Common Sales Interview Questions & What Sales Leader WANT to Hear 🤝

In my career as a sales leader, I have interviewed hundreds of candidates for sales roles. Today I'm going to walk you through some of the most common interview questions asked and what I and probably many other sales leaders am looking for in a strong answer from a candidate. The first question that's often asked is geared towards understanding why somebody is even interested in leaving their current company. What we're looking for here is that you're not running away from something, but rather you're running towards the opportunity at the new company. Now, to be clear, there are times where you are actually running away from a terrible boss, a terrible company, terrible accomplishment plan. That's fine. But what we don't want this to sound like is that you're looking for anything outside of your current opportunity. You just want a way out because that introduces risk that maybe you join us only to leave something that is more suited towards your interest shortly after. So when I'm asking this question, I want to understand how excited you are about the opportunity working with my org, not just that you're trying to escape a non ideal situation in your current organization. Another really common question that a lot of people kind of hate because it feels like a trap is what would your manager say is your biggest weakness? Or what would you say is your biggest weakness? What I'm looking for here is strong eq. I want to see an understanding of your own gaps and weaknesses. The absolute worst answer in this situation is something where you try to make it sound like your weakness is a good thing. For example, I've heard before, my weakness is I just, I work so hard, it's hard for me to detach or it's hard for me to unplug. Well, yeah, that could actually be a weakness. It sounds more like a humble brag, like go hire me. I'm awesome. I work super hard. I actually want to hear a real weakness in this answer. I want to hear that you have an understanding of something that you can improve at. And then I would love to hear you back up your response of your actual weakness with how you are trying to improve in that area. If I have a candidate walk me through something they actually kind of suck at, even if it's important for the job I'm hiring for. If I understand how they're trying to improve improvements they've made and results they've seen as they focus on that improvement, that would be a really strong answer for this question. The next question that I actually love to ask, and I think a lot of others do as well, is what Are the main factors that would impact your success if you joined? Now, this might be a little bit of a trick question, but what I'm looking for here is what is described as an internal locus of control. When I ask some candidates this question, they give me a laundry list of a bunch of factors that they'd be reliant on. They're like, oh, well, I would need a great territory, great enablement, a great comp plan, a great mentor, great ongoing coaching, great support. And they just give me all these things that the organization they join has to provide to them. Now, by all means, you should join organizations that give you great support, but if I just get a laundry list of all the things that you need from us, I'm thinking, well, geez, I could put anybody in that ideal circumstance and they would have success. A really good answer here shows that you, as a candidate, fundamentally believe that you own your success. And so answers like, well, I would need to come in. I'd have to. I'd have to find the top performers and find a mentor and seek that out. I'd have to take control of my development. They go list things in their control to have success. Making me believe again that they firmly believe that they impact their success more than circumstances is a great sign for somebody to come in and have that internal locus of control that is more likely to lead to success. Then I can worry about putting them in the best environment possible while they worry about maximizing that environment and not being a creature of circumstance in sales. Obviously, we're going to be asking questions about performance. And so the question might sound like, tell me about your performance and in your current or previous roles. Okay? Now here I really need to hear specificity, okay? Because everybody in interviews will tell me that they've hit quota in some way, right? I've never interviewed somebody that told me they are not hitting quota, which statistically speaking is literally impossible. There's no way. Right? And so I take it with a grain of salt when people tell me about quota attainment, I want to hear specifics that stack ranks. How do you compare to people on your team with similar tenure, even different tenure? I want to get a feel for what quota tainment means at your current company and understand how you compare to individuals in similar circumstances as you. That's much more valuable to me than just a blanket number where I don't understand what good actually looks like for, for your company. I'm looking for stories. I'm looking for how you've improved performance over time. Much more specific than just oh yeah, I fit quota three out of four quarters, right? And then finally I like to hear some self awareness of improve you're making in your performance, what you're focusing on for development and how that has led to outcomes. But when you're answering this question, remember if all you're saying is, oh yeah, I'm at 100% of quota, the hiring manager is very skeptical of that response. So be honest, be clear and be