Sales Account Executive interview questions and answers
Use these sample Sales Account Executive interview questions to assess candidates’ sales skills and hire the best fit for your company.
Sales Account Executive Interview Questions
Sales Account Executives provide excellent customer service to maintain company-client relationships at high standards. They achieve sales quotas while keeping clients satisfied.
As with all sales roles, you should look for people who can lead a pleasant discussion and are interested in your products/services. These individuals interact with key clients, so opt for candidates who are professional and portray your company in the best light.
Use the following questions to discover how familiar your candidates are with sales procedures and software. Behavioral and situational questions will also help you understand how they’ll approach challenges on the job (e.g. customers complaints and contract negotiations.)
Operational and Situational questions
- What arguments would you use to persuade potential clients to consider our company?
- When would you stop pursuing a prospective client who keeps giving you excuses not to buy the product/service?
- Would you use social media to identify prospective clients? If so, how would you do it?
- How would you prioritize fixing problems multiple clients were having at once?
Role-specific questions
- What CRM software have you used? What features do you find the most helpful?
- Walk me through a successful cold call.
- What makes a demo presentation effective?
- What do you know about our products/services? What differentiates us from our competition?
Behavioral questions
- Describe a time you dealt with a dissatisfied customer. How did you handle the situation?
- What was the most difficult deal you closed? What were the obstacles, and how did you overcome them?
- Tell me about a time you successfully negotiated a customer contract.
- How do you handle rejection from a potential client?
- Have you ever failed to reach a sales quota? What went wrong and what did you learn from the experience?