Ever wonder what your life might be like if you had better job prospects? Putting your sales career on the fast track takes being with the right company, selling strong solutions, at the right time.
So how do you make the most of your sales career over the long haul? Strong performance on the job is essential. But at some point, you have to separate yourself from the pack and learn how to draw high-level opportunities toward you.
“Difficult work is easy to avoid. Difficult work is exactly what will get you promoted.” — Seth Godin
One proven way to do that is to master strong interview skills. Exceptional interview skills increase your ability to compete for the best sales opportunities on the market. Not to mention, the better you interview, the more money you’ll make.
Prepare and land your next sales job by doing, not studying, these 32 action items.
Preparation (Tips 1-13)
1. Prepare so deeply it’s apparent to everyone who meets you that there’s something different about you. Prepare like there’s no tomorrow. It will boost your confidence and help you stand out. (My 12-step research checklist is the place to start.)
2. Request or attend a product demo. If you’re going to sell something, don’t you want to see it? Everyone who signs up for a demo gets extra points. When the signup form wants a corporate email address you can’t provide, try your personal account anyway. Depending on the company, you might get through.
3. Memorize the company’s product line. Know the names of the products sold, and conduct primary research within your network to find customers who use them.
4. Download whitepapers and case studies. Then read them. All of them. Note the clients they’ve acquired and what those clients say about the solutions.
5. Read press releases. Look for product launches, leadership changes, and other news. Press releases pre-select the most newsworthy topics of conversation for you in advance.
6. Research the space and the competitive landscape. Use Gartner reports to size up the market. Find out who’s in what quadrant and why.
7. Check out popular sales books. Review methodologies and terminology. Salespeople often rely on natural ability, and sales books provide the structure and vocabulary that strengthen your answers to sales cycle questions.
8. Learn names. Start with the people you’ll meet, then move to executive management, admin support, HR, and sales team leaders. Study their backgrounds, and try to piece together an org chart to help you remember who’s who.
9. Do some more digging. Don’t be afraid to get muddy. Reach out to former employees via LinkedIn and see what you can gather. You never know who will provide the inside tip that lands you the job.
10. Invest the necessary time, because your sales career is worth it. Does this take hours? Sure it does. Is your career worth the investment? Of course. The decisions you make will affect your career for years, so approach your search with rigor.
11. Study well-known sales formulas. No sales strategy yet? It’s never too late to adopt one. Managers appreciate salespeople who follow formulas and study their craft, and the same structure works on interview answers: the SAR method is the one to know.
12. Look the part and make sure you fit in. When you’re unsure what’s suitable, take the safest path and ask. Think neat and crisp rather than torn and worn. Also, brown is not an interview color.
13. Make friends and build your confidence. Call the company before your interview. Ask whether you need ID for the building or if there’s a parking garage they recommend. These questions build a connection before you arrive, and you’ll be more relaxed knowing you’ve already made a friend at the company.
In the Room (Tips 14-25)
14. Stay in control of the controllable. Arrive five minutes before your scheduled appointment. Too early puts pressure on the hiring manager to attend to you; late is an unnecessary mistake that was entirely within your control.
15. Use body language to convey confidence. Focus on looking comfortable, and minimize your habitual discomfort signals. Don’t rattle your pen on the desk. Keep your hands visible on, not beneath, the table. And don’t cough or frown when answering questions about compensation, former supervisors, or reasons for leaving.
16. Relevant questions are good questions. Keep questions relevant to the person you’re meeting, appropriate to the interview stage, and congruent with the position. Diving into vacation time on the first interview won’t help; benefits are a final-stage topic.
17. Don’t be shy about wanting the job. People hire applicants who are enthusiastic and want the job. Express your interest by asking for it, in a way that’s comfortable for you, and leave the office with a definitive next step.
18. Neatness is a sign of trust. Don’t come with tattered folders and sloppy notes. Prepare as if you were meeting the President of the United States. Would you show up with a flimsy folder and a green spiral notebook?
19. Listen more than you think you should. Yes, you’re a salesperson, but don’t do all the talking. Exceptional salespeople are exceptional listeners. Turn off the phone, focus completely on the interviewer, and know that spending 80% of a first interview listening is not uncommon when you’ve mastered this skill.
20. Be interruptible, and don’t interrupt. Some interviewers need definitive numeric information, not stories, and once they have it, they need to move on. If they interrupt you, let them. And develop the habit of counting to two before you speak. You’ll be surprised how often you don’t get to two before the other person starts talking. Let them.
21. Draw up a 30-60-90 day plan after the first interview. It doesn’t need to be War and Peace, just an idea of how you’d get started. You may share it during the process, you may not. Have one.
22. Want the job. Some people think showing eagerness leads to a low offer. That’s not true. The person who’s most interested typically generates the strongest offer. Show your interest at every step.
23. Provide specific, tangible details. Don’t answer with generalities and vague concepts. Provide quantifiable metrics: sales cycles, average deal size, clients won, percentage of deals lost. Have your sales math down cold.
24. Be positive, always. Never speak negatively about anyone or anything, no matter how upset you are with a former boss or current employer. If the hiring manager makes a negative comment, you can simply say, “I understand.”
25. Brace yourself for surprise, because things won’t be perfect. The interviews in our imagination are idealistic: every question anticipated, every answer perfect, and the hiring manager shouts “You’re hired!” as the top-of-range offer letter goes out the next day.
In actuality, you spill your water on the desk. You get a feeling in the pit of your stomach that the interviewer hates something you said.
Maybe they challenge your responses. Don’t let the small stuff deflate you, because you can recover from a bad moment, and chances are it’s not as big a deal as you believe. Keep on truckin’. Perfection isn’t required. Flexibility, perseverance, and the ability to overcome obstacles are.
The Product Is You (Tips 26-32)
26. Know what’s on your resume. Be prepared for questions about anything and everything on it. Many people don’t write their own resumes, which is acceptable and often beneficial, but if it’s on your CV, you own it.
Don’t be caught off guard by a question about a job from eight years ago.
27. Confidence sells. Never underestimate its power. Build it before the meeting by investing in preparation, because the number one confidence maker is being ready.
28. Know your product: YOU. You are the product and the service, so know your skills, strengths, accomplishments, work history, and results. Self-awareness is critical, and understanding what you’re good at is where it starts.
29. Speak their language, not yours. When interviewing in a new space, learn the acronyms and domain terminology in advance. But when discussing your own positions, drop the jargon, because the hiring manager may not know your acronyms. When in doubt, use language anyone can understand.
30. Work with the hiring manager. They request 30-60-90 plans and presentations so they can learn what it’s like to work with you. Be responsive, send a thank you note after each interview, and make it easy for them, just as you would if they were already your boss.
31. Be social. Post-interview, invite the people you’ve met to your LinkedIn network. It’s a great way to remind them of your interest and add another touchpoint.
32. Do it today, not tomorrow. When given options, book the first possible interview day. Always picking the furthest date out gives the impression you’re not interested. If ever there were a time to throw your whole heart, mind, and body into what you’re doing, it’s before the interview ever begins.
Think, Act, and Plan
The keys to interview success are your ability to think, act, and plan effectively. Use this list to refine your skills through preparation, and you’re bound to have offers to choose from.
Before you know it, you’ll be selecting the best job from multiple offers. Now imagine what that will do for your sales career. For the full journey from prep through follow-up, start at the sales interview preparation hub.
