To answer strengths and weaknesses questions, it is important to know which behavioral traits and skills the interviewer is looking for in you for your potential impact on the company and its sales growth. Let’s go through this article to know much more about the type of question this is and what answer would fit the best impression on the interviewer.
.
.
Why do Interviewers ask about your strengths and weaknesses?
Talking about your strengths and weaknesses can be a bit intimate. Job interviewers often ask the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses at one point in the interview process. This is to see the possible asset to their company. This is the best chance to highlight your professionalism and self-management. Many ponder on the thought of making an impression on the interview with a wonderful story to indicate their strength and make a sympathetic gesture towards their weakness. Not knowing much on the trend and the working culture of the company it is likely to have a wrong thought on that. The interviewers want to make sure the candidate they choose has a way of showing their strength and weakness as a matter of challenge to themselves and not something that lets them slow down a bit.
Tailoring your answer in both – strength and weakness- perspective, gives a professional view on one’s character. The interviewer gets the impression of a person who is self aware of his/her strengths and weaknesses. This would help the company to put you in the category where your strengths would benefit them.
.
.
How to answer strengths for sales interview
Describing your strength is a great way to emphasize your working nature and how skilled you are for the applied role. The interviewer gets the impression of a person’s professionalism through the way a candidate for the applied job role describes their strength with confidence. In sales, having confidence in your prepared speech gets you an upgrade positivity in your performance. Tailing a story to strengthen your strength is a good practice.
Best to describe your strength in reference to the job description. In this way, you can have context and story to support it in the interview. However, make sure to point out the outcomes of a certain event where your strength had an impact. The interviewer is most likely to note that as a useful asset for the company in the upcoming projects.
.
.
[ Learn to sell yourself better with – What is Greatest Professional Achievement ]
.
.
Prepare your answer with the proper context to put your strength as an upgrader for your skills. Pretty impressive for the interview. This way you can also talk about the enhancement you can bring to their company if you are hired by them for the applied job. Noting down the negative impression of the interview may lead you to fail your spot in the company. Put your affords in convincing them in a nice and polite way that your strength will be the strength of their company to move forward with a pace and compete with much higher status in the same field.
.
.
How to answer weakness for sales interview
It is pretty impressive to describe your strength in detail but having knowledge of your weakness is considered as a very strong strategic skill. While answering this question, make sure you talk about that one weakness that helps you to work even harder to improve it as well as have a positive result for your strength. The interviewer will consider this as a strong asset to improve their company sales and also a way to lead further ahead in time.
To be a successful salesperson, one should have knowledge on their strength as well as their weakness. What makes them feel insecure about their ability? This is common for every professional to have a slight doubt in their working process no matter how trained they are. However, unlike most, some have a good understanding of their weaknesses. It is best for them to take hold of it as well and implement their work accordingly. This might surprise you but once you get a better knowledge on how to use your weakness to improve your strength, it becomes your strongest weapon of yours.
With that said, choose a weakness to talk about that doesn’t stop your work or prevent you from succeeding in your project.
“ I used to struggle in recognizing the product’s details during sales but had developed a way to remember the slight relevance that helps me pick what product to work on.”
This clearly emphasizes your awareness of the growth areas. You know where you can overcome your weakness. Though it is not possible for one to not have the weakness by the time they get hired, this will ruin all the impression the candidate has had from the beginning.
.
.
Sales Strengths Examples
Possessing strengths that increase the sales revenue for a company is always referred to as priority. Here are some sales strengths that a sales company looks for in their candidate.
- Time management – the most important strength that is also considered as a skill in major fields. As a sales person you need to manage a lot of other functionalities in the company and time management skill is a better strength to highlight in the interview.
- Competitiveness – It is likely for a sales company to have many opponents in the same locality or same field. The interview will take it as a plus point to note down if you are competitive.
- Collaboration skill – Many times companies join hands with abroad businesses. Having an employee with this skill benefits them in many ways.
- Technical skill – showing your knowledge on technology is a bonus key point that the interviewer cannot miss. Try to learn and get used to enough softwares that is commonly used by the salesperson.
- Patience – if you ask any experienced salesperson what is the most important requirement while being in the sales department, the common answer will be patience. Having to work on products and making them sell worthy and also focusing on the market revenue can take a bit of a toll on any person.
Here are some example answers for showcasing strength :
“My strength is that I am cooperative. I always preferred to work in groups. I have managed my team through various team projects and have learnt agility.
This shows the candidate is superlative in nature. Leading a team in various projects and having an eagerness to work in a team shows the person is likely to get along with the other members on the board. The interviewer need not to focus on their extra storyline.
“I have a strong understanding in the softwares like MS Word, Excel sheets, PowerPoint. I have worked as a content writer at XYZ company and have gained readers for their blog posts with new articles every alternate day. I work vigorously to meet the deadlines.
