Sales Interview Questions to Ask Candidates: 15 With Scoring

The best sales interview questions ask candidates to prove they can find, run and close deals, not just talk well about them. The 15 questions below are for the person hiring, grouped by interview stage, each with what a strong answer shows and the warning sign to listen for.

We build Talent Summoner, which finds and ranks sales candidates for a role before the interviews start. As of 3 October 2026 your first Role is free with no card, then US$29 per Role or US$59 a month for 10 Roles (pricing); the questions below work whether or not you use it.

This page is for hiring managers, founders and HR people filling a first or second sales role. If you hire sales reps every month with a trained panel, go straight to the scoring scale.

15 sales interview questions by stage

Ask every candidate the same core questions at the same stage. That is what makes the answers comparable.

Screening call questions

#	Question	A strong answer shows	Warning sign
1	What did you sell, to whom, and how did a typical deal start and end?	A clear product, buyer, deal length and their own part in it	Vague words like "enterprise solutions" with no buyer or process
2	How was your performance measured, and how did you do against it?	They know their target and explain good and bad periods without blame	No idea how they were measured, or every miss was someone else's fault
3	How does a normal week split between new business and existing accounts?	A clear split that matches the role you are hiring for	An account-management role described as winning new business, or the reverse
4	Why this sales role, and why now?	They have looked at your product and buyers	Money or title is the only reason

Skills interview questions

#	Question	A strong answer shows	Warning sign
5	Tell me about a deal you found yourself, from first contact to close.	How they chose the account, got the meeting and moved it forward	The deal came in by itself
6	How do you decide whether a lead is worth your time?	A repeatable check of need, budget, timing and decision-maker	They chase every lead the same way
7	Describe a deal you lost. What would you do differently?	An honest look at their own mistakes and a change they made	Only price or the product was to blame
8	How do you keep your pipeline and forecast accurate?	Regular updates, clear stages, dead deals removed	The forecast is a feeling

Role play and deal review questions

Give every candidate the same short, made-up buyer brief before the call.

#	Question	A strong answer shows	Warning sign
9	Run the first ten minutes of a discovery call with me as the buyer.	Open questions, real listening, follow-ups on what you said	Pitching features in the first minute
10	I say, "This looks good, but it's too expensive." What do you say?	They ask what "too expensive" means and link cost to value	An instant discount, or pushing harder
11	Talk me through one open deal from your last job, names removed.	A next step, the risks they see and an honest close chance	Every deal is "about to close"
12	Write a short follow-up email after the call we just did.	The buyer's problem, the next step and a date, in plain words	A template that could go to anyone

Final interview questions

#	Question	A strong answer shows	Warning sign
13	Tell me about a time you disagreed with a manager about a deal.	They raised it directly and kept working well together	They went around people
14	Have you been asked to promise something you weren't sure you could deliver?	They stayed honest with the buyer and their own team	Overpromising is "just sales"
15	What would you want to have done in your first three months here?	A plan to learn the product, build pipeline and ask for help	Big promises with no plan

What a sales hire has to prove

Pick 4 to 6 questions for each one-hour interview, starting from what the role needs most:

Their own pipeline: they open new conversations, not only work the leads they are given.
A clear sales process: they qualify leads and know the next step in each deal.
Buyer understanding: they ask good questions and link the product to a real problem.
Honest forecasting: they can tell real deals from hope.
Resilience: lost deals and quiet weeks don't stop them, and they learn from each loss.

If you are hiring in Hong Kong, our guide on how to hire a sales executive covers pay and commission norms there.

How to score sales interview answers

Score each answer alone, right after the interview, before you talk to the other interviewers:

Score	What it means
1	No evidence: vague, off-topic, or a warning sign
2	Thin evidence: general statements, few real examples
3	Good evidence: a real example that shows the skill with some detail
4	Strong evidence: their own actions, clear results and what they learned

Sales candidates are often good at interviews, because talking well is part of the job. Score what they did, not how confident they sounded; our candidate interview scorecard template shows how to write down the evidence behind each answer.

Sales interview mistakes to avoid

Hiring the best talker. Score the evidence, not the delivery.
Skipping the role play. Watching a practice call shows more than any past story.
Different questions for different people. You can't compare answers fairly.
Personal questions. Skip age, family plans, health and religion; many places restrict them.
Asking for a past employer's private data. In the deal review, ask them to remove client names and numbers.

When these sales interview questions are wrong for you

The 15 sales interview questions on this page are built for a sales executive or account executive at a small company. Swap them out in three cases:

Entry-level sales development roles: weight coachability, activity and written messages over deal history.
Sales leaders: add hiring, coaching, territory and forecast-ownership questions.
Account managers: weight renewals, expansion and customer problems over new business.

Where Talent Summoner fits before the sales interviews

Talent Summoner is our product for candidate sourcing and candidate ranking. The facts below were checked on 3 October 2026.

Candidate sourcing takes a role brief and returns a ranked shortlist with plain-English reasoning. It searches LinkedIn, GitHub and other public sources, over 200 million profiles.

Candidate ranking scores up to 50 CVs you already have, free and with no account.

What it does not do: run or score your interviews, send paid LinkedIn InMail, keep an always-on pipeline, or sync with an ATS today. The interview decisions stay with your panel.

We re-check the product facts on this page every quarter.

What are the most common sales interview questions?

The most common sales interview questions ask what the candidate sold and to whom, how they were measured, a deal they won, a deal they lost, how they qualify leads and how they keep a forecast accurate. Many interviews add a short role play of a discovery call.

What should I ask in a sales role play?

Give the candidate a short buyer brief and ask them to run the first ten minutes of a discovery call. Then raise a price objection and ask for a follow-up email, and score how well they listened.

How do you score a sales interview?

Score each answer from 1 to 4 on the evidence it gave, right after the interview and before talking to other interviewers. A confident answer with no real example scores 2 at most.

What are red flags in a sales interview?

The clearest red flags in a sales interview are deals that "came in by themselves", losses blamed only on price or product, and a forecast with every deal about to close. Any of them is worth a follow-up question before you score.

Pick 4 to 6 questions for each interview, run the same role play with every candidate, and agree who makes the final call before the first interview.