Interview Questions For Sales Enablement

How Have You Stayed Motivated In A Remote World

Interviewers ask this because:

Many, if not most, sales teams are currently hybrid or fully remote. And what were hearing is that the majority will continue to operate at least in a hybrid environment for the foreseeable future.

The tough truth is that working remote in a sales role is challenging. You lose the energy from being together with peers, you lose overhearing whats working on someone elses call, you lose the celebration from the team when someone finally picks up. So interviewers want to know either that you thrive in that environment, youve found a way to make it work for you, or you have a plan for it.

How to answer:

Think about what tools you use to connect with people: Zoom or another video software, Slack or another chat software?

Think about the rituals that help you feel connected to your teammates: regular happy hour or coffee chat? Rotating catch-up soons? Coworking with peers in your area?

Think about what motivates you: recognition? Achieving goals? Financial incentives?

Example answer:

Before I jump into my work day, its important that I take care of myself first. Instead of rolling out of bed and opening my laptop, I give myself ample time to get ready for the day, do something I enjoy , and set intentions for the day.

I prioritize refreshing myself during the day as well so that when Im working, Im truly focused and bringing my best self to work.

Whats The Sales Enablement Manager Salary

The typical base salary for a sales enablement manager is $68,957, plus $21,088 in supplemental compensation such as incentive bonuses.

These figures are from Glassdoor. According to ZipRecruiter, the average sales enablement manager salary in the United States in October 2020 was $105,863, with the top 25th percentile earning more than $109,000.

Of course, the answer will differ depending on region, industry, firm size, and other things. For example, when only the salary of a sales enablement manager in the Computer Software & Hardware category is included, the average salary jumps to about $76,942, according to Glassdoor, with the best earners earning more than $125,000.

What about the size of the job market for sales enablement? According to CSO Insights, more than 60% of organizations have a dedicated sales enablement function or program in 2018. That figure rises well above 70% among enterprises with more than $50 million in yearly revenue.

Now that weve seen the average sales enablement managers salary in the US, lets also see their basic skills and qualifications

What’s Something You’ve Learned Lately

You want to hire sales reps who are eager to learn better selling strategies and strengthen their skills? This question helps you find those sellers.

Listen to how they describe what theyve learned and which resources they used to learn about it. No matter how much sales training you provide, you cant train someone to have a thirst for knowledge its smart to hire a self-starter who takes their learning and growth seriously.

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How Is Sales Enablement Practiced

There are five sales enablement best practices that can help you with your efforts.

Define specific objectives

Your program should provide salespeople with everything they need to engage and convert buyers. But what do you focus on next? Should you focus on detailed information about products and services? What about sharing best practices from top performers in the sales organization? How about the development of sales skills like delivering great presentations? These are all good options to consider.

Focus on buyer experience

Given that sales enablement is about empowering salespeople to engage the buyer, it makes sense that you would make the buying experience the cornerstone of your efforts.

There are two aspects to this:

• Make sure salespeople understand who the buyer is and the journey theyre on.
• Map your sales plays and training to the buying experience.

Create high-quality content

Content like blog posts, white papers and webinars allow a large number of salespeople to deliver value to a lot of buyers in a scalable, controllable way. Some good salespeople prefer to let high-quality content do the talking, so provide a lot of high-quality content that maps to the buying process.

Make sales training a continuous effort

That is why you need to make sales training a continuous effort, with at least one formal training a month. In addition, use tools like newsletters and collaboration platforms to keep sales enablement in front of the sales team.

How Whatfix Helps You Support Your Top Talent

To build a strong sales team, you need to find people who can hit sales goals, handle objections and pushback, and be consistent, persistent, and patient. You cant hire just anyone for a sales role the wrong person can prevent your sales team from hitting quotas that support the overall business.

Whatfix makes onboarding new sales reps fast and easy. With our digital adoption platform, you get access to a pool of vetted, qualified sales talent. Participate in virtual hiring events, use our onboarding and ramping programs, and level up your entire team with trainings and certifications.

Learn more about how Whatfix can support your new sales reps today.

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What Is Sales Enablement

At The Center for Sales Strategy , we define sales enablement as the strategy, content, technology, and training that empowers sales teams to sell smarter and faster. Matt Sunshine, Managing Partner at CSS, explains this perfectly in

What we most often see are teams focusing on the just content of sales enablement, he explains. But because they dont have a strategy, the content isnt necessarily the right content. You must have content that reaches everyone in their particular customer journey, such as case studies, eBooks, checklists, whitepapers, or blog articles that answer common questions.