This tells the interviewer about the tremendous knowledge on the outside box of the candidate. Since most people neglect the importance of learning a little bit about technology if they are in a non technical field. It is a very much approached skill and any salesperson opting to learn this to improve their sales in a company is very much accepted.
.
.
[ Related Reading – 40+ Powerful Strengths in Resume for Freshers ]
.
.
Sales weakness example
When one accepts one’s weakness and is aware of it, then there is no greater strength than that. Here are some of the weaknesses a sales candidate can mention in an interview.
- Lack of experience – Often freshers feel intimidated by other candidates with few years of experience. And it is completely fine to accept that but you can mention it in a positive sense. “ My weakness is that I lack industry experience. Instead I have learnt a lot more about sales management over the last few months and I am eager to improve by using them as a beneficial skill for you.”
- Procrastinate – You can talk about times when you overestimated a project assigned to you and had trouble meeting deadlines.
- Overthinker – This weakness can question the interview on your inability to take your work seriously. On the side note, if it makes you look irresponsible you can describe how you once discovered this and worked to avoid this for better results.
They are often considered as a down point in most areas. But having a weakness is like having a shadow of your strength. It doesn’t make you look an inappropriate candidate, rather talking about your weakness shows the uncompetitive side of yours that any hiring manager will find as a challenging figure for other opponents of the company in the same field. Here are some example to measure your weakness as a strong push for the company’s strength:
“My weakness is overthinking. While working I often think of various scenarios where our project might not reach the goal. This makes me very uncomfortable to look at every perspective into the project and guide my members to make sure we have covered all the parts of the project and make it the best on our side.”
Talk about the ultimate strength. This visualizes the interviewer that the candidate is probably the best fit for the role. Having a salesperson to figure out a way to overshadow their weakness and make it a strength is always best for the team.
“ My weakness is overthinking. No matter how much I work not to overthink, it stays. Still I try my best to work and find the best possible result of the given task.”
This is not a well structured answer. The interviewer is most likely to be disappointed by the lack of confidence in the candidate for accepting their weakness rather than seeing it as a demerit.
.
.
BONUS : 200+ Examples of Strengths and Weaknesses in Interview – Largest Collection
.
.
Tips to answer Strengths and Weaknesses in an interview
Keep in mind to have prepared enough in advance for the interview. There are certain tips to follow to prepare your answer. Strengths and weaknesses is a part of the interview process to describe the candidate’s nature and their capability to accept all and move forward nevertheless.
1. Make your strength as a beneficial asset to their company.
It is important for the interview to know how your talked strength can be of any advantage to their company. Most sales companies want a candidate that has the essentials to enhance the company’s performance in sales.
2. Talk about your personal strength that motivates you to work better every time.
Yes, your hiring managers would definitely appreciate you mentioning your personal strength and a story on how you have worked on a similar event. Your strength helping in the company’s growth is all that matters to the interviewer. Do not hesitate to sell yourself.
3. When the interviewer asks you about your strengths and weaknesses, it is wise to mention an accomplishment based on your core strength to highlight it.
Strengths are a form of skills that have a heavy impact on your success. Having an achievement that results from your strength or how you overshadowed your weakness and achieved your goal shows a very alluring nature of you.
4. Don’t be hesitant to sell yourself as it is the main skill.
As a salesperson your priority is to sell the products at any safe cost. If you have practiced a sync manner to show the interviewer how you sell yourself to the company, that definitely increases a positive impression on the interviewer as a future salesperson of the company. Selling yourself to a sales company is like giving a plus point to your chances of getting selected.
5. Be honest but strategic.
If you stay honest and humble, the interviewer will not find any lag in your story. However, it is important to make your story strategic in how you talk about your strength as a pillar of success along with your skills.
6. Talk about your weaknesses as an improvement with each new experience.
Like said before, knowing and understanding weaknesses is a plus point. It enhances your competitive nature. Explain in brief about your weakness having a strong hold on your success as well.
Structure your story with the appropriate context that aligns with your strength. It is important for the candidate to understand the efforts they put behind describing their strengths as the interviewer sees those skills as the best assets to the company. Don’t brag about strengths rather sell them and show them a salesperson side to enhance the probability of you getting selected.
.
.
Mistakes while talking about your Strengths
You can think of many strengths that you possess but it is possible to speak about all of them in the interview. Choosing the right strength to mention in a sales interview is good thinking.
- Don’t brag – It sounds as if you will owe the company if you use the respective skill.
- Don’t be negative – This often happens while answering the weaknesses question. Don’t say irrelevant answers like “I’m always late to work” or “I easily slack off from work”.
- Don’t fall silent – Practice before coming to the interview and you will never fail to leave any question unanswered. It is quite unprofessional to leave a person hanging in the air when asked something.
- Downcasting others – A very negative approach to explaining your strength. Talking about strength in an interview is not about how you defeat your opponent in a sarcastic way. In an interview, never show how strong you are in beating another salesperson from the same or different company. Talk about the strength that makes you competitive to make a product sales at a high rate.
.
.