If the candidate has a personal reason for wanting to sell your product or service in particular, they’ll likely approach their job with more passion and care. Whether you’re hiring your very first sales development rep, or have a well-established SDR program, these questions can help you identify the very best prospectors. This question identifies candidates with a growth mindset who learn from the sales industry’s best.
Money, achievement, helping customers, being No. 1 — there are a lot of potential answers to this question. What makes an excellent answer versus a bad one will hinge on your company’s culture. While this question may be tough to answer on the fly without information about a company or product, the rep should still be able to provide an idea of how they’d qualify prospects. This question assesses a candidate’s ability to see loss as a learning experience. Selling is about more than listing a product’s or service’s benefits and features. This question lets your candidate show how well they can share knowledge and walk you through a new concept.
What role does social media play in your selling process?
For instance, if cold calling is central to your process, a candidate who abhors it won’t be a fit for your company. But beware of reps who prioritize quotas over truly giving customers what https://wizardsdev.com/en/vacancy/sales-development-representative/ they need — or withholding what they don’t. If they nail the description and are genuinely interested in explaining the concept, they should excel in explaining your product to prospects.
As well as how regularly they iterate and experiment with new approaches. Use these questions to assess a candidate’s personal traits and cognitive skills. Use these questions to identify a candidate’s technical knowledge and abilities. While compensation is important to every candidate, it should not be the only driver. A thoughtful answer shows that the candidate is fulfilled by this role—beyond a simple paycheck.
Top hard skills interview questions for hiring sales development representatives
People who have worked in customer service, retail, or the restaurant industry have undoubtedly dealt with complaints. If the candidate was able to keep their cool under pressure, they’re likely well-equipped to field objections and handle rejection as an SDR. They don’t have to believe that the customer is always right, but they should maintain that the customer always deserves to be heard and supported. As Daniel Pink argued in his book Drive, internal motivators such as autonomy, mastery, and purpose often trump external motivators like money or prestige.
When it comes to entry-level SDRs, sales leaders often want to understand their motivations for choosing this role as a career starter. Top candidates highlight their strengths and the value they will add to the company through the position. Despite being crucially important, the interview is still just one stage of the full hiring process. A process that can be time and resource-consuming, often based on subjective data, and prone to biases. Coachability is critical for sales development reps. Observe how well the candidate incorporates your feedback into their second attempt. This will indicate their level of coachability, as well as demonstrate their listening skills.
What Interview Questions to ask a Sales Development Representative?
Listen for answers that suggest the candidate has done research about your industry, your product, and its competitors. But if they haven’t, make sure their response is measured, objective, and not disparaging. You don’t want your employees to be known for bad-mouthing the competition, which will devalue your legitimacy and make your team appear to be untrustworthy. When SDRs reach out to a new prospect for the first time, the prospect might have comparison questions between your product and that of your competitors.
- This question uncovers the techniques that the potential SDR uses to assess prospects’ sales-readiness.
- Probably the most common question in any interview, this aims to understand the candidate and what they think about themselves.
- Qualifications include previous sales experience, strong communication and negotiation abilities, and proficiency in CRM software.
- Qualifications include previous sales experience, strong communication and interpersonal skills, and proficiency in CRM software.
- Collaboration and teamwork are essential in sales roles, as they help ensure the success of both individual salespeople and the company as a whole.
The benefits include a competitive base salary plus commission, opportunities for career growth, comprehensive benefits package, and a supportive work environment. The company is seeking a motivated and customer-oriented individual to join their team. The Sales Representative will be responsible for prospecting and qualifying leads, delivering persuasive product presentations, closing sales, and maintaining customer relationships. The benefits include a competitive base salary plus commission, opportunities for professional growth, comprehensive benefits package, and ongoing training and development programs. Sales reps play a vital role in driving sales success for small businesses.
Tell us a bit about yourself to access the questions.
By asking this question, interviewers want to gauge your resilience, adaptability, and self-motivation in the face of challenges. Demonstrating that you have strategies to cope with slow periods and rejections helps potential employers see that you can maintain a positive attitude and drive, even in tough situations. In a small business, you may be assigned a specific territory or market segment to focus on. It’s your responsibility to identify potential sales outlets, assess market trends and competition, and tailor your sales strategies accordingly.
Your hiring process should take these factors into consideration and adapt to the specific challenges of onboarding new sales reps. In summary, the Sales Development Representative plays a key role in a sales team, ensuring promising prospects make their way into your sales funnel. A great SDR should have a specific combination of personality traits and sales skills that are necessary to deliver in the role. These can be broken down to the 8 personality characteristics and the 5 main sales skills listed above. Are you looking to hire an exceptional Sales Development Representative? In this article, we have compiled a list of the key interview questions and a detailed breakdown of the role and what the ideal candidates look like.
You want to bring on talent that is already familiar with your team culture. If the client was not in an inclusive environment, look for a constructive response on how the last company could have done better. Collaboration might be less important at some organizations than others, but candidates who aren’t willing to collaborate at all likely won’t make pleasant co-workers. This question identifies candidates who prefer to be lone wolves versus those who believe in teamwork. This question dives into the personal motivations of a candidate and helps you decipher if a candidate wants to be in sales for the long haul. This question helps you align and match a candidate’s core values with yours.
If they can put aside their pride to move a deal forward for the company’s greater good, that’s a great sign. This question helps you know if the candidate uses customer feedback, rather than guts, to improve their sales process. Answers will differ based on what the candidate is selling and whom they’re selling to. You want to hire salespeople who are hungry for new skills and eager to learn better selling strategies. Listen to how thoroughly they describe what they’ve learned and ask which tools they used to learn about it. This question shows candidates who can identify excellent icebreakers, create a positive atmosphere for prospects, and personalize communication.
