How To Prepare For A Sales Interview

now if you have a sales interview coming up you want to make sure you watch this video because i'm going to be showing you some of the best techniques and strategies you can use to prepare for your sales interview so that you can impress your future employer and land your dream job what's going on everybody it's patrick dang with sales legacy the ultimate online sales master class that's going to show you how to start and accelerate your sales career now before we go ahead and get started make sure to give this video a like subscribe and turn on notifications if you want to see more videos like this and let's go ahead and dive in so if you have a sales interview coming up the first tip i have for you is you want to treat that sales interview like a sales meeting and what i mean is that when a recruiter or sales manager or founder is interviewing you a potential sales candidate they're not just listening to what you are saying they are listening to how you are saying it are you being persuasive are you telling stories would they want to buy something from you right how you do something is very important because how you interview is going to be a direct reflection with how you actually sell and communicate with potential customers so treat the interview like you are selling yourself and first thing is obviously to know how to highlight all of your strengths and you know tell stories to exemplify that and show the person like hey if you hire me i'm gonna do a great job for you i'm gonna be closing deals generating leads anything you need i got it right so highlight your strengths obviously and you have to prepare ahead of time what these strengths are what stories you want to tell that show that you are capable of doing a good job and then also when it comes to sales it's not just being able to pitch but also being able to listen because the best sales people are actually the best listeners so what you want to do in your sales interview and how you want to prepare is that you want to prepare questions you want to ask your potential employer during that sales interview and specifically you're learning about okay what pains does this interviewer have right what problems do they have are they having trouble finding the right candidate what are the characteristics there are looking for a candidate that they just cannot find and you want to find those pains first and then show them in that interview like hey you know you're looking for someone that can generate leads and doesn't complain about cold calling well just let you know i'm a master at cold calling and i don't complain at all right so it's all about listening to what the other person wants and aligning with who you are and what you can do to those pains and show that you are the solution so that's effectively solution selling right so interviews exact same thing as selling it's all about solving problems for the customer or client and in this case it is the recruiter now the next tip i have for you and ways to prepare for that sales interview is you want to show your energy and your enthusiasm okay this is extremely important in sales because how you say something like i've been saying is very impactful on how people perceive you and will determine whether or not someone likes you and ultimately buy from you so if you don't have energy if you don't have that enthusiasm when you're coming into a sales meeting well why would you have that when you are talking to a prospect or doing a cold call if you don't have the energy you're not going to be able to sell so i actually have a story for you so i remember one time i took a story telling class and this was when i had already started my sales career and in the class we had to you know use a certain format a storytelling format and you know write a story and go in front of the class and we tell a story right that was the final project and so when i wrote my story and i went up you know i came in with a lot of energy a lot of enthusiasm and everyone's like oh my god that's great and then after the professor critiques you right and they said and i remember my professor said patrick you had a lot of energy enthusiasm that was great but you didn't follow my format and to be honest i didn't really have time to follow the format and do an excellent job because i was doing a full-time job at the same time right so you know my bet on me but she was like and she said the only reason for why people thought it sounded good was because of your energy enthusiasm that's it but actually you didn't follow any of the storytelling techniques that you were supposed to follow not any but you know i missed a lot of the the ones i was supposed to use so that just shows you that you know from an expert's perspective yes i didn't do it right you know obviously their professor and they're looking for all these things but when it comes to actually how people feel when they listen to my story even if i'm not even following the story structure of what is a good story because i have the energy enthusiasm people feel it and they gravitate towards it and they think it's a good presentation or a good story so same thing with sales right same thing with your interview actually you don't have to say the perfect thing you don't have to you know do everything perfectly you can make mistakes that's okay but if you have the energy enthusiasm then you know that's what people are going to gravitate to and it's going to cover your mistakes right and i feel like for some sales people they have a certain energy to them that you know that if you just drop them in the middle of the forest they're going to be able to figure it out and find a way home right and so as a salesperson you're kind of doing the same thing