Sales come with extensive opportunities for professional success. On a contrary, only 20% of people can actually find sales success. In a fast-paced industry, you need to know the modern strategies to get the highest success. Until you are ready to grab the top-notch opportunities, you cannot get a better job position.
These types of interview questions are asked to freshers as well as experienced candidates. So, to encounter this one, you need to analyze your past activities and find where you put your best efforts and got the most successful result.
Before you prepare for this answer, you need to know what sales success exactly is and what interviewers would look for in this answer.
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What is sales success?
Definition of success varies for people and one can’t really give an exact idea of sales success until he had the experience. Unlike an average salesperson, sales should not be like a monotonous routine but there should be a goal. It may sound simple but to set a proper goal, you need to balance between three very important metrics- knowledge, skill, and discipline.
- Knowledge
As a student, we do learn a lot about sales, its theory and practical application. But, when you get into the field, you need to keep this thrust active. You cannot implement the same strategy to get successful for all the sales targets. With updated industry knowledge, you can push the boundaries and that leads you to the most successful sales.
According to research by Hubspot, 44% of the salesperson depend on their manager to get tips and strategies. So, if you’re a manager, you need to have legit knowledge and if you’re an employee then you need to know the knowledge to implement the tips.
- Skills
To use the knowledge in a proper direction and get the best possible sales outcome, relevant skills are equally important. The best part is, skills can be developed if someone is willing to learn. To close a successful deal, you need to practice the skills. For example, if you have good communication skills but you are not motivated enough to communicate with the prospect, it won’t take you to success.
- Discipline
Or we can phrase it as a motivated mindset. Better decision-making skills let you proceed fast to a successful career. And discipline refers to these important skills like active listening, management, communication, and leadership.
How do you define your sales success?
According to your work experience, your definition of sales success would vary. But, in your answer, the former points should be present. For a sales manager, sales success can be to motivate his team with a better incentive. For a call centre employee, sales success can be to increase call volume by 20%.
It is not important what interviewers would think sales success is. Instead, it is important what you think and how you draft the answer. With this question, the interviewers would look for your confidence, your skills, and most importantly how passionate you are about this job. Usually, this question can be asked after your share your basic intro or answer some situational questions. Another important part is maintaining the sync. When you mention your skills or your motivation in the interview for some question, stick to them and justify in these types of analytical questions. If you’re not consistent enough, the interviewers would doubt your potential.
How to answer your most successful sale?
As mentioned earlier, you need to comprehend your sales skills with a proper context to share your most successful sale. You can use this opportunity to mention your best skills as a salesperson. Here are three major notes for you to prepare the best answer for this sales interview question.
- Prepare a story
Instead of a straight answer, try to narrate a story with a context, action, and result. To break the monotony and attract the interviewer’s complete attention, your answer should have a narrative approach with what was your role or responsibility, what was a situation, what was your take, and how did you seize the success. All of these points need to be covered in the answer as a coherent story.
- Share all your skills
When you frame the story, the next step is to include all the sales skills you have that include both core skills like marketing and softs skills like active listening. Do not hesitate to share your achievements or skills as that seems you’re underconfident. But you also need to maintain the balance between being too shy and being over-excited.
- Describe the ‘Why’ part
As you told them about the incident and your action, explain briefly why that method worked and how you managed to get the most successful sales This portion carries the highest importance as your skills like giving an explanation, analysis and describing a situation is included.
Also Check – How to make your prospects instantly curious about your products?
Sample Answers:
#1
My most successful sales are not about any single incident but a similar pattern. I worked with a goods transport company and I was the assistant transport manager. My responsibility was to maintain the delivery system. For two long years, I managed difficult situations where we need to complete urgent delivery but we had fewer transport vehicles or situations where any of our clients are putting frequent complaints about poor delivery.
To manage urgent delivery, I always maintain a backup team to avoid any rush and try to get personalised feedback for our service. It helped us to get organic recommendations. To resolve client complaints, I try to understand the root cause and then form a small team. I always speak to the customer with an empathetic tone to feel them cared.
Why it works:
In this answer, you mentioned your regular work process with an explanation of steady success for the company. It would work as a good answer because you mentioned continuous success instead of a single incident. Also, you emphasise your skills like communication, planning, and analysis through the answer.
#2
In my last job, I was working as a travel agent for my company. I can recall a situation where my client complained about the hotel food that you have booked for them. He asked to return 40% of the booking price for cheap food. As we worked as a third-party agent between the hotel and the tourist, we were unable to return the money.
I connected with the client personally and listen to their complaint properly. Then, on the behalf of our company and our customer, I mailed the hotel about the incident. I asked them to solve this to continue good business relation with us. They rescinded in two days and agreed to refund the food bill to the customer. The tourists were happy and they became our retaining customer for the past two years.
Why it works:
In this answer, you described the situation first and then your take on it. Finally, you explained how it helped your company in long run. This answer reflects how transparent you can be in the job, maintaining the balance between customer satisfaction and company policy and ethics.
4 Tips to Remember
1. Answer this question to the point instead of taking too much time explaining your skills or how you got an appreciation. Interviewers will also judge on the basis of your speaking skills throughout the interview round.
2. Do not try to memorize the answers and talk about them in a monotonous way. Learn a bit of voice modulation and use some pause while answering. It will help the interviewer to understand the situation better.
3. Before the interview, try to discuss these questions with an experienced person or any of your friends to understand how well prepared you are. It would be better to connect with someone from a company where you’re going for an interview for exclusive tips.
4. Take inspiration from the answer available on the internet or from any person but always talk about your own experience only. If you feel that you don’t have any such exciting stories, then try to recall where you put all your efforts and got good results. Interviews would appreciate an honest answer and understand your potential anyway.
Summary
This is to say, to answer this question, you need to be motivated to get the best result. With a common aim, you cannot land an extraordinary sales deal. Your core skills should be used as your best performance in order to showcase your potential. Success can only be defined when you know the next goal to be achieved. In your interview answer, it is mandatory to showcase this positive attitude.