SALES Interview Questions & Answers! (How to PASS a Sales Interview!)

Hi there. My name is Richard McMunn from the interview training website, PassMyInterview.com. And in this tutorial, I'm going to teach you how to pass a sales interview. So, in a minute, I'm going to walk through this door and undertake a live sales job interview. So, make sure you stay tuned, take notes and look at the answers that I give to the top sales interview questions, because they will help you to pass your own sales interview. So, let's now go into this interview room and undertake the sales interview. Here we go. Come in. Hi there. Nice to meet you. I'm Richard. Hi. How are you doing? Nice to meet you. Hello. Nice to meet you. Please take a seat. Thank you very much. Hello, Richard. My name is Joshua. This is Andrew. Today, we're going to be asking you a number of interview questions to assess your suitability for this sales role. Start with, can you tell me about yourself? Yes, no problem at all. Thank you very much for inviting me to be interviewed for this position. I believe I have the skills and qualities needed to be effective in this sales position long term. I have studied the job description in detail, and I believe I have the experience and the attributes necessary to come into the organisation and make a positive impact straight away. So, the skills and qualities that I have built up is being able to build long-term relationships with customers and clients. I understand, as a sales person, the only way that you achieve difficult sales targets is to build long-term relationships, find out what your customers' clients need, and then present them with appropriate products and services. I am also the type of person who enjoys working under pressure. So, if you give me difficult sales targets to achieve, I won't be flustered by that. I will put a plan of action in place to make sure that I achieve those. I'm also the type of person who wants to continually grow, improve, and develop. I am always looking for different ways to adapt my sales skills to meet the target audience. Because I understand we live in a world where everything is always changing. So, you can't sit still as a sales person. You have to be able to adapt and change all of the time. I am also good at working with other people as part of a sales team. So, I'm not just focused on my own sales targets and objectives. I will help other people as part of the sales team to achieve theirs as well. Because at the end of the day, we work for the same organisation. I believe strongly that if you hire me in this sales position, you will have somebody who is entrepreneurial, who can come up with different ways to make great sales, who will build long-term relationships with your customers, and who will also make a quick and positive impact on your organisation. Thank you. Why do you want to work in sales? I want to work in sales for three reasons. The first reason is, I want to work in a pressurised environment and sales obviously gives me exactly that. So, working in a pressurised environment, I will come into work each day, I will have difficult challenges and targets to meet and I prefer to work in that type of environment where I am improving and developing continually. The second reason why I want to work in sales is because I have ambitious plans outside of work and I know the only way I will achieve those is if I perform to a high standard within this sales position. So, for example, my partner and I are saving up to buy a house and we need to get a deposit together. So, we are both really committed to our work and we know that if we do well for our employers, then we will achieve our external goals. The final reason why I want to work in sales is because I will get to interact with lots of different people on a daily basis and I will get to build long-term relationships with them. I am a people person and I enjoy interacting with others, finding out what their needs are, listening to them and then giving them the products and services that they need and also making sure that I work on customer retention because in sales it's important that we build lifelong value of our customers and encourage them to become advocates of our business. So, those are the three reasons why I want to work in sales. Thank you. What skills and qualities are needed to work in sales? To work in sales and more importantly to be successful in sales, you need to possess a variety of different skills and qualities. First and foremost, you need confidence. People buy from people. Now, there's a difference between confidence and arrogance and in sales you have to be confident but you also have to communicate effectively with your customers and find out what they need. So, if a customer, a potential customer does not feel confident whilst dealing with you, they're not going to buy from you. So, you have to have confidence and that also leads on to confidence in your products and services and the only way that you will achieve that confidence is to have an in-depth knowledge of the products and services that you are offering your customers because if you don't have that knowledge, you can't answer any questions. So, that's one of the first things I will be doing if I am successful is finding out as much as possible about the products and services that we offer. You also need to have, above everything else I would suggest, is good listening skills. In the past, as sales people, we would talk a lot to tell customers what we think they need. Things have changed. You have to listen. Yes, you have to ask appropriate questions, relevant questions to try and, you know, progress a sale and also to close it but you have to be a good listener. So, always listen to the customer because they will then feel valued. You also have to have relationship building skills. So, I would be looking to come into this position and build long-term relationships with customers because then that helps your organisation. You don't have to spend as much on advertising because the lifelong value of the customer increases. You also have to have entrepreneurial spirit. You have to be adaptable, come up with different ways to improve your sales figures and be positive in your work and also be adaptable and changeable because the sales environment is changing all of the time. So, you have to stay ahead of the curve and make sure you know what is going on right now and what your customers need. So, those are the qualities that you need to be effective in sales and I believe obviously that I have