22 Software Sales Interview Questions That Always Get Asked
This list of software sales interview questions was gathered by cross-referencing these sources:
- Personal experience (from both sides of the table)
- Anecdotes from colleagues
- Various sources on the internet (including HubSpot, Sales Hacker, and Career Contessa)
There is a longer version of this list (hundreds of questions), but these are 20 of the questions that most commonly recur in software sales interviews:
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Tell me about yourself.
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What do you know about our company?
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Why do you want to work for our company?
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Why are you leaving your current company?
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What percentage of quota did you achieve in the past month/quarter/year?
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Where do/did you rank on your current/previous sales team?
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Why did you choose a career in sales?
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What are your long-term career goals?
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Why should we hire you?
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Sell me this pen.
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What gets you up in the morning?
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How do you motivate yourself?
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Walk me through a sale from prospecting to closing.
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Tell me about a sale that you lost.
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Tell me about a sale that you won.
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Tell me about a time you had to deal with a difficult customer.
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What’s your strategy for handling objections?
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What would you do if you were behind on your quota?
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Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager.
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Would you describe yourself as a team player?
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What do you do for fun?
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Do you have any questions for me?
Practice, practice, practice.
You were probably already thinking of your own answers to each question as you were reading through them.
Write those down!
Make flashcards with the questions on one side and your answers on the other.
And then practice with a friend or career coach as if it were a real-life interview.
Build confidence.
If you’ve already written down your answers and practiced them out loud a dozen times, you’ll be less worried about remembering what you’re supposed to say during the interview.
This way, you’ll feel more confident going into the interview so you can focus on being yourself and connecting with the interviewer in a natural way.
Don’t try to prepare for every single question.
It’s not possible.
There will always be some degree of quick wit and “thinking on your feet” in an interview (especially a sales interview).
But if you prepare answers for the most common questions, then you can use these answers for all the questions that are similar, but just slightly different.
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