Sales interviewing made easy

Okay, I can’t really make it easy. But you can make it more reliable. (And if you’re an AE / seller, hopefully this will help how you present yourself.)

In many cases, sales interviewing is largely talking through hypotheticals: “How do you use LinkedIn to find new prospects?” or “How do you overcome objections?” These are textbook questions with textbook answers and any decent seller should give you good answers.

To be effective, you need to get under the skin of their experiences. Find examples of where they have done what you need and understand their personal responsibility for it: “Can you give me example of a deal where you were initially on the outside looking in, but managed to engage the prospect to evaluate your company seriously?” And once they answer that question, dig in with further questions: “What did you personally do in that process?”

Then ask for a deal they lost: “Can you give example of a deal that you thought you were well-positioned for but ultimately lost?” Push them for their understanding of what happened, how they could have done better and where have they implemented their learnings. You can use this to understand their coachability. For example, when they say they failed to engage the economic buyer early enough, ask “given all your experience, how did you manage to miss that in this case?” Once you’ve had a deep enough conversation, go for a second deal. Good sellers will have at least one good and bad example already prepared - force them to think through another one.

You can take the same approach around their engagement with their manager. “Give me example of your best management relationship to date. Why was it so positive?” Then follow-up with discussion of a less effective management relationship. Worth digging deeply into this one!

If you have skills you require, for example people who can help you break into a new market, then come up with relevant questions. “When have you had to define the market entry approach for a new sector?” Or “Can you give me example where you realised that the messaging was not catching your prospects attention? How did you react to this?” Or “Can you give me example where you’ve had to build your own collateral?”

Crucially, include a task-based interview. For sellers, a discovery call is the best option. Give them some material to learn about your product/service and ask them to run a discovery meeting with a couple of your team as a role-play. Do they engage you in genuine curious discovery? Do they provide enough information about the product/service that it’s interesting to continue the conversation? Did they prepare diligently enough for the interview?

Following the role-play, ask their feedback on how it went, and give them your own feedback. Are they open and reflective? Or are they closed and defensive?

I have LOTS of resources that I can share (no cost!) for all of the above, just let me know if you are interested.