation that your team needs to act out. One person pretends to be the potential client, while the other will play the role of a rep.
From the course: Interview Tips for Sales Professionals
– Angry customers are never fun to encounter, but certainly something that all sales people will run into from time to time. When youre going after a sales job, your interviewer will likely want to know how you diffuse the situation when a customer gets upset. You might even be asked to participate in a role play where your interviewer plays the angry customer so she can see how you roll when the heat is on. In fact, lets do one so you can get a feel for what you might expect. Im going to be the angry customer in this example. So pretend that Im the head of operations for a food manufacturer, and Ive just learned that a big piece of equipment that we bought from Susannas company is slowing down my entire manufacturing line. Im on fire over it, and Ive just showed up at her office to discuss. Take a look. Susanna, we have a real problem here. – Oh, goodness Jenny, Im sorry to hear that. Can you tell me whats going on? – Our vacuum packing equipment, it is malfunctioning again, and its making every bit of our production line slow down. This is costing us thousands of dollars and I need somebody on your team to get this back up and running or Im going to take every one of your machines out of every one of our production facilities. – I absolutely understand your urgency, Jenny, and let me get some more details on exactly whats malfunctioning so I can share that information with Dwayne Rogers. Hes our sales tech manager and we will get a team out there to take care of that as soon as possible. Can I get a few more specifics? – The vacuum pump is making this loud nose like eee and were ending up with all kinds of air bubbles in all of our products so were having to scrap a whole bunch. Its a mess. – Definitely sounds like a timely manner, and I will make fixing this my highest priority. – You know what, if youre thinking about sending that same tech that you sent the last time, think again. That guy didnt know a vacuum pump from a vacuum cleaner. – I completely understand your frustration, Jenny. Im so sorry this is happening, and I will take care of this for you right away. So let me get this information to Dwayne, and we will send out our most experienced technician, and well take care of that. Also, Jenny, once we take care of this initial situation, I would love to send out our director of engineering and our installation manager to the site just to prevent this from every happening again. – That would be great. – So youd be open to chatting about this once the dust settles? – Yeah, I would appreciate that. This was a perfect example of how a sales professional could and should handle themselves when confronted by an angry customer. I was really hard on her, and she did a great job. She didnt get defensive, she didnt interrupt, even though its never fun to get yelled at. She also demonstrated accountability and empathy and offered to pretty much drop everything to fix the situation as fast as she could. I also liked that she said shed be right back in touch with me. This goes a long way with a customer whos already really stressed about the impact that this issue is having on the companys bottom line. Finally, I noticed that Susanna used my name several times in that short conversation. She may not have realized she was doing it, but that was a good move. People feel heard when you use their name when you speak to them So as you interview for your next sales role, keep these techniques in mind, and assuming that your similarly skilled in handling angry customers, be ready to share both your formula and examples with your interviewing team.
FAQ
How do you prepare for sales Roleplay interview?
- Research the company beforehand. …
- Take a confident approach. …
- Treat the scenario like real life. …
- Take your time. …
- Ask questions. …
- Discuss the customer’s challenges. …
- Highlight the product’s benefits. …
- Close the sale.
How do you prepare for a Roleplay interview?
- Review the instructions. Your potential employer is likely to allocate time at the beginning of a role-play interview to explain the situation-based scenario. …
- Ask any clarifying questions. …
- Develop a strategy. …
- Highlight key points. …
- Follow and adapt. …
- Discuss the outcome. …
- Receive feedback.
How do you do a sales role play?
- Are you comfortable making cold calls? …
- Have you consistently met your sales goals? …
- What motivates you? …
- How did you land your most successful sale? …
- How would your colleagues describe you? …
- Sell me this pen. …
- What are your long-term career goals?
