To keep your sales department providing better results, your company need to recruit the Best Sales Executives. It is important to find the people who are motivated, positive, and can handle rejection.

Hiring a salesperson is not an easy job. Hiring a wrong candidate can affect your company’s growth.

Here are 10 good questions to ask during the interview. These questions will help you to understand the person you’re intervening.

1. What will you do in your first month if you get hired?

The answer of this question will help you to know that the candidate is a self-starter. He/She is good with the planning. The candidate knows his/her work from the starting. He/she is clear in his/her mind for the work he/she is getting hired.

In the first month of your new job, take this as “absorb” month, where you understand informations like what are your KPIs (Key Performance Indicator), what is the culture of the company and what about internal promotions, what is the expectations of the company from you, how your manager is measuring you and what he/she cares most about, what is the company business, what is the name of your team members and their roles, what is your role and what kind of image you are going to build, all about your organisation and its product/service, who are your customers and what is their problems, on which parameters you will judged on.

2. How do you research prospects before calling or meeting them?

With the answer of this question, you will get to know, how the candidate can deal with people. You will know that is it worth to hire the particular candidate.

This question can help you to understand the candidate’s behavior with prospects and the chances of new clients.

Research is the most important part of the sales process, if you don’t know what you are talking about and to whom you are going to sell, you will never get any outcome like any phone call or sales lead. So, first understand the prospect’s target customer, their interest and queries about product and find their solution.

3. How do you use social media in your selling process?

These days social media is another way to do business. Many companies are doing business only through the social media. Social media is the huge network to do business and you need people who know how to sell your product and do business online.

So, it is important that a person you are hiring should have enough knowledge about social media too. You can use social media by answering customers questions, responding to top comments, spreading awareness about the product and sharing the content i.e; blog or article throughout the sales process.

Research by IDC has found that:

• 91% of B2B buyers are now active and involved in social media
• 84% of senior executives use social media to support purchase decisions
• 75% of B2B buyers are significantly influenced by social media

4. What do you ask your prospects in the first meeting?

In first meeting you can’t get desperate to sell your product, you need to be a good listener and understand the requirements of the prospect.

It is little hard to leave the positive effect on prospects on the first meeting because after all, we want to sell our products or services. But a good sales executive don’t do only sell but understand client’s needs and try to fulfill them.

Before your meeting you should turn to the web, read news items about their company website, “Google” about the person you are meeting with and check out their social profiles and try to understand the person.

5. What do you know about our company?

This question should be the most necessary question in all the interview. If a person apply job online in any firm then he/she should know about the company.

With this question, you will know that a candidate is having enough knowledge about your company. He/she knows the company’s requirements and can help the company to grow more and more.

The main reason behind this question is the hiring person wants to know that have you did some research about the company before applying for the job. They don’t want someone who is not interested in company’s profile. They want to see how much research and preparation you have done for this interview.

6. How do you keep yourself positive on a hard day?

There will be the hard days when it gets difficult to be positive. After all, we are humans and not all days are same.

But it is totally in our hand that when you need to keep calm and be positive, so with this question you will know that how well the person can handle himself during hard days.

7. How would you sell me this pen?

This one is the perfect question to ask any candidate who is applying for sales executive job.

You can get the practical sell on the spot with this step. You will know that how capable the particular candidate is to sell any kind of product. After all, you are looking for a person who can sell your products or services to strangers.

For this hypothetical question, there will be no perfect answer, but the hiring person will be interested in the sales process that you are going to follow, your verbal communication skills, and your enthusiasm and creativity.

8. Why are you pursuing a career in the sales department?

Whether the person is pursuing sales career out of a choice or just for money, you will understand through this question.

If a person is choosing this career only for money then you can think twice but if he/she is actually good at dealing with different types of people and can convince people well then, Congratulations, you found a needed sales executive for your firm.

There are several reasons why you should choose a career in sales department. In sales department you get more flexibility, earning potential, competition, job security, personal control, fun etc than any other department.

9. Why did you leave your previous job?

The answer to this question will always play an important role in your decision of hiring a sales executive.

Whether he/she is thrown out of the previous job or was looking for a better job opportunity, this question can help you to know the reality.

You should answer of this question in two parts, First, you’re switching to a more better opportunity, Second, you have no bad feelings against your previous employer.

10. How do you keep yourself motivated every day?

A salesperson needs to be motivated all the time. So the candidate should have an action plan to keep himself motivated. If a salesperson is not motivated to do the job then this thing can affect your selling or business.

With this question, you will understand a candidate is capable of handling stress and being positive even in the stressful situations.

You should answer of this question by following these key points:

Accept where you are, Build a disciplined personal selling process, Dare to think in awesome dimensions – Make a plan – and stick to it, Don’t dwell on defeat – Focus on activities versus results, Participate in war stories, Tap motivational resources – Align with the best, Stay committed to your career goals – Stay in shape, Eliminate negativity – Do not allow setbacks to control you, Get outside the business, Be a mentor , Never be intimidated – Take mental health breaks.

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