It is said that the best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour. Small wonder that competency, also known as behavioural, interviews are increasingly used to identify and secure Sales talent.
Competencies of a successful Sales professional include organisational skills, relationship building, new business focus, influencing people, resilience and ambition. A competency based Sales interview, therefore, encourages you to discuss scenarios in which you exhibited an ability to:
  • Exceed sales targets – you may be asked to explain what the target was, how you managed the process and to what extent you delivered.
     
  • Handling difficult clients – you may be asked to describe the challenge, clearly explain what you did to overcome the problem and how this benefited the business.
     
  • Hunger and ambition –  you may be asked to give examples of those times you’ve gone the extra mile and the sacrifices you made along the way to get a result.
     
  • Influencing people – you may be asked to give examples of how you convinced a client or one of your reports to try a new approach thanks to your intervention.
 You might think about putting together a ‘brag file’ to provide evidence of your successes, including P60s, league tables and references.