Scenario-Based Interviews

Employers should ditch the traditional, vanilla interview questions such as "Why should I hire you?" or "Where do you want to be in five years?" since candidates already have prepared perfectly-crafted answers.

Instead, Schmidtmann said interviewers should use scenario-based questions such as "Describe a typical sale from beginning to end," or responding to "I really like what you have to offer, but your price is too high."

Interviewers should be pay attention to where the process starts – do candidates have a method for identifying prospective customers? – where the process ends – is there any post-sale follow-up? – how many steps it contains – enterprise sales require at least four steps – and whether the salesperson or the customer is in control of the sale.