Top 32 Sales Management Interview Questions You Must Prepare 28.Mar.2024

You should be quick in trying to get the right USP for the product and sell efficiently.

The sales tax is a type of excise tax levied on the goods and services by the national organization.

A range of methods may be used to forecast sales. However, the choice of the method to be used will depend on a number of factors including, the demands on accuracy, the costs involved and the frequency with which the forecasts needs to be made. The methods that are usually used to forecast sales are time series techniques, causal techniques, and the judgmental methods.

The word PODSCORB in management means the following:

  • P stands for Planning.
  • O stands for Organizing.
  • D stands for Directing.
  • S stands for Staffing.
  • COR stands for Coordinating, and
  • B stands for Budgeting.

You can make a list of these required skills before going to the interview and talk about it. Some are: active listening, flexibility, tolerance to frustration, communication skills, customer service skills, etc.

The stockist is a key element in the value delivery system. The stockist stores the products of the company and rotates them through the retail network to the customer. Usually a stockist operates within a defined geographical domain. He also functions as an information conduit for the company.

Sales Planning involves predicting demand for the product and demand on the sales assets such as machines, people, or a combination of both. It assures that when a consumer wishes to purchase the product, the product is available but it also means opportunities for additional sales that are presented and the sales assets are available to exploit these opportunities. It should allow for meeting increasing customer demand for more products, services and customization as the business is growing but also react quickly when demand decreases. It improves efficiency and decreases unfocused and uncoordinated activity within the sales process.

You should be good at judgment as this can be one of the most trapping questions. You should be a person who will create something new and bring out with an innovation.

Be prepared with concepts that you feel is most challenging in marketing. Understand the risks and challenges of the new market developments.

Give a picture of how you see the whole sales structure and procedure from the beginning to the closing.

This is a precise question and requires a precise answer. The interviewer wants to know what your background and technical experience is all about.

We may classify the channel types based on either ownership or number of levels or nature of activities. The manufacturing company may have its own outlets like Raymonds or Reliance. A single organization other than the manufacturing one might own a chain of retail outlets like the India coffee house. Alternatively each location might be taken tip by a distributor who has nothing to do with another person in another area. The channel may be classified as a single tier or multi tier depending on the number of levels of the intermediaries. We also have the types of wholesalers, retailers etc..

The candidate should understand the difference in selling a company and a product.

Not everyone can handle sales. You need to have the right attitude and abilities. At your job interview, the interviewer will be looking for your sales skills, and the aspects of the process that help close deals. An example of a good answer includes “The ability to recognize both verbal and non-verbal cues to adapt the sales strategies you implement to impress the prospective buyer.”

Sales Management is attainment of an organization’s sales goals in an effective & efficient manner through planning, staffing, training, leading & controlling organizational resources. The main functions are the collection of revenue, sales and sources of funds fuel organizations and the management.

The roles of marketing channel:

  1. Transfer of goods.
  2. Transfer of ownership.
  3. Placing of the product.
  4. Collection of information.
  5. Handling risk connected with carrying out the channel work.
  6. Placing order to manufacturing.
  7. Bulk breaking and repacking to suit other channel members/ customer.
  8. Storage and movement of physical product.

The roles of the channel in the following areas of marketing are
a) Marketing of a real estate project-Transfer of ownership .
b) Marketing of soaps and detergent- Transfer of goods .
C) Marketing of a major event- Transfer of information. 
d) Marketing of software products and services- Transfer of ownership .
e) Marketing of insurance products-Collection and dissemination of information.

Software is a service and therefore not tangible. The customer would look at the service with a greater doubt than he does goods. I would therefore use aspects like my earlier products, the qualifications of my technical people etc., as evidences of my abilities that would help the customer reduce his ambiguity. Thereafter I would provide details of my oiler on a corporative platform to highlight the advantage of my offer. This would bring the customer closer to my oiler and at this stage will clinch the deal.