Which Crms Have You Used In The Past What Is Your Experience Working With Them

Technology is the engine that powers sales teams today, so its important to learn what kind of technical skills each candidate is bringing to the table. You can always train new sellers on your preferred software or workflow, but this question is more focused on their sales experience and adaptability.

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Start With The Best Candidates End With The Best Hires

Sales Assembly makes scaling fast and easy. With our membership platform, you get access to a pool of vetted, qualified sales talent. Participate in virtual hiring events, use our onboarding and ramping programs, and level up your entire team with trainings and certifications. Chat with us to get started or learn more.

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What Should A Job Description For A Sales Enablement Manager Look Like

The sales enablement manager is in charge of overseeing the sales enablement team as well as collaborating with sales, sales operations, and marketing to ensure strategic alignment across all three areas. So, the ideal candidate will be a highly organized sales professional with prior experience creating and managing similar programs.

Principal Responsibilities

• Leads the development and implementation of appropriate salesforce training, content/sales message, procedures, practices, forms, and tools.
• Supports product launches by preparing and enabling sales representatives to comprehend and sell our solutions.
• Responsible for all areas of sales foundational and continuous learning programs, including but not limited to training content design, scheduling and coordination, on-demand courseware design and deployment or delivery, and instructor-led sales training.
• Responsible for courseware and sales enablement content utilization tracking and analysis.
• Supports the purchasing and selling processes over their whole life cycle, from lead generation to win/loss.
• Assists frontline sales managers and the sales leadership team in building a sales coaching program and also implementing effective management disciplines.
• Manages and coordinates numerous sales enablement programs and also initiatives.

Knowledge, Ability, and Skill

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What Technologies Do You Use

In many industries, much of the sales processâfrom lead generation to data managementâis being automated in various programs and apps, requiring sales professionals to become proficient at using them. Asking this question shows that you want to be on the cutting edge of sales technology, that you are mindful of the companyâs sales process, and that you want to become efficient at selling.

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Why Is Sales Enablement Important

Sales enablement plays a key role in scaling the sales organization beyond a handful of overachievers. It provides all salespeople with the best practices, knowledge, tool and resources required to be successful. One sales enablement best practice is to designate overachievers as leaders/teachers of the program.

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Tell Me About Your Current Team

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to know you are a team player and work well with others. A high-performing salesperson isnt worth having on the team if theyre a jerk, or negative.

How to answer:

Quickly share the structure of the team. What roles are there? Who does what?

You can also share some team rituals that are important to you whether it is the weekly team meeting where you aligned on goals for the week, or the fact that someone was always ready to help out on one of your deals.

Why Are You Looking For A New Role

Interviewers ask this because:

They are looking for a positive, forward-thinking attitude. They want to see that you have a growth mindset and will tackle the new role with energy and enthusiasm.

How to answer:

Do not talk about why your current situation sucks. In fact, show gratitude for what you learned from it.

Remain focused on the future opportunity ahead of you.

Example answer:

The past year with my current employer has taught me so much. While Im so grateful to have had the opportunity, Im ready for the next big adventurefilled with new learnings and areas for growth.

Specifically, Im looking for a role where I can learn , and work with a team to accomplish .

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Walk Me Through Your Resume/background

Interviewers ask this because:

They want an easy recitation of your relevant experience so they can start to assess fit. And they also want to see if you can hit critical and relevant points of a story in a short time.

How to answer:

Keep it to 90 seconds.

Spend time on the elements of your experience that are most relevant: A club at school? Athlete? Door to door sales? Lemonade stand? Waitress?

They dont need to know everything about each role theyll just want to hear the skills that you learned that will help you excel in sales.

Example answer:

In my most recent job experience, I managed the front desk with a busy multi-line phone system. While being responsible for multiple tasks, like greeting guests on arrival and receiving and sorting mail to 100+ employees, I learned how to comfortably handle communications and balance that work my other responsibilities. Before that, I interned at a public relations company and got some great exposure to how businesses position themselves in the market.

It was important to keep a positive attitude even when the external environment was hectic and ensure that the customer and their needs were always top priority. I believe both of these experiences are relevant and set me up for success in the fast-paced role of a customer-facing sales rep.

