Sales Representative Interview Questions — Entry Level

This is the standard screening question for commission-only roles.

Answer honestly. Saying yes when you haven't produces a resignation in month two, and the interviewer has seen it before. If you haven't, say so and say what makes you ready for it — savings that cover a ramp, or previous experience with a heavily variable package.

Reported by candidates at SGS North America as an expectations question and, more bluntly, at CTP Distributors as "will you accept $54,000 yr?"

Have a researched range. And interrogate the commission structure as hard as the base — see the questions to ask, below.

Reported by candidates at Comcast, and it has exactly one right answer.

Say no, clearly, and then say why it's also commercially stupid: false sales surface at installation or collection and cost more than the deal was worth. Don't philosophise; the philosophising is the failure.

Also reported by candidates at Comcast. If the role is field or door-to-door, they're checking you know what you applied for. Don't pretend it's glamorous. Say what you like about the immediacy of it.

Ask what the territory boundaries actually are before you agree to anything.

Reported by candidates at Cbeyond, Comcast and ADP in near-identical phrasings — one of the most consistently asked questions in the entire role.

Reported by candidates at Johnson & Johnson. A Wyeth candidate reported being asked about their most difficult sale.

Pick a real loss you understand. The trap is blaming price — the reflex of everyone who never analysed the loss. Stronger by far is naming your own error: you never reached the decision-maker, you qualified too late, you assumed a budget you never confirmed. Then say what you changed.

Reported by candidates at Charter Communications ("a time when you had to deal with an upset customer") and at TBWA\Chiat\Day (a client who felt the creative work didn't meet expectations).

In sales this question is usually really about promises. Show that you went in person and fixed the cause, not the mood.

Keep it procedural. Sales teams have territory and account disputes constantly; the useful answer is about how it got resolved without a manager having to arbitrate.

Both reported by candidates at Stryker.

Deliberately uncomfortable, and the point is your reaction rather than your answer. Stay level. A flat denial reads as dishonest; an over-eager confession reads as unstable. Somewhere human in the middle is the pass.

The single most frequently reported question in this role, appearing at ADP (in several forms), Marcus Evans, Frito-Lay, EMC, Citysearch, Keyence, Techtronic Industries and Cook Medical.

Sales gives you an easier answer than any other profession: talk about their product as something you would sell. Who they compete with, who buys it, why you think you could move it. That answer does two things at once — it proves you researched, and it demonstrates you think like a seller.

Reported by candidates at ADP, DISH Network ("what makes a good sales person?") and Eli Lilly ("what does it mean to be a salesman?").

Avoid "I'm a people person" — that describes a receptionist. Sales is numbers, discipline and follow-up, and saying so out loud separates you from most of the room.

Both reported by candidates at ADP; strengths and weaknesses also at inVentiv Health and Griffin Greenhouse Supplies. "What pressures you?" is an unusually good question — answer it honestly and say how you manage it.

Show neither desperation nor indifference: you have a direction, and this role is a choice within it.

The honest answers are better than the noble ones. "Because the money is uncapped and I want to find out if I'm good at it" gets respect. "Because I love helping people find solutions" gets an internal eye-roll.

Say what drew you and, crucially, say what you know will be hard. A candidate who names the hard part has thought about the job; one who describes sales as relationship-building has described the pleasant part and left the job out.

At this level your only credential is what you did when nobody was paying you to do it, so this question carries more weight here than it ever will again.

Name the specific thing and what you took from it — a course, a certificate, a book you actually finished, a channel you watch, a relative's shop you stood in on weekends. Then say what changed in how you talk to people because of it. That second half is the whole answer; a list of course titles with nothing hanging off it reads like a CV line somebody bought.

Do not let a certificate stand in for experience. Interviewers ask beginners about training precisely because they are waiting for the honest version, and the candidate who says "I've done the reading, I haven't done the job" gets believed on everything they say afterwards.

You have none, and the wrong move is to inflate a part-time job into a sales career.

Convert instead. Any number you have is better than a story with no number: the upsell rate you were held to on a till, the calls you made per shift, the fundraising total, the number of people you got to a society event and how many came back. Give the number, then the thing you did that moved it.

With no track record to inspect, an entry hire is bought on one trait: how quickly you change after being told something. That makes this the centre of the interview rather than a soft question near the end.

Saying you "welcome feedback" costs nothing to say and proves nothing. Give the instance instead — the correction you were given, what you did differently on the very next attempt, and how you knew it had worked.