specific in how you're performing. And then again, as a bonus, if you help me understand how that compares to other people in a similar circumstance as you. This is actually one of my favorite questions and I think it's actually my current do. It's one of his favorite questions as well. So I know it's a good one. But the way it's phrased is what are you most proud of? Or what achievements are you most proud of in your life? And now oftentimes we'll even separate career for personal and say, look, it can be either. It doesn't have to be your career, but it can be if you'd like it to be. What I'm looking for here is something actually special. I'm looking for something that is actually impressive and I'm looking for how you tell that story to help me understand why it's impactful to you. The worst answer that I've heard for this. I asked a guy this and he said, well, over the break, I was at my sister's house, she just had a baby and so I learned how to change a diaper. And that's it. That is your lifetime achievement that you're most proud of is learning to change a diaper. So that poor fellow did not get hired. That did not quite, did not quite impress. But what achievement are you most proud of? Think about what you're most proud of in your entire life. Good stories, things you've overcome, challenges you've defeated. And be able to tell that story in a compelling way that will insinuate that you can do hard things and you can create special outcomes. I ask this question a lot because I run an acquisition org, but how do you generate Pipeline? Again here, specificity matters. Examples matter. Because every candidate tells me they love to cold call. Every candidate tells me they love to generate pipeline. And again, statistically speaking, that's just not possible. I know I interview a lot of people that are willing to generate Pipeline but don't love it. And so sometimes I'll even ask in an interview, can you show me some recent outreach? Can you show Me a recent meeting you sent. If you want to really do well on this part of the interview, come prepare the specific examples of creative outreach, examples of success, examples of metrics that you've hit, and bonus points if you pull up your screen and show your operating rhythm and give examples of how you actually do generate pipeline. If you do that, it'll. It'll blow me away and probably impress most hiring managers. Another question that is asked to gauge understanding of the product you would be selling in a new role is a hiring manager asking, how would you describe the value of the products that we sell? A great answer here is actually going to break it down at the Persona level. And so like for MongoDB, you might answer, well, the value for a developer is this, the value for a VP of Engineering is this, and the value for a CTO is this. Understanding that value changes based on Persona and showing that you know our product well enough to differentiate that value is an extremely successful answer for this question that gives me confidence that you've done the research and understand how to describe of products, not just features. Another question that I love is tell me about a time you failed. What went wrong? Okay. And so what I'm looking for here is one EQ admittance that things sometimes do go wrong. I'm also looking for ownership. A really bad answer here is, well, I had this failure and here's why. It wasn't at all my fault and is casting blame on somebody else. What I want to hear is a time where something went wrong and you were at least a little bit at fault. I want to hear you take ownership of what went wrong, what you learned, and how you corrected it moving forward. So a great answer is going to be a significant failure because people that try, people that take on hard things often will have real failures. So I want to see a real failure. I want to hear the eq, the ownership of, hey, these are, this is why I failed. And then I want to hear how you learned and how you improved from there so you don't repeat that, that same mistake. And then the final question, and for me, this is actually the most important part of the interview is when you're asked at the end, what questions do you have? Right? And the reason why this question is so important is this gives me insight into how you're going to sell, how prepared you are. Understanding who I am as an interviewer, how prepared you are understanding the company that I work for will lead to the quality of questions that you ask. And so if you're asking me super generic questions like, oh, how long have you been at. How long you been at Mongo? Right? Terrible. You should know that. You should know all these things before you even start the interview. I want to hear thoughtful role specific questions that I have a unique perspective on because if you bring that level of granularity to the interview, that gives me confidence that when you go into a discovery, you'll do your research, you'll know your Persona, and you will ask thoughtful, effective questions. All right, that's it. Those are some of the most common questions that I ask and others ask in interviews. I hope this is helpful as you prepare for your next interview for a sales role. If you found this video helpful, let me know I'm going the right direction by leaving a like on this video. Then if there are any questions or topics you want to make sure I cover in a future video, leave me a comment. I read all comments and I love recommendations that will help me help you sell more. Finally, don't forget to subscribe. That way you won't miss any of my upcoming content that I'm creating to help you improve the way that you sell.