5 Ways to Blow an Interview for an Entry Level Sales Position

One of the ways OpenView adds value to our portfolio companies is by helping them build lead qualification teams. A lead qual team can be an integral piece of the kind of lead generation systems we help our portfolio companies build. When fueled by an inbound marketing engine and managed through an integrated custom CRM implementation, a system like this can really help a company take off.

Our lead qual “teams” usually start out as 1 or 2 young ambitious professionals looking to start a career in sales. This role at one of our portfolio companies is a great opportunity for anyone interested in a career in sales. Since working at OpenView I have hired for this position multiple times and conducted dozens of interviews over the phone and in person. This blog post is intended for anyone applying for an entry level sales job, but some of these can probably be applied to any interview process. 
1. Forget which job you are interviewing for

I get that people on the job search apply to a lot of different jobs at once and sometimes it can be difficult staying organized, but if you finally manage to schedule a phone interview, you better know which job it’s for. I had a phone interview with one candidate who actually asked me what job he was being interviewed for. That was a short interview.

2. Say that you are not really motivated by money

For some reason, many people are either not really motivated by money, or are afraid to say it. It’s not a bad thing, especially in sales. If you are not motivated by money, you probably shouldn’t be looking for a career in sales.

3. Give very short and unenthusiastic answers to questions

Most entry level sales positions are all about attitude. If you come off as confident, and enthusiastic about the job you are interviewing for you will at least make it to the next round of interviews. Sales is all about interpersonal skills and if you don’t demonstrate the ability to be enthusiastic and sell yourself no one is going to believe that you can sell their product.

4. Don’t prepare any questions before the interview

There is no way that going into a first or second round interview all of your questions about a company or a position have been answered. Asking relevant questions in an interview shows a potential employer that you are actually interested in the job and in their company. Not asking any relevant questions about the position or company shows that you haven’t put much thought into the company, what it does, and how the position you are applying for fits into that. Anyone who takes a few minutes to think about that should easily be able to come up with at least a few good questions.

5. Bring a copy of your resume folded up in your pants pocket –

This probably doesn’t happen very often, but it happened to me recently. I think that you should actually bring at least 2 extra nice clean copies of your resume to an interview in a folder or a notebook. If you don’t it’s not the end of the world, but it’s probably 1 strike against you. However, when someone I was interviewing pulled a wrinkled copy of their resume out of their pocket and handed it to me that was pretty much it for that candidate.

Good luck with the job search.