171 Sales Director Interview Questions

 
The Sales Director role is considered to be the lifeblood of many companies because of the strategic and operational role they play in the success of the business.

Recruiting for the role can be a painstaking experience, especially when there are so many good candidates out there.

How can you attract the right one for your business?

How can you differentiate the great from the average, so you stand a better chance of choosing the right person?

The quality of your questions will make the biggest difference in this challenging process.

Contents

• Industry And Market Interview Questions
• Sales Leadership Interview Questions
• Personal Qualities Interview Questions
• Sales Performance Interview Questions
• Specific Job-Role Interview Questions
• Dealing with Clients

 

Interview questions for Sales Directors

Below I’ve listed 171 interview questions that will help you sort the wheat from the chaff if you’re interviewing a Sales Director.

And if you’re a Sales Manager or a Sales Leader applying for a Sales Director role, please take notice of these so you can prepare effectively for your upcoming interview. Sales Director Skills are different than that of a sales manager. There are some similarities and some big differences.

Industry And Market Interview Questions

These are questions based around how well the Director of Sales understands the marketplace and how they will create a strategy and a plan to dominate it.

1. Help me understand your approach to our particular vertical markets and examples of net new name business won.
2. How will you address your relative lack of experience in the xxx industry?
3. Could you describe your achievements to date in the xxx industry?
4. How would those achievements assist you in performing well for our company?
5. Tell me about your viewpoint on how buyers in this industry have changed over the last 5-10 years
6. What do these changes mean to your role as (Director of Sales)?
7. What future changes do you see in this industry that will affect the way you develop your team?
8. How would you best protect our margins at key customers in an increasingly competitive environment?
9. Explain your understanding of the market as you see it at the moment and the direction it may take in the future
10. How do you stay updated with the latest trends in this industry?
11. What tools do you use to track these trends and changes?
12. What tools do you use to predict changes in the industry?
13. Explain your sales plan to penetrate other local, regional, and foreign markets?
14. What market trends do you think are the most critical?
15. What do you think you can do to stimulate a significant change in the sales industry?
16. What do you know about data analysis?
17. What are some of the data analysis tools you have used in the past?
18. What are some of the most effective sales techniques that you know of?
19. How would you use these sales techniques to improve our company’s standing in the market?
20. What technology are you using to improve your sales marketing?
21. Some methods employed by sales companies in the past have now become obsolete. Can you identify them?
22. How will you replace those obsolete methods with new ones in our organisation?
23. How will you convince the board to replace old tactics with those you propose?
24. What do you think is the one thing that is lacking in the sales & marketing industry that needs to be highlighted?
25. Do you think our sales strategy should evolve if the market evolves?
26. What are some of the markets and partners we should collaborate with that will add value to our company?

Sales Leadership Interview Questions

Sales manager interview questions and topics around senior leadership are always hot questions to ask a sales director in an interview.

27. This role involves handling remote teams. How would you seek to engage a remote team with members in different cities/countries?
28. How would you manage a team with conflicting demands from internal stakeholders?
29. How would you expect a sales team to motivate themselves?
30. How would you go about recruiting great sales talent?
31. How do you evaluate a person’s sales skills, other than the results they achieve?
32. What kind of motivational processes do you use to engage a sales team?
33. Other than your team earning money and hitting sales targets, how do you judge success in your team?
34. Talk me through how you would develop a poor-performing member of your team
35. How would you deal with a sales team that has lost its passion and motivation, even though they have great potential? What sales team motivation ideasdo you have?
36. Apart from sending your people on Sales Courses, how else do you develop your Sales Managers and Salespeople?
37. Describe how you would deal with conflict between your team members
38. How many team members did you lead at your previous company?
39. How many team members do you think you can manage at a time?
40. Will you be able to handle a large team?
41. As a leader, what can you do to add to the quality of the work your team produces?
42. How did you build your teams previously?
43. Tell us how you directly managed the teams?
44. How would you describe your leadership style?
45. Do you have any kind of experience in recruiting new people?
46. How do you go about building a team for Sales Operations?
47. What kind of a team is needed for Sales Operations?
48. Why do you wish to work in a leadership capacity?
49. What qualities do you think you have that make you a good leader?
50. How would you effectively deal with a disagreement between your team member and a client?
51. How would you assess which tasks to assign to each of your sales team members?
52. What is your prior experience in encountering challenging clients? How would you go about dealing with them?
53. How can you help our company prosper?
54. What, as a leader, would you do to ensure that your sales team meets its goal in a given time?
55. How would you train a new salesperson on your team? Will you be arranging any selling skills training courses for your team members?
56. In your opinion, what kind of training is essential and relevant for a salesperson to have?
57. Do you think you can fire someone if the situation demands it?
58. What has been your experience with laying off people?
59. How would you respond to a competitor that has been attempting to take some portion of our market share?
60. What will you do to make sure that your team members understand your vision as a sales director for the company?
61. What steps will you take to ensure that your company does not lose its clients via effective key account management processes?
62. In your previous job, did you set sales goals for your team members?
63. What strategies did you use to set those goals?
64. How will you ensure a competitive yet healthy environment for your sales team members?
65. How are you with setting goals for your sales team members? Do you set goals that are achievable and desirable?
66. Will you be able to build a sales strategy for our company?
67. Will you be able to come up with a sales process for our company?
68. What is your vision for our structure of Sales Operation? How do you think it should evolve with the growth of the company?
69. What will be your most immediate plan of action once you take up this position in our company?
70. Suppose the company is on the verge of losing one of its biggest deals. What strategies will you undertake to make sure that it does not lose it?
71. What hindrances do you think mismanagement can pose to your sales team members?
72. Can you tell us about your decision-making process?
73. How capable are you of making decisions that might be the most beneficial for the company and its success?
74. How capable are you of leading more than one team?