In this unit, you’ll learn how to craft and deliver behavioral interview questions that reveal the true capabilities of sales candidates. Mastering this skill is essential for uncovering real evidence of past performance, which is the best predictor of future success in sales roles. You’ll discover how to align your questions with core competencies, tailor them for different sales positions, and avoid the common pitfalls of hypothetical or generic prompts.

Effective behavioral interviewing starts with questions that are anchored to the competencies that matter most for the role such as:

• Resilience: The ability to persist through setbacks, rejection, and challenges in the sales process, maintaining motivation and focus to achieve targets.

• Persuasion: The skill of influencing prospects and clients by clearly communicating value, addressing objections, and guiding them toward a buying decision.

• Ownership: Taking responsibility for outcomes by proactively managing opportunities, following through on commitments, and finding solutions to obstacles in the sales cycle.

• Adaptability: The capacity to adjust strategies, messaging, and approaches in response to changing customer needs, market conditions, or feedback during the sales process.

Instead of asking what a candidate would do in a situation, focus on what they have actually done. For example, rather than "How would you handle a difficult client?", ask "Tell me about a time you turned around a difficult client relationship. What steps did you take, and what was the outcome?" This approach encourages candidates to share specific stories, giving you insight into their real-world skills and decision-making.

To design these questions, first identify the key competencies for the role. Then, think of scenarios where those competencies are critical and frame your questions to draw out detailed examples from the candidate’s past.

Sales roles vary widely, so your questions should reflect the unique challenges and expectations of each position—even when assessing the same competency, such as resilience. When customizing behavioral questions for different sales roles, consider the following:

• Sales Development Representative: Focus on individual persistence and day-to-day challenges, such as handling rejection.
• Account Executive: Emphasize resilience in the context of managing complex deals and navigating setbacks with key accounts.
• Sales Manager: Center questions on leadership resilience and how the candidate supports and motivates their team through adversity.

By aligning the theme and level of your questions with the responsibilities of each role, you’ll gain deeper insights into how candidates demonstrate resilience in the situations that matter most for their success.

It’s also important to avoid hypothetical or overly broad questions, as these tend to produce vague or rehearsed answers. Here are three common problems with hypothetical interview questions:

• They invite generic responses: Candidates often give textbook or idealized answers that don’t reflect their actual behavior.
• They don’t reveal real experience: Hypotheticals focus on what someone thinks they would do, not what they have actually done.
• They make it harder to assess competencies: Without concrete examples, it’s difficult to evaluate a candidate’s true skills or decision-making process.

Instead of "How would you handle rejection?", try "Can you give me an example of a time you faced repeated rejection in sales? How did you respond, and what did you learn?" This shift ensures you’re gathering concrete, job-relevant evidence.

Here’s a short dialogue that demonstrates how to move from a hypothetical to a behavior-based question, and how it draws out a much more useful response:

• Jessica: How would you handle a situation where a project you’re responsible for starts to fall behind schedule?
• Ryan: I’d try to identify the cause of the delay and work with the team to get things back on track.
• Jessica: Thanks, Ryan. Can you tell me about a specific time when you took ownership of a problem at work? What actions did you take, and what was the result?
• Ryan: Absolutely. In my previous role, a key deliverable was at risk because of a miscommunication between our sales and support teams. I took the initiative to organize a meeting with both teams, clarified the issues, and created a shared action plan. By following up regularly, we delivered the project on time and improved our internal process for future projects.

Notice how Jessica’s follow-up shifts the conversation from a generic, hypothetical answer to a concrete example. This approach uncovers real evidence of how the candidate has handled similar situations in the past, which is far more predictive of future performance.

By focusing on real experiences and tailoring your questions to the role, you’ll be able to draw out the stories and details that matter most for hiring top sales talent. In the upcoming role-play session, you’ll have the chance to practice these techniques—asking behavior-based questions and refining your approach to get the most meaningful responses from candidates.