Hire Sales STARs by Asking Behavior-Based Interview Questions

If you follow professional football, then you know that Shedeur Sanders was the big story of the 2025 NFL draft.

For you non-football fans, Shedeur Sanders is the son of ex-NFL great Deion Sanders, who also serves as the head coach of the University of Colorado football team, where Shedeur Sanders played as the starting quarterback during 2022-2024.  Prior to the 2025 NFL draft, Shedeur, his dad, and the media hyped Shedeur as a first-round pick, maybe even the number one overall pick. 

Unfortunately for Shedeur, the 2025 draft was a disaster.  Shedeur went undrafted in the first round, then undrafted in the second round, undrafted in the third round, and again undrafted in the fourth round. Finally, the Cleveland Browns drafted him in the fifth round as the 144^th overall pick in the NFL draft. 

So, what went wrong? 

According to post-draft media reports, Shedeur Sanders reportedly stumbled during his pre-draft interviews with NFL teams.  Teams were put off by how he responded when asked to walk through his “mistake reel”—game footage highlighting poor decisions or missed reads. Rather than taking accountability, Sanders deflected blame and grew defensive, raising concerns about his coachability. He also struggled with the "install" exercise, a common test of a quarterback’s ability to quickly learn and recall plays, where he appeared unprepared and failed to grasp key concepts.

These NFL teams used sophisticated behavior-based interview questions focusing on the candidate's past performance and behavior to predict future performance and behavior in similar scenarios.   

Like a sports team, where great players are the key to winning, you can also use behavior-based interviewing techniques to evaluate sales talent.

The Cost of a Bad Sales Hire 

Your hiring decisions won’t be as public as an NFL football team’s draft pick, but mistakes can still be painful. Here are some of the costs associated with hiring a bad salesperson.

1. Recruiting Costs. There are the time and cost of hiring the salesperson, advertising, recruiting, and time spent interviewing. When you make a poor hiring decision, these costs are all compounded because you must incur them again to replace the poor hire.
2. Training. Then you have to train the salesperson.
3. Salary. You have to pay bad hires a salary even if they are underperforming.
4. Lost Productivity. The most significant cost is when the salesperson misses his/her number. Contrast this lost productivity to a good hire who ramps up quickly.
5. Employee Morale. Morale can suffer when a bad hire remains at an organization for an extended period.
6. Lost Management Time. Nothing saps a sales manager’s productivity more than dealing with a problem employee. You can’t get back the time you waste managing a bad salesperson.
7. Customer Risk. A bad hire can mean the organization loses business. It can be because of the bad hire's incompetence, inattention to client needs, or other problems that result in lost business. 

Profile Your Sales STARs

So, how does a sales leader find the right candidate?  Hiring great salespeople starts with benchmarking your star performers.

Many sales leaders have created (or inherited) a job description for their sales teams. A job description details the open position's responsibilities, expectations, and duties. A benchmark, on the other hand, looks at key attributes that are either present or lacking in some of the key players performing well in the position.

Common characteristics of your organization's successful (i.e., the top 15-20%) salespeople could include:

1. Education
2. Work experience
3. Performance on the job
4. Skills/knowledge (trainable)
5. Personal qualities/behaviors (non-trainable)

Of these key areas, arguably the most important for most sales leaders are the Personal Qualities and Behaviors. Do you want a candidate who is competitive or who has a positive attitude, or both?  In shorter sales cycles, you may want to look for resilience. Careful consideration of these factors will help you hire top salespeople who will be the best organizational fit.

Once you clarify your ideal salesperson’s key characteristics, you can build a pipeline of quality candidates. As a guideline, try interviewing at least 3-4 qualified applicants for each open position. The more qualified candidates you speak with, the easier to identify stars. More candidates would be better, but that may not be realistic given time constraints.

Behavior-Based Interviewing for Sales Positions 

During the interview, your job is to uncover whether the candidate has the attributes of a high performer and not just tell you what you want to hear.  This is where behavior-based interview questions come into play.

Often, a sales manager will ask leading questions such as “We’re a team-oriented culture – are you a team player?”  Any candidate worth your time will respond with a resounding “yes.”  But in that case, we have told the candidate what we want to hear and don’t know if they are, in fact, a team player.

A more effective approach is to ask “STAR” questions that focus on how the candidate has applied the skill or attribute in the past, structured around the

• Situation: Set the scene by providing context on the challenge you faced.
• Task: Explain your role in that situation.
• Action: Describe what actions or steps you took to tackle the situation.
• Result: End with the outcome of your actions and how you grew from the experience.

Each question in the STAR model asks how the particular characteristic was demonstrated in the past and then drills down more to discover the specifics.  STAR questions help you highlight a candidate’s measurable achievements during an interview.

For example, if the attribute you want to hire for resiliency, here is how the STAR model would help uncover a candidate’s resilience:

• Situation: Tell me about a problem that was particularly difficult to overcome.
• Task: Describe what you were doing when this problem or obstacle occurred.
• Action: How did you combat this challenge?
• Result: What was the outcome? How will this situation affect your outlook when similar problems arise?

Behavior-based interview questions help you elicit detailed, specific answers from the candidate, focusing the interview on their actual past actions and behaviors. 

Conclusion 

Getting the right players on your team is an essential factor for sales success (or NFL success, for that matter). You can mitigate your hiring risk by identifying the behaviors and characteristics of your ideal candidate and then having productive interviews by asking behavior-based questions.

Interested in more insight about building your sales teams? Try these articles.

• How to Find and Hire Great Sales Managers
• New Sales Hire: Industry Experience or “Best Athlete”?
• How to Hire the Right Salespeople