SaaS Sales Interview Tips

At Salient, we’ve had the privilege of placing over 3000 GTM professionals across the APJ region. It’s fair to say that we’ve collated some juicy IP around what drives success in a sales interview.

We have collated some of our top SaaS sales interview tips to help you sell yourself to the hiring manager, both through your resume and during the interviews.

Tips for Your Next Sales Interview

Sales interview tip 1: Research the Company

Yep, the standard ‘research the company’ is often overlooked or underbaked. Be sure to spend time really thinking about the company’s market opportunity and role scope, and how your profile aligns.

Remember, the moment the interview starts, you’re showcasing your sales skills. Knowing a company and solution background shows how well you can internalise product features and benefits and prepare smart questions based on this. More importantly it’s an example of how you show up for your prospect meetings.

Sales interview tip 2: Showcase your Storytelling Skills

Sales interviews are about effective communication.  Interviewers will be assessing your communication skills through the lens of ‘how you will communicate with our customers’. And the role of good storytelling in sales can’t be underestimated. Your customer may be nodding politely if you’re talking features and product jargon, but will truly engage if listening to a story about how a similar customer solved a problem they are facing.

Have stories ready, but be sure to keep them sharp and succinct whilst balancing talking and listening. These should be strong narratives that you’ve rehearsed when answering questions like, “Tell me about your career so far,” or “What are your career goals?”, or “Tell me about a deal that you lost and what you learnt from the experience”.

Answer career questions by telling them about your skills, experiences, objectives of your past sales roles, and how you met expectations. Whilst the narratives should be cogent and engaging, also let the interviewer know you can elaborate further on any key points if needed.

Sales interview tip 3: Articulate your Sales Methodology

An important sales interview tips is to being able to articulate how you sell and how you leverage different sales methodologies applicable to the customer context. Don’t assume because your interviewer knows sales that they aren’t looking for strong detail on this – they want to see how well trained you are and your instinct for the deal.

High performers are always honing their craft so it’s a good idea to discuss self led learning of new methodologies and approaches as well. Most reps will use different aspects of different methodologies to suit their authentic style and needs of the customer – eg, maybe you’ve found yourself leveraging ‘path to power’ in recent times due to economic conditions, or ‘teach, tailor, control’ because you’re evangelising a new solution.

Sales interview tip 4: Communicate your Sales Discipline Effectively

The less glamorous aspect of selling is how you ‘chop wood and carry water’. Sales leaders will want to understand how disciplined and hard-working you are – especially when riding the ups and downs of a sales role. Why? Because they know that work ethic and discipline usually trump talent when it comes to dictating who will be an elite performer within a sales team.

Be clear in articulating your strategy to ensure you hit quota – how you keep yourself doing the hard things consistently when times are tough, and what you do differently from others.  Eg, how you keep going when facing a lot of rejection or doing repetitive activities like prospecting that might get tedious over time. Present your personal mental roadmap to drive success – day in, day out.

Sales Interview Tip 5: Be clear on your numbers

You must, must, must be across your numbers and be clear on how you achieved them.

Interviewers aren’t expecting outstanding results quarter in, quarter out. Rather, they want to see consistent strong performance.  Show that you know what worked well for you, what didn’t, and how you used data to change your approach or draw insights for the future. Go into your conversion ratios and demonstrate that you reverse engineer your target into daily, monthly, and quarterly activity to reach your sales quota.

Sales Interview Tip 6: Showcase your sales superpowers

Bring yourself to life as a value proposition for the company. Do you win because you are excellent in controlling sales process? Have deep, well nurtured networks across the companies core ICP? Maybe you are a strong in prospecting and building a sizeable funnel.

What sales strengths do you want the interview to remember you for? Pick 2-3 that are authentic to you and relevant for the role and context of the company. Prepare some strong stories that highlight how you leveraged those strengths to win.

Example Sales Interview Questions

1. Walk me through a deal that you lost to a competitor and what you learnt in that process.
2. Tell me about your typical ICP and what’s important to them?
3. What sets you apart from others in your team who didn’t perform as well as you?
4. Can you tell me about a time you were able to get a prospect to create budget when there wasn’t one?
5. Can you tell me how you shape your value proposition to different stakeholders across the account?
6. How have you worked as part of a deal team to get an opportunity across the line?

Example Questions to Ask Your Interviewer

1. What do your most successful reps do that others don’t?
2. How would you see the sales strengths I articulated drive success in this role (or not)?
3. How do you see the competitive landscape playing out for X segment across the next couple of years?
4. How does your team leverage AI in the sales process?
5. I saw X (demonstrating your research on news articles, financial reports etc) about this company. What are your thoughts on this/how do you see that impacting X?

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