you want to show your intelligence your energy your enthusiasm and that shows you know this shows a lot in your personality right so if you know right now i'm showing a lot of enthusiasm for this video because i want to make it as entertaining for you guys watching this but imagine if i did my sales videos like this hey everybody today we're going to be talking about how to crush your sales interview so obviously there's a big difference between having low energy and having high energy you can just feel it right but if i said the exact same thing and with high energy it would be like hey everybody so today we're going to show you some of the best ways and strategies and techniques to crush your sales interview and get your dream sales job so pretty much saying the same thing how i'm saying it completely different and i'm sure you feel the difference now the next thing you got to prepare for your sales interview is making a positive first impression now in sales there's this rule where they say like people will make a decision on whether or not they like you within the first five seconds of meeting you sometimes even faster it could be even two seconds or three seconds so the first impression is very important it comes down to how you look how you sound and the words you say the words you say not very important it's more about how you look and how you sound so if you're going in for a in-person interview so let's let's break it down right how you look is how you're dressed are you dressed appropriately for that interview right if you're not dressed in the right way automatically people are gonna you know filter you out because they're not gonna like you because you're not showing respect for the interview if you are just great you know move on to the next step then it's gonna be like hey how's it going you shake their hand right so you know when it comes to first impression when it comes to the first handshake how i typically like to do it is the handshake itself just needs to be firm not too soft like not too limp because that's kind of weird not too hard right i had experiences where people are like really gripping my hand and i'm like dude let go of my hand that's what i'm thinking in my head um so not too soft not too hard because when you're over doing something it kind of raises a red flag in someone's head they're thinking like why is this guy shaking my hand so hard that's kind of weird is he like overcompensating for something or you know what's the deal or if it's too soft it's like you know is this guy you know going to be very assertive or a girl going to be assertive so just firm and essentially you want to just like feel how they shake and kind of copy it essentially and it's like a split second feeling so just go with firm handshake you know you practice with yourself practice with your friend and then eventually you'll know what to do after you shake so many hands like you'll get the idea if you're not meeting someone in person then you know it's all about the video right and so it's all about the clarity of the voice and how you sound if it's over phone and video and then just like your presentation when it comes to actually the camera so just make sure you have decent lighting doesn't have to be amazing just decent people can see you you're not dark hopefully you have like a not crazy background in the back and it's like regular right at your house or whatever it is and that's pretty much it right i would say one very important thing when it comes to online interviews or phone interviews is the clarity of your voice and how you sound so from a technology perspective make sure you have everything working that's first of all that sounds not too loud not too soft and then from there make sure that your voice is very clear and concise and people can clearly understand everything that you are saying don't mumble your words i've seen that all the time where people are they talk like that and it's like you can't understand what they're saying so clear concise really enunciate your consonants and vowels that's a trick i learned where you know if you really emphasize every consonant and value it just makes everything more clear and easy to follow and by showing that clarity in your voice well it translates into sales because sales is communication with people and by doing that you're going to be a lot more attractive as a sales candidate and the next tip i have for you is you're going to want to tell stories so this is very important because when you are doing a sales interview you don't want to just be like yeah you know i worked here i hit my quota here um i'm really passionate about this job i like golfing on the weekends it's just like okay cool but what's what's the story what makes it interesting right like i said before when people are judging you on your sales interview they're seeing how you actually sell yourself so don't just go with the features and the facts and where you went to school what's your gpa what's your past experience don't just talk about those things tell a story of why it's important so when somebody asks you something like you know what's the best deal you ever closed or what's the most difficult deal you ever closed well tell a story about it right don't just be like oh you know i closed this client and it was hard whatever right be like you know this is one deal that you know we're really excited about but we weren't sure we're going to get it and so we did this and that but then you know everything wasn't going to work and then at the last minute i came in with this thing and everything worked in the end right it's like tell a story of you know your accomplishments like what you care about why you care about these things what you believe in you know source is