Best interview questions for your hiring process
Telesales Representative Interview questions
Telesales Representatives are excellent communicators and negotiators, who can speak to clients or customers and convince them to purchase your product or services. Upselling, answering difficult questions, and providing deals or bundles are all tasks your Telesales Representative will take care of.
These are the important qualities to look for in a Telesales Representative:
- Excellent communicator (both verbal and written)
- Confident with negotiation
- Ability to work independently
- Great initiative to offer and upsell deals
- Experienced with using Microsoft Office
Interviewing a Telesales Representative
For an e-commerce company, or any business looking to grow their customer base, a Telesales Representative is a crucial role. And, since these individuals will have direct contact with your clients, customers, and potential customers, it is essential that you hire someone who can represent your business correctly.
Our example Telesales Representative interview questions below will help you to tailor your interview process to do just that!
How to open the job interview
Even confident communicators such as Telesales Representatives will feel a little nervous before a job interview. But, to ensure you get a great overview of your candidate, you’ll need to make sure they’re comfortable talking to you.
To do this, simply ask your potential Telesales Representative a couple of easy opening questions.
Best interview questions for your hiring process
See our Telesales Representative job description hereFor the interview
A positive opener to start
What is your best memory as a Telesales Representative?
Why did you choose a career in Telesales?
Behavioral Questions
Name a time a change you made to your Telesales script improved sales or communication with customers?
Tell me about the most challenging customer or client you have had to speak to, how did you overcome this?
When working with customers, there will occasionally be difficult characters. You need to be able to trust that your Telesales candidate can deal with this in a professional manner.
Tell me about a time you made a mistake you made when relaying information to a customer. How did you rectify and learn from this?
This Telesales interview question aims to highlight a candidate’s honesty and drive to improve. Even the most expert candidates will make mistakes, you’re looking for an individual who owns this and takes steps to minimise the damage. They should also mention improving their script or taking extra measures to avoid making the same mistake again.
Talk me through a time when a manager or colleague has disagreed with a choice you have made regarding a customer, How did you settle this?
Telesales Representatives are excellent communicators and negotiators. Therefore, they should be able to use their expert knowledge to show why they made a certain decision, or to negotiate a middle ground to settle any debates.
Soft Skills
How do you prioritise your time when receiving multiple calls at once?
A Telesales Representative position will often be a fast-paced role. Therefore, the ability to prioritise tasks is essential. The candidate should be able to mention having a few key factors that help them to decide which calls are the most important.
What steps would you take if you received a negative piece of feedback from a customer?
Here, you test a candidate’s initiative and ability to receive feedback properly. A great Telesales Representative will take this feedback on board, and take steps to change any negative factors in their future calls.
What skills do you have that help you as a Telesales Representative?
Here a candidate can really brag! They may mention soft or hard skills that will help them in this role, and give you an idea of their confidence areas.
When explaining a deal or product feature to a potential customer, how do you ensure they are following what you’re saying?
A Telesales Representative will have a deeper understanding of your product than a customer who is hearing about it for the first time. Here, you’re looking for communication skills that help a candidate really sell your product or service. They can mention using real-life examples and other techniques to get their point across.
Hard Skills
What is the largest sale you have made?
This Telesales interview question will help you to assess a candidate’s previous experience and how this matches up with your company.
How do you usually make a record of the conversations you’ve had with a customer?
This answer will give you an idea of what tools a candidate has used during previous customer service roles. They may mention certain CRMs or more generalised tools.
Are you fluent in any languages other than English?
This won’t be make or break for some roles, but it is worth noting, especially if you work for an international company or are looking to expand your business.
Have you received any negotiation or communication training?
Again, this won’t always be essential, however, it can help give your Telesales candidate bonus points when checking your interview scorecard.
Do you have sales experience in any technical or niche areas?
Knowing whether your Telesales Representative is used to working with technical information or niche areas can help you to match their experience against your business or industry.
Operational / Situational Questions
If a customer or client asked a question that you didn’t know the answer to, how would you respond?
This question tests a Telesales Representative’s ability to think on their feet. They should mention either putting the customer on hold and finding the information, checking a script or customer guidebook, or offering to contact the customer later when the information is found. Making up an answer, leaving a customer confused, or lying to the customer should never be considered.
If when communicating with customers, you noticed the same question or comments frequently popping up, what would you do?
Here, the candidate should have the initiative and forward-thinking ability to pass this information on to a manager or the relevant team.
Imagine your colleague asks you to take over an urgent call, but you’re already speaking with a particularly chatty customer. How do you respond?
Your candidate should have the prioritisation skills to deal with this situation. They may mention asking the colleague to take over their call in return if their call is not urgent, politely ending the call with their customer if their problem has been solved, or finding a suitable colleague to take the urgent call.
If you were to join our team as a Telesales Representative, what are some of the first steps you would take?
Your candidate should mention getting to know the product or services you offer in detail, familiarising themselves with your technology, and getting to know the team.
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Initiative and innovation are great qualities for your Telesales Representative to have. This question aims to test whether these are present in your candidate.