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.
About the author: Saurya Ghosal for http://www.creativeinterview.com Read more about Interviews http://www.creativeinterview.com/Tips-for-Job-Interview.html Copyright 2005 http://www.creativeinterview.com