Account Executive Interview Questions

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About the role

Sales or Account Executives act as a bridge between a company and its customers.

They not only sell products to interested leads but also remain the key point of communication to inform customers about new products, answer questions and build relationships. Account Executives need to be resilient and empathetic as well as excellent, persuasive communicators.

Account executive responsibilities

  • Onboarding new customers
  • Reporting on customer retention
  • Generating sales opportunities
  • Working closely with salespeople to improve the handover process and deepen the relationships already built
  • Writing and sharing stories of customers’ success to help others see the values

What skills should you be looking for?

Resilience
Proactivity
Perseverance
Communication
Persuasion
Diligence
Relationship builder
Question 1

It is the end of a tough quarter and you have under achieved on your sales target. Your sales manager has organised a 1-on-1 with you to review your pipeline.

Although things haven't gone your way this quarter, you're confident that you have laid the groundwork for a good next quarter. What do you say to your manager when they ask you about your performance and how next quarter looks?

Resilience
Proactivity
Perseverance
Question 2

You've just gotten off of your third cold call in a row, where the person you have called has been unreasonably rude to you on the phone. You have planned to continue cold calling for the rest of the morning, but you are feeling discouraged now. What do you do?

Resilience
Perseverance
Question 3

Your last three deals that you have committed to pipeline have fallen through at the last minute. Describe the impact that this has on the team and the business. Detail three deal indicators that flag whether a deal is likely to come in and describe the proactive steps you can take to understand the state of these indicators and influence them.

Resilience
Question 4

The first part of an introductory sales call between an account executive and a lead is typically spent listening to and understanding the lead's pain points relative to the services we offer. This process is called discovery and is key to understanding whether we can match the lead with our solution, and how we can position the solution relative to the things that the lead cares about the most.

You are on an introductory sales call and despite your best efforts, the lead does not want to talk about their problems, they just want to see a demo of the solution. What do you do in this situation and how do you ascertain the information you need from the lead?

Communication
Perseverance
Question 5

How would you structure a 30 minute introductory sales call with a lead? What would you try to learn, what would the objectives of the call be and how would you judge if it was a success?

Communication
Persuasion
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