Salesperson Interview Questions: 25 Questions and How to Assess the Answers
Good salesperson interview questions don't test whether a candidate can tell a nice story. They test whether the candidate delivers results and knows why they deliver them. Below are the 25 questions I ask in interviews with B2B salespeople, together with what to look for in the answer.
If you're looking for a broader view of how to tell a salesperson from someone who simply interviews well, start with the post How to Spot a Good Salesperson. Here we focus on the questions themselves.
How to Use the List
Don't ask one candidate all 25 questions. Pick 2-3 from each area, tailor them to the role (selling to new customers calls for different questions than managing existing accounts) and always probe further. The first answer is usually rehearsed. The truth comes out on the second and third "can you be specific?"
Area 1: Results and Numbers
A salesperson who has genuinely sold knows their numbers. It's the fastest filter.
- What was your target, and what percentage did you achieve over the last four quarters?
- How many meetings a week do you need to close one deal?
- What is your conversion rate from first contact to meeting?
- How long is your average sales cycle, and what does it depend on?
- Where do most of your deals come from: your own prospecting or leads supplied by the company?
- What was your best quarter, and what happened then?
A good answer: specific numbers, without having to think about it, with the context explained. A red flag: "it varies", "depends on the month", "I don't remember exactly". The point isn't that the numbers are high, but that they exist at all.
Area 2: Accountability and Learning
- Tell me about a deal you lost and should have won.
- What did you do differently after that loss?
- What sales mistake have you made most often?
- Who has taught you the most at work, and what exactly did they teach you?
- What have you changed in the way you sell over the past year, and why?
A good answer: the candidate takes the blame and can name the mechanism ("I got to the decision-maker too late"). A red flag: the fault lies with the customer, the product, the price, marketing or the competition - never with them.
Area 3: The Sales Process
- How do you qualify whether you're talking to the decision-maker?
- How do you prepare for a conversation with a customer you don't know?
- How do you run a first meeting with a new customer? Where do you start?
- How do you react when a customer says "too expensive"?
- How do you know a deal is real and not just a pleasant conversation?
A good answer: a repeatable process described in their own words, built on questions to the customer rather than ready-made lines. I write about how important questions are in a conversation in Whoever Asks the Questions Leads. A red flag: the answer starts with the product ("I present the offer") instead of the customer's needs.
Area 4: Prospecting and Cold Calling
- How many calls or messages to new customers do you make in a week?
- How do you build the list of companies you call?
- What do your first 15 seconds sound like when you speak to someone who doesn't know you?
- What do you do after a run of several rejections in a row?
A good answer: consistency, their own system, and an awareness that the goal of the first conversation is to book the next step. I describe typical mistakes in these conversations in Cold Calling Mistakes. A red flag: "I wait for leads", "I call when I have time".
Area 5: Attitude and Resilience
- Apart from pay, what motivates you most in sales?
- What does your week look like when nobody is checking up on you?
- What are you learning right now on your own initiative?
- How do you cope with a quarter in which you miss your target?
- Why sales and not another profession?
A good answer: independence, self-discipline, a calm hunger for results. Techniques can be trained; this attitude usually can't. A red flag: answers about prestige, the company car and commission, with no mention of working with customers.
How to Assess the Answers
After the interview, don't ask yourself whether you liked the candidate. Ask: "What exactly did this person show me, other than that they were pleasant to talk to?" If you can't answer with numbers, examples or behaviour in a simulation, you've been won over rather than found a salesperson.
Questions are only half of recruitment. The other half is checking in practice how the candidate sells, which I cover in Sales Simulation in Recruitment.
Recruiting salespeople is one of the things I help companies with - from the candidate profile, through selection, to simulations and onboarding. See the service: sales recruitment or book a free consultation using the button below.