After years of sales recruiting, we’ve watched the same interview mistakes cost strong candidates offer after offer.
Before you’re tempted to say “I already know this,” read the list and circle the one you might be making. Then seek interview feedback and keep adjusting.
1. Lack of preparation. Come prepared: adequately or over, but never under. Come with a list of great questions, understand how to sell the company’s value proposition, know their target market, and get familiar with their offerings. Do a YouTube search, sign up for a demo if you can, pull up LinkedIn profiles, read the most recent press release. Never wing it.
2. Dumping. This is a big problem for many sales professionals, and most people who have it know it on some level and keep doing it anyway. Great sales professionals do more listening than talking. They ask good questions. Strike that, they ask great questions, and they bring them to the interview.
I had a candidate with a very unique background and a transferable client portfolio, exactly the profile the employer wanted. But he took the interview from his car, and he talked and talked on every question he answered. The internal recruiter’s feedback came back in two words: unfocused and frazzled. The candidate who got the job had less depth of experience, but his references told me he presented beautifully in front of clients, and he won mine over too.
The portfolio got him the meeting. The talking lost him the offer.
3. Tangents. Answer questions as clearly and precisely as you can. People who dance around questions come off as unprepared, disorganized, and ineffective, and rambling is one of the classic ways to tank an interview without realizing it.
4. Not knowing your numbers. What was your W-2 last year? Are you at quota? How many calls a day, how many leads, how many deals, what’s your average deal size?
Don’t know your numbers? You come across as an average performer at best, because top salespeople always know where they stand in their funnel. Have your sales math ready before you walk in.
5. Skipping the closing questions. Every great salesperson asks appropriate closing questions. The trick is doing it in a way that gets the point across without coming on too strong. I can’t say it enough: you must close the interview with a request for a next step. Skip that step, and you won’t be invited back.
6. Depending on personality. You most likely have a high likability quotient, and it will come in handy, but it won’t seal the deal. What you need to get across is desire and motivation, backed by a track record of sales success.
Other great personalities are competing for the same roles, so concentrate on what separates you from the pack.
7. Negativity. Under no circumstances should you say anything negative about your former or current employer. Sound like old news? It is. Almost everyone has heard this, and plenty of candidates just can’t help themselves in the room and do it anyway.
Put Your Sales Career on the Right Track
Using these strategies will help you land the right sales job faster. For the bigger picture, work through our Job Search Action Plan, and if a round already went sideways, here’s how to recover from a bad interview. Fix these seven, then work through the rest of the sales interview preparation guide.
