Sales interview questions: evidence over bravado

The one that still stings taught me the most: a three-year washroom services renewal across a client's 40 sites — our second-biggest contract, and I lost it to a competitor at a price eight points ABOVE ours. That detail matters, because it killed the comfortable explanation before I could reach for it.

The honest autopsy: I lost that renewal eleven months before the decision, when their facilities lead — my champion of four years — moved on and I treated her successor as a name change instead of a new sale. He'd come from a business that ran consolidated FM contracts, he inherited a supplier he hadn't chosen, and in his first six months I visited twice. The competitor's account director, I later learned, was in monthly — building the case that washroom services belonged inside a bundled FM deal, which was the story my new contact already believed.

By the time the tender landed, I was defending line-item value against a worldview. Our bid was sharper on price and service levels; theirs answered the question he was actually asking. We came second.

What it changed — permanently: contact changes on any account over £50,000 now trigger the same motion as a new prospect — a re-qualification meeting inside 30 days, their agenda not mine, and a written note on what this PERSON is trying to achieve, not what the account history says. I've run that play 14 times since. Two of those accounts I'd probably have lost the old way; both renewed.

And the uncomfortable lesson I'd own out loud: my four-year relationship had quietly become my qualification process. Relationships are compounding assets, but they're attached to people, not logos — and the CRM field that says 'strong relationship' should really ask 'with whom, and are they still there?'

I'll answer the second half first, because it's the half that matters. In my current pipeline of roughly £600,000, there's about £120,000 I wouldn't put my name on — and I can tell you which deals and why.

The biggest is an £80,000 automotive-supplier opportunity that's been 'decision next month' for three months. The engineer loves us; the buyer won't take my calls. My qualification framework scores access to commercial power, and that deal fails it — an enthusiastic user with no route to the person who signs is a science project, not a pipeline entry. It sits in my CRM at ten per... it sits at the lowest probability band I'm allowed to use, with a kill-date: if I haven't reached the buyer by month-end through the engineer's sponsorship, it comes out entirely.

The other £40,000 is two deals waiting on 'budget confirmation' — which in my experience is what prospects say when the honest answer is no and they're too polite to deliver it. One more cycle each, then out.

The £480,000 I DO believe in breaks three ways: £190,000 in renewals with expansion attached — highest confidence, because the expansion conversations started with THEIR production problems, not my quota. £210,000 in active opportunities where I can name the decision process, the date, and the competing alternative — including one where we're second and I've told my manager exactly that. And £80,000 early-stage but properly qualified: real problem, named budget holder, my next step in the diary rather than 'awaiting response'.

The habit underneath: I run my own Friday pipeline scrub before my manager ever sees it — deals age forward honestly or come out. My forecast's been inside five points of actual for six consecutive quarters, and that number matters more to me than any single quarter's attainment, because it's the number that makes my commit worth something.

This exact scenario, near enough: a regional office landlord, a £180,000-a-year cleaning contract across six buildings, and a procurement lead who ended our final meeting with 'take fifteen grand off and we'll sign this afternoon'.

What I did first was nothing — the most useful two seconds in negotiation. Then, instead of answering the price, I asked what the fifteen thousand was FOR: was our bid over budget, or over a competitor? The answer reshaped everything: a competitor had come in cheaper, but — his words — 'we'd rather it was you'. That sentence is negotiating power, and candidates who leap to discount never hear it, because they answer before they ask.

So the fifteen thousand wasn't a price problem; it was cover — he needed to show his board he'd extracted something. I gave him something to show that didn't come off our margin: I offered to restructure, not reduce. Two of the six buildings had daytime-cleaning specs their tenants had grumbled about anyway; moving them to evening service saved us agency premiums worth about £6,000 — a genuine cost-out, so I passed it through in full. Then I added year-one quarterly review meetings with his board's facilities committee — costs us four afternoons, reads as accountability — and asked for something back for the rest: a three-year term instead of two, and a case-study reference at month twelve.

His board got a £6,000 saving and visible governance; we got contract length worth far more than the discount asked — and the margin line held at full rate on the spec we actually run. Signed nine days later, not that afternoon, and the delay was fine: deals that genuinely die over nine days were dying anyway.

The principle I carry: price is the last variable I move, and never alone. Every pound of discount is invisible to the customer within a quarter — but structure, term and service changes are things both sides can point at for years. And if it HAD been a pure price war against an identical spec? Then the honest conversation is whether we want the work at that margin — and sometimes the strongest move in sales is respecting your own price list in public.

My second year selling fork-lift trucks: six months, one machine sold. My territory's two biggest accounts froze capital spending in the same quarter — a distribution group mid-acquisition, a food processor post-fire — and those two had quietly become 60-odd points of my number. The drought exposed a concentration problem I'd been calling a relationship strength.

What I did first was diagnostic, because panic generates activity and activity isn't the same as progress. I split the problem three ways on one page: deals delayed (real, would return — the frozen accounts), deals lost (needed autopsies), and pipeline that had always been thinner than my dashboard pretended. The third category was the painful one: strip out the two big accounts and my true prospecting engine had been idling for a year.

Then the rebuild, unglamorous on purpose. I rebuilt territory coverage from the trade data: every operation in my patch running five-plus trucks on fleets over seven years old — 90-odd sites — and worked them in a fixed weekly rhythm: twelve first-visits a week, every visit logged with a next step or a disqualification, no 'general catch-ups'. I also changed WHAT I sold during the freeze: the frozen accounts couldn't buy machines, but they could buy operator-refresher training and service plans — small numbers, but it kept me in both buildings weekly, which mattered enormously eleven months later when the capital taps reopened and both fleets renewed with us.

The composure question deserves a straight answer too: months three and four were genuinely hard, and what held me together was making the WEEK the unit of success instead of the invoice — twelve quality visits was a good week whatever closed, because I could control the twelve. My sales director could see the same scoreboard, which kept those months honest between us.

The drought broke in month seven — three machines to a haulier I'd first visited in month two. The next year I finished at 112 against target... let me say it properly: twelve points over target, with no account above 25 points of my number. The drought didn't just end; it left me a territory that couldn't produce another one the same way.