10 Sales Manager Interview Questions Used in Situational Interviews

Congratulations! You’ve landed a Sales Manager interview. That’s no easy feat. Now, don’t let the fear of acing your interview scare you off. To help you adequately prepare, we’ve created a list of situational questions you may get asked in your interview.

Keep reading to learn what situational questions are, how to answer them and common Sales Manager interview questions!

What is a Situational Question?

A situational interview question often starts with the phrases:

• “Describe a time when…”
• “Share an example of a situation where…”

These are questions that help interviewers understand how you would react in certain situations based on your past behaviors. Situational interview questions are also called “behavioral questions.”

You should always go into an interview expecting situational questions. These questions give the interviewer insights on your character and soft skills. Soft skills, like compassion and empathy, are important because they help create a positive work environment.

Soft skills are more difficult to develop, so interviewers might even value soft skills more than hard skills (technical skills that the job requires of you). That’s why situational questions are especially important to ace.

How to Respond to Situational Questions

Situational interview questions might instill a sense of fear in you. You’re not alone if that’s the case, but there’s a way to make situational interview questions work for you – you just have to know how to answer them.

When you respond to situational interview questions, it’s best to use the STAR method. The STAR method stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result. Here’s a breakdown of each aspect of your STAR response:

Situation: Describe the event or situation you were in Task: Explain the task you had to complete Action: Describe what action you took to complete your task Results: Conclude by describing the results of your efforts

By using the STAR method, you ensure you’re providing a comprehensive answer. You’ll give enough detail, yet stay organized throughout your answer, which will impress your interviewers.

Thinking of STAR responses might not be so easy on the spot, so keep reading for a list of common Sales Manager interview questions that you can use to practice creating STAR responses. When you’re asked one of these questions in your interview, you’ll know exactly what situation to describe and how to describe it!

3 Sales Manager Questions Used in Situational Interviews

Now that you know what situational questions are and how to answer them, let’s dive into Sales Manager interview questions. We’ll also highlight answers we would recommend for each question.

1. Describe a time when you failed to meet your sales goals.

Questions about failing can make a lot of us nervous, but your reactions to these moments of failure show a lot about your character. Do you give up and go home? Or do you learn from your mistakes?

Don’t be afraid of failure questions. You can use these questions to your advantage to impress your interviewer. Here’s how we would recommend answering this question. We’ll put parentheses to illustrate how we’re using the STAR method throughout our answer:

“It was the week before Christmas, and a lot of consumers were showing up for sales discussions, but no one was buying (Situation). I only had two more sales that I needed before the end of the week (Task). Friday afternoon, I was starting to feel down on myself, but then I remembered the advice I always gave my sales team when they didn’t meet their sales goals. I wrote down all the positive steps I took to successfully sell this week, and then I wrote down the mistakes I made for the consumers that didn’t buy (Action). I might not have met that sales goal, but after we came back from Christmas, I doubled my sales goal (Results).”

In this answer, you’re showing that you’re able to learn from your failure and drive results the next time you have a goal to reach.

2. Can you describe a time where you had to let a salesperson go?

As a sales manager, you’ll be in charge of managing your sales team. This role isn’t just about being able to sell. You also need to be skilled at managing people. In your sales manager interview, be prepared for situational questions about how you manage others.

In this answer, you want to demonstrate your compassion and empathy for the salesperson you let go of. Also, you want to explain how you tried to avoid firing them (at least in the beginning). Try to explain how you helped the salesperson improve at their job. Also, when you talk about finally firing them, don’t highlight their mistakes or lack of skills. Speak gently about the salesperson you fired.

Here’s an example of how we would recommend answering this question:

“I had one salesperson that was on my team for a few years, and he was always excellent at his job (Situation). Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, he had an extreme decline in his sales. Since he had been so successful in the past, I knew he had the ability inside of him, so I set out to help him improve his numbers (Task). I had daily meetings with him to discuss his sales strategies, let him sit in on my sales, and gave him resources that helped me improve my sales numbers (Action). Unfortunately, in the end, his numbers never improved and he admitted he just wasn’t passionate about the industry anymore. I let him go, but I helped him get a job by connecting him to an old friend in an industry he wanted to step into (Result).”

3. Tell me about a time where a conflict arose on a team you managed. How did you navigate this?

Conflict mitigation is an essential soft skill, especially for managers. Of course, there will be conflicts on your team, but how you navigate it is more important than the conflict itself. You can de-escalate or escalate the situation, depending on your reaction.

Here’s how we would recommend answering this question:

“There was a conflict on my sales team when one salesperson ‘stole’ another salesperson’s lead (Situation). They both came to me in the middle of their heated argument, and I knew I had to de-escalate the conflict (Task). I saw it as a learning opportunity for the entire sales team, so I called a team meeting to talk about the situation. I explained that while usually, we give the leads to the salesperson that pulled them in, that employee hadn’t been there at the time the lead came in. It would be unreasonable to send the lead home and ask them to come back at a time when the employee was back. It was perfectly acceptable for the second salesperson to step in. However, to avoid this in the future, I explained how my sales team could set up a follow-up meeting with the leads they pull in. They also should focus on nurturing their leads so that when the lead comes back in, they want to speak with you (Action). We talked about strategies to get leads to come back to their original salesperson, which increased our overall sales that month (Result).”

More Situational Sales Manager Interview Questions

Here’s a list of a few more situational sales manager interview questions (without sample answers), so that you can start practicing on your own:

• Pretend I'm a sales rep who has missed quota three months in a row. What would you say?
• Describe the most challenging sales call you have ever had. How did you manage it?
• Give me an example of a time you had to implement a difficult change for your sales team.
• Describe a time where you had a tight deadline to meet. How did you meet it?
• Pretend I'm a sales rep who has missed quota three months in a row. What would you say?
• Describe how you have trained a new salesperson in the past.
• Tell me about your greatest sales accomplishment.

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