A good building products sales role stands up to evidence. Ask what success looks like at twelve months, who decides that, and how it gets measured. A good employer answers in specifics without hesitating. A vague answer to a fair question is itself an answer, and how readily the evidence comes tells you as much as the evidence.
An interview is two conversations happening at once, and the second one is yours. You are deciding whether to give this company the next few years, and you are allowed to find out what you are getting.
It is easy to sit through several conversations and come out knowing how the company describes itself and almost nothing you could check. Below is what to ask, what to ask to see, and how to read the answers you get.
Start with the question underneath all of it: what do you actually want. What the work looks like day to day, what you want to be earning, and where this role puts you in five years and in ten. Without that, you are evaluating a role against nothing.
What should you ask about the role itself?
Ask what success looks like at 12 months, then ask who decides that and how it gets measured.
Pay close attention to vague answers on that question. Ask who agreed the expectations and where they are written. If nobody can show you, treat the role as unclear until they can.
Then ask where the role goes. What did the person before you move into. What does the structure above this seat look like in five years. If the honest answer is that there is nowhere to go, that can be completely fine, but you want to know it now rather than in year three.
And be direct about your own deal-breakers. If there is something you need, on money, on travel, on flexibility, on the kind of work, say it clearly and early. That cuts both ways. Name both sides' deal-breakers before the offer stage.
How do you check whether the area is as good as they say?
Ask to see the evidence, and treat how it is provided as part of the answer.
If you are told you are inheriting a strong area, ask what it is worth today. Ask for the last couple of years of revenue against it. Ask which accounts are active, which have gone quiet, and what is in the pipeline that has not closed.
Some companies will show you. Some will show you part of it and explain what they cannot share, which is a fair answer. Some will not, and how they handle the request tells you something on its own.
There is a second reason to ask, beyond finding out. If you are given numbers and they turn out not to reflect reality, you have a documented starting point for a conversation. The written numbers give you a record to take back to the employer if reality differs.
How can you tell whether an advertised OTE is realistic?
Ask what the area is worth now, and ask exactly how much you have to sell to earn the OTE.
Anyone can advertise a big number. If a company is putting an OTE in front of you, they should be able to show you the path to it: what the target is, how the target was built, what the current holder or the previous holder actually achieved against it, and a worked example of what the commission plan pays at a few levels of performance.
If they cannot show you that, the OTE is a number you have no way of standing up. Treat it as unverified until they can.
These are the questions I use, in order:
- What is the total target for this area, and how was it calculated?
- What did the last person achieve against it?
- How many people on the team are currently hitting the number?
- Show me what I earn at 80 per cent, at 100 and at 120.
- When was the plan last changed, and why?
Run the answers through the commission calculator before you take anything at face value. Thresholds and accelerators change what a plan pays, and the worked numbers show you by how much.
What should you ask about support and systems?
Ask how the systems and processes actually help you hit the number.
Support and systems decide how much of your week you get to spend selling, and this is the question I end up prompting candidates to ask. Who does the quoting. How long does a technical query take to come back. What does the CRM actually do for you. Who handles a warranty issue or a service complaint on your accounts.
The reason it matters is time. A rep who spends most of the week on service issues and chasing quotes has very little of it left in front of customers, and it is entirely possible to hit target in that role and be miserable in it. The headline package will not tell you any of this. Ask about the support structure directly.
Ask what proportion of the week the current team spends in front of customers. If nobody knows, that is worth noting.
What should you ask about the manager and the person before you?
Ask what happened to the last few people in the seat, and listen for whether the answer has any detail in it.
If the role has been filled several times in a few years, ask about it directly. You are asking for context, and it is a reasonable thing for a candidate to want to understand. A company with a good answer will give you one.
On the manager, ask questions that need a specific answer.
- What decisions can I make without checking first? Pricing latitude, discount authority, how I plan my own week. Autonomy with a dollar figure attached to it is the kind you can check.
- How often will we speak, and what happens in those conversations? A weekly pipeline review and a weekly activity check are different jobs done to you.
- If I am six months in and behind the number, what happens? I rate this as the most useful question on the list, because the answer tells you whether their instinct is to diagnose or to blame.
- What did the last person in this seat do well, and what did they struggle with?
The strongest thing available to you here is the team. Ask to meet the people you would be working alongside, and ask to speak to someone else in the room while you are there. You can ask fairly direct questions in that conversation. My own rule of thumb is that twenty minutes with the team tells me more than an hour anywhere else in a process. When a business has a real problem, the team is where I have heard about it.
How should you read what you hear about a company in the market?
Take all of it with a pinch of salt, and be careful whose view you are taking.
Reputation is worth listening to and it is not evidence. Someone may have left a business unhappy, and sometimes when you speak to that person you can understand exactly why it did not work out for them. Equally, no business and no job is perfect, and a company that has had a rough run of turnover is not automatically a bad place to work.
Treat what you hear as a lead to verify. If several people independently describe the same specific, observable thing, that is worth taking to the team meeting and asking about directly. If it is a general impression, it is a general impression.
How do you read a short tenure on your own CV?
A clear reason can explain one short stint, while a repeated pattern needs a fuller account.
Worth saying plainly, because it works in both directions. Explain one short stint clearly. For repeated short tenures, give the context for each move and show what you checked before taking the next role.
Two roles can go wrong for reasons entirely outside your control. Go into the next role with extra care, because the verification in this article matters more for you.
One thing to avoid in the interview itself: do not be overly negative about where you have been. Give the reason, keep it factual, and move on.
What do you do when the answers do not line up?
Write down what you were told, by whom and when, and go back to them on the specific gap.
If the manager describes the area one way and the team describes it another, that is not necessarily anybody lying. People see different parts of a business. But it is a question you are entitled to close before you sign.
The pattern worth watching is questions that keep coming back vague or unanswered. If the same subject keeps going soft, chase it down before you sign. It is the part of the role you have the least visibility on, and that on its own is reason enough to keep asking.
Where you are working with a recruiter, bring the specific gap to them so they can put a clear question back to the company.
How do you decide?
On the evidence you have actually been shown, and on whether the role takes you where you want to be in five and ten years.
This is the eight-step sequence I work through with candidates. It is my own framework, with no score attached.
- Know what you want first, including where you want to be in five and ten years.
- Ask what success looks like at 12 months and who measures it.
- Ask what the area is worth now, and ask to see it.
- Make them show you the path to the OTE, with worked numbers.
- Ask how the systems and support help you hit it.
- Ask about the people before you, and meet the team.
- Treat market reputation as a lead to verify.
- Chase anything that stays vague.
A company that answers all of it well has just told you a lot about how it operates, and that is the point. Judge the role on the answers and evidence you have collected.
If you are still working out whether it is time to move at all, start with that one. If you want a second read on a specific role, put the role in front of me. The employer's side of this question, and what a good company should be ready to show you, is on the paired page.