Sales Interview Questions To Ask Sales Rep Candidates

There’s an abundance of salespeople applying for jobs, but how do you find the diamonds from the coal in this ocean of applicants?

In Sales Ninja, we use very intensive and challenging sales questions and challenges to find the best salespeople and identify the red flags so that you don’t make the wrong hire.

One of the core principles we go by is to hire slow fire fast. Just because you need or are desperate for people it’s important not to just simply recruit. You could be recruiting someone who is incompetent and just can’t carry out the task you require, also it can be costly for you because of the time and money invested into the individual. So it’s also important to get rid of the bad apples, otherwise, they will sabotage your operations.

So here is our Sales Ninja interview process and what we look for in candidates:

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This is just the standard filtering process to ensure on paper the candidate has the right requirements, especially if there are any technical requirements.

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This is also standard with the usual questions like “Where do you see yourself in 5 years” to test the waters and get the initial feel and impression of the candidate.

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Assign a small assignment to them that is related to their role, this is to test and see how committed they are. For example for videographers, it could be editing a short 1-minute clip.

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This is the first in-person interview, we would get around 5 people in a session and have them “fight” it out to see who has the competitive winning spirit, hunger, and desire for the role. At the same time, we also have tasks to identify whether candidates are good team players and are positive.

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This will be conducted face-to-face where we get to know the interviewee more intimately to get further into the root of their character and competencies.

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This is the interesting part that will separate the best from the rest, we would run the sales candidates through live selling, which can either be in the form of a simulation or selling a real product to real customers.

The simulation could be “sell me this pen” and give them 2 minutes, then see whether their pitch is good or not.

For selling real products to real customers, what I’ll do is give them a product, send them out to the streets and say "You have 30 minutes to go to the street make a sale and you must come back with cash!" I will send a camera guy to film the entire process.

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Interviewees who cannot think fast on their feet that goes "uh ooh uh ooh ah ooh". We need to have sharp salespeople on the group who are able to adapt quickly to situations because in sales we are constantly bombarded by objections and unexpected scenarios.

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Essentially what we find in a good salesperson is their Agility (Think on their feet), Ability (Key competencies), Adaptability (Managing unexpected scenarios), and Aggressive Mindset (The hunger and drive to persevere and go for a sale).

Adopt this process and I promise you, you will be able to identify and hire better quality candidates. What is your favorite part of the process?