Building an efficient software sales team is mission-critical for organizations to grow. Your sales team is at the forefront when it comes to customers. They advocate for your solution or product to the market, counter objections, and generate revenue.
When interviewing sales candidates, it is best to divide the discussion/questions into different parts to properly evaluate the interviewee, such as process, a behavioral, narrative, etc.
While numbers are vital to establishing success, digging into their expertise will help you figure out if they fit your organization well. For instance, it’ll be good if they have accomplished their sales goals with a comparable degree of support and complexity.
The narrative domain attempts to capture the candidate’s story that helps you understand their communication style, personality, sales philosophy, and more.
And when merely 24.3% of sales reps exceeded their quota in the previous year, it is imperative to prepare beforehand, do your research, and brainstorm to ask the best questions to find the best software sales talent.
So what are some of the most relevant questions to prepare yourself for the software sales interview and find a great fit.
Walk You Through An Important Deal At Their Most Recent Company
This is an excellent introductory question—ideal for an initial interview. The candidate’s answer will provide you with a lot of information in a short time regarding the deal type the individual usually works on. This will help you determine if they are suitable for the required position. Also, it gives you an idea about the overall approach and attitude of the candidate.
Along with gauging their communication style, a comprehensive answer to such a question gives you an outlook of their current sales cycle and process.
Ask Them How Technology and Data Support Their Success
Get your potential software sales employee to talk about how they leverage technology and data to get insight into the candidate’s style and needs.
For instance, ask questions like,
- Do you depend on a robust tech stack to get insights?
- What data points do you think are most important to look at for a potential customer?
Compare their answers to the intricacies of your sales process and products. This question is a way to evaluate the candidate’s relationship with different tools and comprehend what administration challenges you may face if you take them on board.
Most sales organizations have various tools and platforms they require to keep processes running smoothly, such as pipeline updates, expense reporting, CRM, lead scoring, demo software, and more. So consider the candidate’s capability to embrace the tools that your organization uses.
See their attitude to your existing culture and tech stack, and you will learn a lot about the individual’s technical aptitude, cultural fit, and sales process within your current team.
Ask Them To Describe A Challenging Conversation With A Client
This question can help you qualify how good the candidate is with communication and narrates a story, as it is essential for a competent sales professional. Also, you can learn about the candidate’s integrity based on the story they tell.
Here are some pointers to assess when the candidate tells about their interactions with a client.
- Are they narrating a story that focuses on the way they took a difficult decision as it was the right move for their customer?
- Do they own their mistakes?
- Did they withdraw from a deal because their product wouldn’t have solved the client’s problems?
- How do theydeal with relationships when things aren’t going as per the plan?
- Do they have the tendency to throw competition under the bus?
You should look for integrity and self-awareness in their responses.
Wrapping Up
In order to hire well-rounded sales representatives, you need to ask the right combination of questions to gauge how candidates think and to find someone knowledgeable in the industry who’s also passionate.
However, make sure you ask the questions at the right time in an interview, as it is also a crucial part that most interviewers overlook. This is when you know that you are interviewing an intelligent, interested, and informed person.