As the New Year approaches many sales leaders are moving from closing business to planning for the new year. Part of that planning is looking at additions and sometimes subtractions from the sales team. As part of the hiring process the interview is the most important part. The sales interview questions that your candidates are asked is very important. Over my almost 20 years of sales leadership, I have had hundreds of interviews. There are a couple overarching themes that are part of my interviewing strategy. I find that situation questions with specific answers are the best gage a candidate. Here are a few of my favourite questions for both senior sales people and more junior sales people.
For more experienced reps I would ask:
Tell me about your biggest win? How did it start?
I am usually hiring for a hunting role and one of the hardest things to determine is if the candidate is actually a hunter. They may have a big name and revenue number on their resume or LinkedIn, but you don’t know the role they played with the sale. Getting them to tell you the specific actions and steps they took at the start of the engagement will allow you to evaluate their hunting role. If you get a great story, ask for another one. Sometimes reps have one really great polished story, but often don’t have another one ready.
Tell me about your biggest loss? What did you learn?
In sales we often learn more from losses than wins. If a sales person has a perfect batting record, then they aren’t batting enough. They should be able to tell you about a loss and what they learned. If they can’t that should be a red flag.
When I say CRM what do you feel? Tell me how you used your CRM on a daily basis.
One of the things that is essential for a modern sales person is to use a CRM. For a sales person there is often a love-hate relationship with a CRM. It is important for any enterprise sales team to record and plan their sales efforts within a CRM. The biggest key is that use it everyday to support their sales efforts.
Tell me about how you would plan your first month at our organization.
This is a great question to gage how interested they are to get out and start selling. Yes there will need to be training time, but if they are not pressing to get out and meet with clients, then that is an issue.
For less experienced sales people I would ask:
What are you most proud of and why?
This question could be related to a job, school or something else. More junior sales hires may not even have sales experience, so they won’t have wins that they can talk about. They will likely have victories in other parts of their lives or careers. It could be winning a sports championship (showing they are competitive), speaking at a big event (showing they are confident and well spoken), or doing well with an assignment (showing they are hardworking and smart).
If I spoke to your last manager what would be something they told me you excelled at? What would be something that you did that drove them crazy?
More junior sales reps are less polished in handling what they need to work on, then experienced sales people. You typically won’t get that they worked too hard as an answer. This is a great question to help identify red flags.
What is it about sales that you like?
This is a great red flag questions. I like setting my own schedule and the freedom of the job is code for I like to sleep in and work from the cottage. If they talk about the thrill of the close and helping customers with problems you will know that this could be the right person.
What would you like to be doing in two years?
I used to set the timeline for this question to five years, but millennials seem to think in shorter time frames. If they talk about moving into a different role, outside of sales or working for a big company those could be both red flags. A great answer could include becoming a great sales person or looking for an opportunity to move into another sales role within your organization.
If you are looking for some more information to help grow your sales team check out our white paper. It has lots of great ideas on recruiting, hiring, and onboarding new sales team members.
