Sales jobs and interview questions you can prepare for
Q : How good are you at selling?
A : From my own experiences I can only assume that modesty is an old British trait as the number of apparently successful sales people who answer something like 'okay' or ' pretty good' seems all too high. If you are a modest person that's fine, but an interview is a sales call with you as the product, to sell you need to leave your interviewer thinking that you're better than 'okay' that you really are the best there is! Loose your modesty and tell them just how good you are.
Q : You say you're good at selling, can you prove it?
A : If all has gone to plan, you will have answered something representating yes to the above, now you're going to need to back this up. Sales managers want to remove as much uncertainty form their final decision as possible, and as a result they want to see hard evidence that you are as good as you say you are. You should build up a brag file with all you examples of success. Try to make your evidence recent, sustained and comparative Evidence that is out of date will leave them asking what has happened since, one hit results won't impress and you need to evidence to show that you have beaten the rest of the field.
Q : Can you recall an occasion where you generated excellent results, tell me about it?
A : Most people can instantly recall scenarios where they were successful, for example where they earned a big bonus, or got promoted. However, this alone is not enough. You need to be able to explain why the success occurred and ideally show that it was a deliberate and planned result. To succeed routinely in sales jobs you need to be able to routinely solve sales problems to generate positive results. Too many people describe scenarios here which transcribe to be somewhat of a chance happening, or indeed on questioning further, are down to others.
Q : What's the most difficult sales situation you've had to handle, describe how you handled it.?
A : It may be time for a little salesman's license here in that you need to forget about any scenarios where the outcome wasn't positive. In real life some customers just aren't meant to be and when they are just down right rude it's near impossible to generate a positive outcome. What you need a is a negative scenario that you turned around. sales jobs are full of awkward customers, and it's often your ability to turn around these customers that makes the difference between success and failure.
Q : You have 10 minutes to sell me this calculator?
A : Well if you're not ready for this and it crops up, it really can be the worst of them all, you know nothing about calculators and you simply don;t know where to start. With a little knowledge and practise it can be the key to a job offer as all the other applicants struggle to deal with it. What your sales manager is looking for is a structured sales process which you can implement in a disciplined way with any product. If you look on the web you'll find many many variations of what are essentially the same subject. Most of them will have an acronym to remember them by. Learn one of them, then pick random products and practise the exercise on your family and friends. Once you have the knack you'll sail through your interview.
Although you can't change your past, even if your past is eminently suitable for sales jobs it can all still go horribly wrong at interview. With a few predictions of the right questions and a bit of sensible preparation the outcome of your sales job interviews could be much much better.
About the Author: John Bult runs internet job boards for people in sales jobs around the UK. Sales reps can find jobs in sales here/
More articles by john@ukcareers.co.uk
Print Article | Download PDF | 32 views | Jun 17 2008
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