Question Bank: Sales & Business Development

Are you looking for your purple squirrel in Sales & Business Development? Not to worry, we here are ConveyIQ by Entelo are here to help with some questions that can help you locate your purple squirrel!

Below, you will find questions divided into sub-categories for Sales & Business Development.

Account Management

1. Communication is a vital tool for an account manager. How would you explain your communication skills?
2. Give an example of an experience where you overcame adversity?
3. Have you ever been in a sales situation where your ethics were challenged?
4. How do you react when faced with an angry or difficult client?
5. If you had a customer and he just signed a contract for minimal technical support. It's 10 minutes before technical support closes and they desperately need help. What do you do?
6. Tell me about a situation where your contact person changed at a key account, how did you adjust to the new contact?
7. Tell us about a difficult account that you had to manage. How did you keep the customer happy?
8. Tell us about a recent account that you failed to keep. What did you learn from the experience?
9. Tell us about a time when a customer was not completely satisfied with your product or service. What did you do to "make it up" to them and were you able to keep them as a customer?
10. Tell us about some past accounts that you have managed. What did you do to keep customers satisfied?
11. What do you find to be the most difficult part of account management?
12. What is the most important thing you do each day?
13. What is your 30-day plan?
14. What kind of work environment do you prefer?
15. Why do you think you will be a good salesperson?
16. Would you like to ask us any questions?

Analytical Reasoning

1. As a sales professional, what do you see as your primary and secondary roles within a company?
2. Give us an example of when you had to make a tough decision in a fraction of a second.
3. Have you had experience in web analysis/ search engine marketing/ online media/ marketing?
4. How do you feel about entertaining your clients?
5. How would your present prospects and customers describe you as their sales representative?
6. What are some of the challenges you see that are facing this industry?
7. What do you like and dislike about the products or services you’re selling now and why?
8. What do you see as the key issues in negotiating?
9. What do you see as the key skills in closing?
10. What sales skills do you think are most important to having success in sales?
11. What steps will you take to increase our profits? / What can you do to make a meaningful contribution to our company?

Business Development

1. Are you open to traveling extensively?
2. Can you give me evidence of a time when you demonstrated initiative in a job?
3. Does ‘Business development’ mean ‘sales’?
4. Give us some tips for generating leads for business development.
5. How do you plan to bring in new customers?
6. How do you plan to identify and develop new business opportunities?
7. How do you plan to network with employees of other companies and potential customers?
8. How IT literate are you?
9. How much does the firm influence a business development professional in choosing his or her target markets?
10. How would you control the internal factors affecting the business processes?
11. If hired, how do you plan to increase the brand awareness of the company?
12. What achievements are you most proud of?
13. What are some of the best ways to use technology for business development?
14. What are the most important internal and external factors that affect business development?
15. What changes would you make if you could go back in time?
16. What does your current job involve?
17. What has been your latest marketing activity? What kind of response did you experience from this activity?
18. What have you enjoyed most in your career to date?
19. What is your attitude to authority?
20. What priorities and strategies would you consider in developing a business?

Experience & Professional Development

1. Describe the sales activities in which you were engaged in your last job.
2. Did you have assigned quotas or targets at your last position? What percent of the time did you meet or exceed them?
3. Did you work while going to school? In what positions?
4. Give an example of an experience where you overcame adversity?
5. Give an example of a situation in which you provided a solution to an employer.
6. Give an example of a time in which you worked under deadline pressure.
7. Have you ever done any volunteer work? What kind?
8. Have you ever quit a job? Why?
9. How do you think a former supervisor would describe your work?
10. How would you describe your abilities as a business developer? As a business maintainer?
11. In what sales venues have you been involved?
12. In your current position, how much time would you say you spend directly with prospects and customers throughout the sales day and what specifically do you do with them?
13. What are your favorite selling books?
14. What did you enjoy most about your last employment? Least?
15. What do you do personally for your professional development?
16. What do you like and dislike about presentations and why?
17. What is the largest group you’ve presented to (externally/ internally)?
18. What is your biggest achievement in your career?
19. What job-related skills have you developed?
20. What were your responsibilities from the commencement to the end of the sales cycle?
21. What would you say your one or two biggest failures or mistakes were? What did you learn from them?