Do not generalize when giving and answer, on the opposite, give very specific and clear examples of the things you find interesting when it comes to sales.

Development of sales force objective

  • Strategy - How much market, what growth rate, sales target
  • Structure- Multi-layered, direct marketing
  • Size -Geographic expanse of the market
  • Compensation - Rewards or returns

One way of allocating territory is to divide the market into zones and put people familiar with the zones. There are advantages/disadvantages with each was. One has to weigh the gains & losses and then decide.

Companies partner with specific suppliers and distributors to create a superior valued delivery network. The value delivery network is a concept broader than Supply Chain Management. It rests on the premise that consumers need value addition through consumption rather than just access to the products/services. Value connects customer driven approach, rather than an efficiency-driven approach as in Supply Chain Management.

Advantages of Direct Marketing are:

  1. Get to know the customer pulse.
  2. Can control Quality.
  3. Can get customer feedback efficiently.
  4. Brand & Company ethos can be transferred.

National sales are the kind of operating revenues which are earned by a nation when it sells its products.

It requires an analysis of the relation between individual incentives to the consumers and their impact on sales. The sales promotion can be in terms of a free bag promoted through Point of Purchase.

Enhancing effectiveness on all of the following:

  • Choosing the right time for negotiation
  • Formulating a negotiation strategy
  • Relationship marketing
  • Sales Force Training
  • Negotiation
  • Leadership/Team building .

Merchandising is a term commonly used in the retailing industry. When we merchandise we refer to a category of items like textiles, toiletries detergents etc., Therefore a merchandise manager in retailing would be a n equivalent to the product manger of goods marketing organization. The distribution function predominantly concerns logistics or making the goods available for consumption while merchandising includes creating availability as well as enabling sale of the merchandise. The decisions that are made by a merchandiser are the categories of items that need to be made available, what will be the display pattern. what will be the discount structure and what types of reordering norms are requires. Therefore the merchandise manager will consider demand, availability requirements, margins, discounts etc.

The Sales Reporting is a kind of key performance indicators of the sales force. This indicates everything about the sales processing by indicating that either it is being operated effectively and achieves the results as set forth in sales planning or not. It should enable the sales managers to take timely corrective action deviate from projected values. It also allows senior management to evaluate the sales manager. It is basically made for the use of the top management.

C & F agent does not take title of the goods whereas a distributor takes title of the goods while in transit.
Major differences are:

Selling concept presumes innately the non-consuming disposition of the human being. Therefore, the individual will have to be communicated about the various aspects of the product that would result in a purchase. While talking of the evolutionary order of the concepts marketing concept is more advanced than the selling concept, the latter one is still relevant in developing economies like India. For example, in case we need to tell the customer the superiority of a toothbrush over a neem stick, then we need to demonstrate the ease of use and superior quality of the output, which is part of the selling process. We need to ensure that the stock of product is sufficient and therefore monitoring stock at the retailer or the wholesaler level is an important function of the sales person.

Individual channel members are often more concerned with their short run goals, leading to channel conflict. Horizontal conflict occurs among firms at the same level of the channel. Vertical conflict occurs between different levels of the same channel.
Channel conflicts are common when the market size is limited and all channel members try to concentrate on the same market and customers. Sometimes differential pricing policy of organization also results in conflict among channel members.

Give a lot of examples and explain to him how you would improve either of this. This will increase a lot of customer service. You should have a commitment towards improving sales and increase the customer base.

In single level system, only one level of the channel directly rnarkets the product. In multilevel marketing different channels directly market products to customer.
The example of single level system is Tupperware and the example of multilevel marketing is Amway.

Product management as an organizational alternative to sales management is a feature of the multi-product organization. Moreover, when markets are large such functioning is very essential. The product management takes the total responsibility of the product from the stage of idea generation to the stage of commercialization. Sales management as a functional choice takes care of sales and the allied issues.