The 10 Most Important Sales Interview Questions

by SmarkLabs | Sales Enablement

Finding a quality sales rep isnt easy. In order to build a strong sales team, its imperative to find people who can meet quotas and handle rejection, while also staying persistent and not coming off as aggressive. Hiring the wrong person can keep your company from reaching important goals, so never rush the recruiting process! These effective sales interview questions dig into a salespersons skills, knowledge, experience, personality, and motivation. They can help reveal ones true identity and whether or not they will fit the role and overall culture of a company. Sales Interview Questions:

Lets take a more in-depth look at these sales interview questions:

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Accelerate: When Interviewing What Questions Should A Candidate Be Asking The Company About The Specifics Of The Role

Dave:

• Tell me about the last big sales enablement initiative. Why was it started, who was involved, how was it rolled out, and what happened?

• How has the sales leadership personally been involved in the success of sales enablement. How frequently does the sales enablement leader meet with the sales leadership team?

• What are the next big enablement initiatives?

What Is Your Best Way To Establish A Relationship With A Prospect

Gather insight into how they approach and maintain relationships with prospects. Answers that contain constant emails and occasional phone calls should be a red flag. Instead, look for a candidate that collects information from the prospect and uses it to build rapport.For example, as a sales rep, if youre on a call and find out this prospect likes to travel in his free time, ask where. Maybe his answer will resonate and be similar to the places you like to go as well. All of which can help build rapport and make sales calls feel more personal!

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Typical Questions Asked In A Sales Interview

Ace your sales interview with these helpful strategies for responding to interview questions, along with examples of common sales interview questions and sample answers. Review them to help frame your responses based on your own qualifications, skills, product knowledge, achievements, and sales experiences. In addition, review a list of questions to ask your interviewer.

Accelerate: What Steps Would You Suggest Someone Take To Transition Into A Sales Enablement Role For The First Time

Dave: Fact: Nobody plans on going into sales enablement. We all end up there from varied backgrounds, but the most common background is in sales. Many former sales reps looking to move into enablement struggle with the transition. But regardless of your background, before making the leap, theres a series of questions I recommend asking yourself:

• Do you really understand the details of the role?

• Can you be selfless and derive satisfaction from making others successful? Many people from sales in particular are successful at being focused on his/her own territory and quota. Some struggle putting the focus off of ones self.

• Can you focus on details on execution? Theres a large project management component to successful enablement. If youre not a details person, think twice.

• Can you build relationships internally?
• Based on all this, Is this really what you want to do?

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Tell Me About A Time When You Met Your Sales Goals

Interviewers ask this question to get a sense of your past sales success, how you set and meet goals and the kind of success you may be able to bring to the company.

How to answer:

• Reflect on your sales experience and the goals youâve been able to meet. Write down the details in quantifiable terms, such as the goal sales volume.

• Prepare to tell a story about the sales situation, the goal, and the actions you took to meet the goal.

Other forms this question might take:

• âWhat sales experiences are you most proud of?â

• âTell me about a sale you closed or a goal you met.â

Q: What Is Sales Enablement How Does It Differ From Sales Management And Sales Training

Sales enablement is like being the conductor of the orchestra. You bring together all these different parts. The way that you do it is by collaborating with subject matter experts. You coordinate with others to bring skills training, product training, and any kind knowledge that people need to do their roles in sales, as well as the tools and how to use those tools.

Sales enablement is helping salespeople maneuver through all of those things so that they can be the most successful, which typically equates to selling more business? Salespeople need the right skills, the most up-to-date knowledge, and to be able to leverage whatever tools they have.

As a sales enablement person, part of my role is not just to deliver formal training, but also to facilitate peer-to-peer collaboration, collect win stories and share them with the rest of the field, get feedback on whats working and whats not working, to help translate that to product marketing, for example.

Product marketing is my closest partner in enablement. In all my different roles, Ive always been very linked to the product marketing team and Ive always reported into sales, which is where I think it should be.

We dont have sales trainers at Allego. If theres formal training to be delivered, its by the subject matter expert. So it could be the product marketing person, a product manager, or the sales operations person.

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Tell Me About A Time You Succeeded Or Were Proud Of Yourself

Interviewers ask this because:

They want to understand your drive to succeed, and hear about one of your greatest accomplishments.

Plus, if when you get the job, your manager will need to know how to motivate you.

How to answer:

Questions that start with tell me about a time indicate that your answer to this question should use the STAR framework:

S = Situation. Briefly describe the situation you were in.T = Task. What were you tasked with doing in that situation? What was the goal?A = Action. Tell the interviewer what you specifically did, step by step.

R = Result. What was the outcome?

Remember that you are interviewing for a sales role, so keep your response focused on something relevant to sales. Share a time when you were persistent and it paid off, when you worked hard to knock a goal out of the park, when you accomplished a significant achievement, etc.

If you have data to back you up, that is gold!