General

1. As a sales rep, what support, either administrative or sales assistance, did you receive?
2. Have you ever been engaged in team sales?
3. How do you organize a presentation?
4. How many first appointments do you have each week?
5. How much of your time was devoted to sales vs. other assigned duties?
6. In your current sales environment, describe the process you go through to qualify your prospects?
7. What attracts you to the industry?
8. What does servicing the sale mean to you?
9. What was the best sales training program you have participated in?
10. What was the worst sales role you have been engaged in?
11. Why do you think you will be a good salesperson?

Most Popular Questions

1. Describe the best sales incentive plan you have worked under.
2. Describe the ideal sales job from your perspective.
3. Describe the ideal sales support you would need to be most effective as a sales rep.
4. Have you ever been in a sales situation where your ethics were challenged?
5. How do you move forward from a string of rejections?
6. How many rejections do you take in a typical week?
7. How were your incentives structured in your last job?
8. How would those with whom you work now, across all areas of the company, describe you and the work you do?
9. How would you rate yourself as a closer?
10. How would your prior sales managers describe your sales capabilities? For business development? For enhancing existing customer business?
11. What are your long-term professional goals?
12. What are your top three open-ended questions for initial sales calls?
13. What can you do to make a meaningful contribution to our company?
14. What does customer mean to you?
15. What do you like and dislike about your sales process and why?
16. What, historically, has been your quota/target penetration ratio?
17. What steps will you take to increase our profits?
18. What type of sales cycle is most rewarding to you? A long cycle for a big-ticket item or a series of smaller, more frequent sales.

Objection Handling

1. How do you handle price objections?
2. How do you overcome buyer objections?
3. What do you say when the prospect says everything looks good, except the price?
4. What do you say when the prospect says send me some information?

Problem Solving

1. Describe a couple of instances, big or small, where you took a different tack in achieving an objective than was the company standard?
2. Describe a situation with a client or prospect where you made a mistake. How did you handle the error?
3. Describe a time where a creative approach to meeting an objective didn’t work and what you did next?
4. Describe a time you led a group of people, the primary challenges you faced, and how you handled them.
5. Describe a time your company did not deliver on its product or service and how you responded?
6. Describe one or two of the most difficult challenges and/ or rejections you’ve faced in the past and how you responded?
7. Give us an example of when you had to make a tough decision in a fraction of a second.

Sales Leadership & Management

1. As a sales leader, how did you go about recruiting your sales staff?
2. How would you describe your sales management style?
3. Rate your management skills on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 representing excellent management skills.
4. Provide three examples from your past work experiences that demonstrate your selected number is accurate.
5. Tell me about a time when you reorganized a department or significantly changed employee work assignments. How did you approach the task? How did the affected employees respond to your actions?
6. What criteria do you use to evaluate your team members?
7. When you have entered a new workplace in the past, as a manager or supervisor, describe how you have gone about meeting and developing relationships with your new coworkers, supervisors, and reporting staff.

Sales Process & Sales Cycle

1. Describe a time where you used a creative approach in meeting a sales goal or making a sale?
2. How do you ask for a referral?
3. What do you do to generate leads?
4. What do you like and dislike about the sales process and why?
5. What is your process to qualify your prospects?
6. What type of sales cycle is most rewarding to you? A long cycle for a large ticket item or smaller and more frequent sales?

Sales Skills

1. What are your three greatest sales strengths or gifts in regard to sales?
2. What are your top three open-ended questions for initial sales calls?
3. What do you see as the key skills in opening new partnerships?
4. What do you think are the most important skills in succeeding in sales?

Work Ethic

1. Tell me about an experience that demonstrates your work ethic.
2. What is the reason for your past success?
3. What was your most significant professional accomplishment and what did it take to achieve it?
4. What were your goals for the past three years and did you meet them?