Job Interview Tips for Sales: What's Your Sales Style?

Are you in a sales role? Or trying to get a better sales job? If so, what's your sales style?

Do you even know what I mean by that? And if you do, can you communicate that to a recruiter or a hiring manager who's considering you for a new position?

In my role as a medical sales recruiter, I interview sales people every day, and I will commonly ask them what their sales style is, or what sales approach they have in order to be successful. It's always amazing to me how many candidates, even some who have been selling for up to five years, can't communicate that.

They'll talk about building relationships and follow-up and things like that, but that's not a real selling style, so I want to encourage you, before you go into interviews, or start looking for a job as a sales representative, to figure out what style you use, and to be able to communicate that in a very professional way to someone like myself, either a recruiter, or a hiring manager.

For instance, if I were to be asked that question, I'll tell people that my particular selling style is called SPIN Selling, from a book by Neil Rackham. It's an excellent distillation of how great sales people are successful. It does a good job of explaining how different size sales require different processes.

SPIN stands for Situation, Implication, Problem, and Need. It's a very simple style, where I look at what exactly is going on with my customer, what their problem is, and how it is either going to negatively affect their business, or cause them to miss opportunities, and then I can bundle my solution in a way that's very specific to the problems and issues that they are experiencing. You don't have to use SPIN Selling, of course. But if you can talk about your style and how it fits into the sales process required for your product, you're ahead of the game.

Good communication skills are a hallmark of a truly great salesperson. If you can't talk about what you do and why you do it, you won't inspire confidence in a potential boss. So, if you're a sales rep for any industry, not just medical sales, you really need to be able to communicate what your style is. Think about that, work out how to articulate it, and practice, because if you want the job, you need to be able to communicate your skill sets in your next sales interview.