A small, unflattering correction beats a grand one. Remembering the detail is itself the evidence that the coaching landed, which is the thing being bought.

They want to know whether you ask why, and whether you leave the door open. "I thank them and move on" is only half right; the useful half is finding out whether it's no forever, no to the price, or no this quarter — because two of those three are worth a diary note.

It does not have to be a customer. A flatmate, a lecturer, a manager who did not want to change the rota. What they are grading is the sequence: what you understood about what they wanted before you asked for anything.

Answer it properly, because saying yes without doing the arithmetic is how people quit in month five.

Ask what the split is, what the on-target earnings assume, how long the ramp is, and — the question worth more than the other three — what percentage of the team hit target last year. Roughly half of reps miss quota in a typical organisation, so the honest answer to "are you comfortable" is "yes, if the target is one people actually hit; can you tell me what proportion of the team did?"

Asking that in an entry-level interview changes how you are seen, because it is the question of someone doing the arithmetic rather than accepting the number. It is also the most useful thing you can find out.

Technical depth is not what is being tested at this level, so the bar is embarrassingly low — and it is still easy to walk in with nothing. Know what it costs, roughly who buys it, and who else sells something like it. Five minutes of preparation is all this costs, and walking in without it is the cheapest way to lose a first interview.

Listening, mostly. Ride along with whoever is the best rep in the team, read the last twenty lost-deal notes if they exist, and learn the product's price list properly. Say you would not expect to close anything in week one, because a candidate who promises early sales at this level sounds like someone who has never done it.

A time you dealt with an angry person, a time you missed a target of any kind, and a time you had to keep going with no encouragement. These three cover the behavioural ground an entry sales interview works over, and one well-chosen job — a shift job is ideal — can supply all three.

The trap in the second one is choosing a miss that was nobody's fault. Pick one where you can say what you would do differently, and say it in one sentence rather than five.

A feature is what it is; a benefit is what it does for this specific buyer. Answer in one line and give one example from their product, not from a textbook.

If not, say not, and say you have kept a structured list of something before. The tool takes a week; the discipline of writing down what happened after every conversation is the actual skill and you can claim that if it is true.

Three, not five, and tie it to competence rather than title: carrying a full quota, owning a territory, knowing the product well enough to run a demo alone. Wanting to be a sales manager in three years, before you have sold anything, lands badly — it asks to be promoted out of the job you are interviewing for before you have started it.

The object is improvised and the exercise is constant. Candidates reported being asked to sell a pen at Pfizer, a phone at Johnson & Johnson, and a foam cup at Keyence. Hewlett-Packard candidates reported a sales role play framed as "give me your best sales…"; at Bella Pictures it was "try to get me to come to the meeting."

Almost everyone fails this the same way: they start describing the pen.

Ask first. "Before I pitch you anything — when did you last need a pen and not have one? What do you mostly write, quick notes or signatures?" Then connect what you heard to the object. Then ask for the close, out loud: "I can do two for the price of one if you take them today. Shall we?"

Three moves — qualify, connect, close. Skipping the close fails the exercise even if everything before it was fluent, because asking is the entire difference between presenting and selling.

And if the object is absurd, don't get ironic about it. Playing it straight is exactly what's being measured.

At Dell, an inside sales candidate reported a simulation, on the grounds that the job is a call centre. Prepare a ten-second open: who you are, where you're from, and why you're worth sixty seconds.

Expect to be interrupted with an objection on purpose. That's the test, not rudeness.

Reported by candidates at Saba Software, where a candidate was asked for the company's elevator pitch and value proposition.

If you get this, it's a gift — preparation alone wins it. Walk in knowing what they sell, roughly what it costs, who competes with them, and who buys it.

Reported by candidates at Kforce, in almost exactly those terms.

This is a planning question, not an enthusiasm question. Answer with arithmetic: how you cluster the territory geographically, how many dials produce one meeting, which day you protect for scheduling. "I'd work hard" is a failed answer.

Reported by candidates at YellowBrix ("do you like to cold call?") and Jan Marini ("how do you cold call?").

Don't claim to love it. Say you're good at it and demonstrate how: your opener, how you handle the first brush-off, and how many you do a day.

Reported by candidates at Johnson & Johnson, in a truncated form that reads as exactly this kind of impossible-account probe.

Show multiple entry routes — an end user rather than the buyer, an event, a referral from a shared customer, a trigger event inside the company. Persistence alone isn't a strategy.

Reported by candidates at Business Objects and MicroStrategy, the latter also asking how the candidate approaches new customers.