Are you a recruitment professional who has been tasked with hiring the next best sales leader? Knowing the right questions to ask – even if you have limited experience in the sales industry – can help you find a sales team champion.
Hadie Perkas, the founder of Gift Card Recruitment, offers these seven interview questions that will help you navigate your search for your next sales leader with great effectiveness and success:
7 Questions You Must Ask A Potential Sales Leader
1: “How do you define your methods of success as a salesperson?”
Every potential sales leader comes to the table with their own set of experiences, values, and personal expectations. Many will have risen the ranks as a salesperson themselves and will have built a system that they like to follow for successful sales.
Asking this question first will help you gain insight into their methods as well as their personal sales history. This can potentially open up the interview to go in several effective directions.
2: “How do you measure up against your team? Do you compete with their success?”
A true sales leader is two things: a high-performing seller and a selfless leader. As they lead their sales team and oversee clients themselves, some sales leaders may be tempted to compete with their team’s results rather than support their endeavors.
By weeding out any potential candidates who show an unhealthy competitive streak, you can ensure that they will have the ability to lead from the front effectively.
3: “Who gets the spotlight when you’re department smashes its target? The individuals directly involved or the entire team?”
Any time a team meets and exceeds a goal, it is worthy of celebration and recognition. However, in sales, exceeding goals can often come at the hands of a select few team members. How well can a sales leader both recognise an individual contribution and hard work while simultaneously encouraging the entire team?
If a sales leader can balance both of these outcomes, they are more likely to encourage individual productivity and drive while also helping the team stay unified in their pursuits.
4: “How do you delegate important tasks without losing sight of your overarching responsibilities?”
Empowerment is the name of the game as a sales leader on a growing team.
As responsibilities continue to grow and expand, it will be increasingly important that a candidate knows how to delegate the right tasks to the right team members. Encouraging and empowering team members to expand their own experience and oversight is essential, while ensuring that the sales leader still knows that responsibility ultimately rests with them.
5: “How would you manage a team member who has performed well in the past, but isn’t a team player?”
Today’s sales market requires everyone on your team to be operating together seamlessly. If one member of a team is going rogue, then the entire team will suffer for their lack of unity.
Asking this type of question will help you see deeper into a candidate’s ability to create a collaborative culture in their team as well as deploy proper judgement when working with difficult team members.
6: “What parts of your leadership job would you leave behind to close your own, imminent deals?”
This question is aimed at helping you understand how a potential sales leader will act when they must choose between the team and their personal success.
Will they make difficult decisions that benefit the business and their team, or will they lean toward choices that elevate their own personal success? These types of questions give the ability to identify their character and the ability to choose under pressure.
7: “Can you demonstrate how practiced you are at analysing sales data?”
In today’s data-driven market, decisions are often dependent on hard data. With more data being collected and analyzed than ever before, it is essential that a sales leader can handle and act on data efficiently.
By asking a potential sales leader to show their expertise with handling data, you can gain insight into how comfortable they are with using, creating, and analysing sales numbers. If a sales leader can interpret sales data quickly, they are more likely to make informed decisions that boost revenue.
Supercharge Your Recruitment With Training From The Professionals
With the right questions, you can prepare for the next sales leader interview with questions that will ensure you find the best candidate for your revenue and your culture. A strong and robust interview question set can be key to a smooth experience.
Want to learn more and find tips on how to excel at your candidate recruitment process? At Gift Card Recruitment ( GCR) we can help manage this process and offer training and coaching to managers on interview techniques as well as the full 360 recruitment campaign of a sales leadership role.
GCR works with senior leadership teams of SME’s and start-up’s to enable them to scale and grow to minimise selection errors & recruitment costs Contact – hadie@giftcardrecruitment.co.uk