those. Great, thank you. What makes you stand out from the other candidates? The things that make me stand out from the other candidates, first and foremost, is my knowledge of the products and services that I am selling. So, what I plan to do if I am successful is come into the organisation and spend a lot of time learning about the products and services you offer and how they are going to benefit our customers. So, I will be spending time in the evenings and at weekends getting to know your products and services inside out because then I can answer any questions customers have and explain the benefits of the products and services to them and how they will impact on their daily lives. The second thing that I believe makes me stand out is my ability to build long-term relationships with customers and clients. I believe to be effective in sales nowadays, long-term, you have to be prepared to build up long-term relationships because I will have a responsibility to encourage customers to come back to the business time and time again because then you don't need to spend as much money on advertising. Customers buy from people, people buy from people, so I have to build up good relationships with people, build up that rapport with them and I want them to become a long-term advocate of our business. I want them to recommend our products and services to other potential customers. The final thing that makes me the standout candidate, that makes me different from the other candidates is the fact that I know when to close a sale. I am a confident closer and I know when to do it. I understand the sales process and I know when the time is right to close the sale. I believe the art of closing is lost on a lot of sales people. I'll give you an example. At the weekend my partner and I were in a shop. We wanted to buy a picture to put on the wall and I was discussing the picture that we liked with the sales assistant. Now he was asking me lots of questions and I was clearly ready to buy. Now when I was ready to buy another customer walked into the store and he left me to go and tend to them and he lost a sale. I know when to close a sale and to take my time with the customers and to make sure that I get that sale over the line. So those are the three things that make me stand out from other candidates. My knowledge of the products and services, my ability to build long-term relationships with customers and my ability to close a sale with confidence. Thank you. How do you handle rejection? I always handle rejection with a positive mindset. So I see rejection as an opportunity to improve and develop. So I will take the knowledge that I have gained from dealing with that particular potential client or customer and I will use it to my advantage when dealing with similar customers and clients in the future. I'm confident in my conversion rate so I always see rejection as an opportunity to try and improve that for the future. So I handle it positively and I always look for ways to improve for later on. At what point would you consider walking away from a sale? Ordinarily there are two situations where I would consider walking away from a sale. The first one is where I feel the customer is trying to appease me. So they are telling me what they think I want to hear. They are being polite. I have the experience to know when that is happening. I obviously don't want to waste their time or our time so I would walk away from a sale then. And that can be at any stage during the sales process. You get to know, you get to feel when a customer is doing that. The second situation where I would walk away from a sale or consider walking away is where I feel it gives me more control. The prospect, the potential customer really wants this product or service and they are perhaps discussing negotiating the price. By walking away or giving the impression I'm walking away that creates urgency and it creates scarcity. And you are more likely to close the sale then and get the price that you want by giving the impression you are walking away. I have the experience and the knowledge to know based on each situation and each communication when to walk away and I have the confidence to do so. Thank you. Tell me about a mistake you've made in sales and what you've learnt from it. Perhaps the biggest mistake I made in sales is when I first started out. I worked for this great organisation and I was talking to a customer and he clearly wanted to buy one of our services. Now it was going really well and I was about to close the sale and then he started asking me some questions, some in-depth questions about the service that we offered and I couldn't answer them. I'd got into the organisation thinking that I knew everything and I could close every sale and I got found out. So that was a mistake that I made and as I said previously when I come into an organisation now one of the first things I will do is spend my own time learning as much as possible about the products and services that I am selling so I can answer questions about what's involved and also the benefits that the product or service has to the customer so I make sure I'm fully knowledgeable. I am the type of person who is always open to improving and developing so if a mistake is made I will always be positive about it and I will look to improve for next time. So you can see that my sales interview is going really well and before I give you some more sales interview questions to prepare for, if you would like to download my full set of 29 sales interview questions and top-scoring answers including the ones that I have just covered within the video so far, CLICK THAT LINK right now in the top right hand corner of the video and it will take you through to my website, PassMyInterview.com. And as I say, you can download my full set of 29 top-scoring sales interview answers. So let's now go on to those 29 questions and I'll give you some tips for answering them. So the first question they asked me was, tell me about yourself? Now, in your answer to this first sales interview question, my advice is to talk about the skills, the qualities and the attributes that you have. Talk about any previous sales experience you possess and also talk about the type of person you are and what you are going to do in the role if they hire you. The second question they asked in my sales interview was, why do you want to work in sales? Now, my advice is to focus on the fact that sales is a challenging environment and that you prefer to work in a situation where the pressure is on to meet difficult