something that's just so natural to human nature it's the way we communicate it's the way we remember things and it's the way we are entertained especially nowadays so if you are able to tell your experiences your work experience and stories people are very receptive to that and they remember you a lot more because they're not going to remember all the facts about you but they're going to remember that story that you told that was really good so prepare these stories ahead of time whatever it is you want to highlight in your career and your strengths and you want to talk about these things in your sales interview prepare those stories ahead of time so that when you get into the actual interview you actually can just like crush it and do well now the final tip i have for you is to practice practice practice now this one's obvious but not obvious at the same time you want to practice your interview skills you want to practice everything from the moment you shake someone how you start the interview how you tell your stories how you close an interview and how you show people you care there's so many different elements of the interview that people don't really you know practice enough and so you want to make sure that everything is just airtight because you know when you think about it when you join a company and you want to be a salesperson there it's not just like you're joining a company it's like okay whatever i joined this company you're basically dedicating your a certain percentage of your life a big percentage of your life in your energy for this job so you want to make sure this job is the best one you can possibly get and that it really helps you in the long term right and so you want to really take your interview seriously and by taking it seriously it comes down to the practice you know like how well do you know your stories how well do you know like let's say if you know that interviewers keep asking you the same objections how well are you handling those objections and why they want to hire you and how can you overcome those objections right and the only way to really get better is to practice either with the real interview itself and you're getting that real world experience and if you're not getting enough interviews you want to at least practice on your own telling your stories handling objections you know things like that because it shows like selling yourself an interview is the exact same thing as selling a product and service it just happens that you are the product right and so when you are selling yourself so you want to make sure you just practice know what your weaknesses are know what your strengths are and know how you're going to present yourself in the actual interview and one thing that really helps me a lot when it comes to practicing my sales skills or interview skills is recording myself that is probably one of the biggest things you can do recording your interviews if you can that would be amazing right because you can replay it so when you record yourself speak it's very beneficial because you understand how you speak how you sound you can start changing it manipulating your voice in a way that is more pleasant and applicable to the real world right so that's practice and recording and there's also recording the actual interview itself if it's allowed or if you want to do it secretly whatever the case is that helps a lot because you can reflect on what you did well what you didn't do well you fix the mistakes and you find the improvements right so recording is a huge thing and a lot of times like when you record yourself you don't really like the way you sound you don't like the way you look i found that to be very true when i started recording myself at the first time in university i gave it a try and so at the beginning you're not gonna like how you sound but over time when you improve you're gonna love the way you sound because you're consciously working on it so definitely practice practice practice in anything you do and it's gonna get you very far and so with that said those are gonna be some of my tips when it comes to preparing for your sales interview if you enjoy this video make sure to give it a like subscribe and turn on notifications if you want to see more sales videos like this and also if you are looking to start and accelerate your sales career make sure to check out sales legacy my online masterclass a lot of my students have taken sales legacy from graduating from university or they were working in a different industry and they wanted to transition into tech sales or some people also took sales legacy when they already have a sales job and they want to just you know exceed their quota generate leads and close deals so if you're one of these people and you are looking to start and accelerate your sales career make sure to check out the link in the description i got a one hour free training to give you a taste of my master class to see if it's a good fit for you and then from there if you want to move forward great if not totally cool so with that said link is in the description my name is patrick dang and i'll see you guys in the next one

Channel: Patrick Dang

Views: 968

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Keywords: sales interview, patrick dang, patrick dang sales, sales legacy, how to prepare for a sales interview, sales interview tips, interview questions and answers, sales interview questions, how to pass a sales interview, sales interview questions and answers, sales job interview, sales career, sales career path, tech sales, software sales, saas sales, b2b sales, working in tech sales, tech sales career, account executive, business development, sales development

Id: zGlghBDjAVg

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021