25 Sales Manager Interview Questions
Assess leadership, coaching, forecasting, pipeline management and strategic thinking for sales manager candidates, beyond their own personal sales record.
Sales Manager Interview Questions
25 total- 1
Why do you want to move from selling to managing salespeople, and what have you found hardest about that shift?
- 2
Describe the sales team you have led or would like to lead. How do you structure it and set expectations?
- 3
How do you set quarterly targets for individual reps and make them feel fair?
- 4
Walk me through how you build a sales forecast and how you know how reliable it is.
- 5
Tell me about a rep who was underperforming. What did you do and what was the outcome?
- 6
How do you coach a top performer who does not need much help from you?
- 7
How do you review a pipeline with a rep, and what questions do you ask?
- 8
Describe a time your team missed its target. How did you explain it and what did you change?
- 9
How do you decide which accounts or territories to assign to which rep?
- 10
How do you recruit salespeople, and what do you look for beyond past results?
- 11
Tell me about a deal that was lost and what you learned from it as a manager.
- 12
How do you handle a strong seller who ignores the process, the CRM or team rules?
- 13
What does a healthy relationship between sales and marketing look like, and how have you built it?
- 14
How do you motivate a team when the market is difficult or targets feel out of reach?
- 15
How would you structure an incentive plan, and what behaviours can a badly designed plan create?
- 16
Tell me about a time you had to deliver bad news about performance to a team member.
- 17
How do you split your time between coaching your team, managing key accounts and reporting upward?
- 18
What metrics do you follow every week, and which ones do you think are misleading?
- 19
Describe how you would onboard a new sales rep in their first ninety days.
- 20
How do you step into a key negotiation with a rep without undermining them?
- 21
Tell me about a time you disagreed with leadership about a target or a strategy. What did you do?
- 22
How would you build a sales process for a new product or a new market?
- 23
How do you keep discounting under control while still closing deals?
- 24
What do you do to keep selling skills sharp across a team of different experience levels?
- 25
Where do you see the biggest risks in running a sales team, and how do you prepare for them?
Sales Manager: let the AI hold the first interview
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