sales targets. The third question they asked me was, what skills and qualities are needed to work in sales? So when you answer this difficult sales interview question, talk about the fact that you need communication skills. Also, the ability to be able to listen intently to your customers or your clients, because that allows you to then focus in on their needs. Also, talk about the fact that you need an understanding of the sales process. Also, you need to have a knowledge of the products and services you are selling, because then you can answer any questions the potential customers and clients may have. Also, the ability to source new sales prospects and also build relationships, ongoing relationships with current customers, because you want to increase the lifetime value of their custom. Also, talk about the ability that you need to be able to work under pressure in sales and being able to close a sale. That's really important. Sales interview question number four, they asked me in the interview, what makes you stand out from the other candidates? I'd be saying that I am able to make a fast and immediate impact in the sales role. I'll talk about the fact that I would be able to learn the products and services quickly so that I can then increase the sales conversion rate. Also, the fact that I have a track record of achievement in sales, that I have a thorough understanding of the sales process. And also, again, talk about the fact that you can close a sale with confidence is very, very important in sales. The fifth sales interview question they asked me was, how do you handle sales rejections? I would be saying that I can handle sales rejections in a positive manner and that I actually see rejection as an important part of my own professional development. I would also be saying that you will always look to learn from the experience of rejection, but you also have confidence in your conversion rate. Other sales interview questions that I recommend you prepare for. Question six, at what point would you walk away from a sale? Don't be afraid to walk away from a sale. You have to learn the art in sales of understanding when somebody is just being polite and they are clearly wasting your time and you need to be able to move on if you don't think that this is going to close. Question seven of the sales interview. Tell me about a MISTAKE you made in sales and what you learned from it. My advice is to not say, I don't make mistakes in sales. We all do, but we have to learn from the experience. Sales interview question number eight. If you are successful, how much time would you spend cultivating customer relationships versus searching for new leads or clients? And why? I would be answering that question by saying that I would focus on 60 percent new clients and 40 building relationships or around that figure. Even 50-50 would be fine, because it's really important that you cultivate customer relationships and spend time doing that, because then they will spend more money with you and it will save the organization advertising funds, which is really important. Don't forget, you can download all of the answers to these, the model answers, by clicking the link in the top right-hand corner of the video. When you're ready, you can download my full set of 29 sales interview questions and top-scoring answers. Question nine of your sales interview. What are the first three questions you would ask a potential sales prospect? Before you're going to speak to them on the phone, what questions would you ask them? It's really important that you're prepared. Question 10 of your sales interview. How do you overcome customer objections? Not rejections, but objections. All customers are going to put objections in the way. How do you overcome these? Sales interview question number 11. What steps do you take to research prospects before you speak to them on the phone? What specific information do you look for? I would be going on to LinkedIn and having a look at their profile, perhaps to find out what they do, the different kinds of business they're in and how you can help them increase their sales conversions. Sales interview question number 12. Sell me this pen! Wow! This is a common sales interview question. It's very difficult to answer. And I've actually got a video for you that you can watch. If you CLICK THAT LINK when you're ready at the top of the video, it will take you through to my other video here on YouTube and actually answer this question in a live interview setting. Sales interview question 13. If we hired you in this sales position, what would you do in the first month of working here? You should have a plan of action in place of what you would do if they hire you. Question 14. In sales, you will have to deal with pressure on a daily basis. How do you deal with stress and pressure that comes with this sales position? Sales interview question 15. At what point would you stop pursuing a client? Sales interview question number 16. Have you ever turned a prospect away? If so, why? By the way, you are unlikely to get asked 16 questions or more. You won't get asked 29 during your sales interview. But the ones I'm going through are the most common sales interview questions that have been asked over the last few years during all sales roles. And it won't take you long to prepare for these. And again, you can download the answers by clicking the link in the top right-hand corner of the video. But if you prepare answers for all of these, I strongly believe you will pass your sales interview. Sales interview question number 17. Tell me about a time when you lost a sale? Question 18. What's the best way to establish a relationship with a sales prospect? Question 19. Explain the steps you take from the beginning of the sales process to the end. And sales interview question 20. Tell me about a time when you managed to achieve difficult sales targets? That's a very common sales interview question. Just a few more. 21. How would you respond to a period of poor sales? Now, that's a tough one. That's a difficult one. Sales interview question 22. Tell me about an objection you had to overcome while selling? That's a behavioral interview question. Question 23 of our sales interview. Why have you chosen our company over others? Why do you want to work for us? Why do you want to leave your job? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Why should we hire you? Where do you see yourself in five years? And also, that's the end of your sales interview. Do you have any questions you'd like to ask us?