Selling well isn’t just about knowing how to sell

When interviewing salespeople, there are things that matter far more than a résumé, past experience, or how many deals someone closed in their last role. In sales (especially consultative sales) performance doesn’t depend only on techniques or scripts, but on personal qualities that later show up directly in conversations with customers.

These are some of the most important ones.

1. Intelligence beyond selling

‍A good salesperson isn’t just someone with sales skills. It’s someone you can have an interesting conversation with. Someone who can talk about context, the economy, politics, or the industry they operate in. Not because those topics will necessarily come up in a deal, but because they reveal how a person thinks. Their judgment. Their ability to understand the world their customers live in.

Salespeople with broader knowledge tend to have better conversations—and better conversations tend to lead to better commercial decisions.

2. Genuine curiosity

‍Curiosity is one of the most important attributes in sales, and also one of the easiest to spot during an interview. All it takes is leaving space for open questions and paying attention to what comes up.

When questions are limited to commissions, benefits, or basic conditions, it often signals a lack of interest in understanding the business itself. On the other hand, questions about the product, the competition, or the company’s challenges show something different. That curiosity is exactly what’s needed later in customer meetings: a real desire to understand before trying to sell.

3. Ability to receive feedback (coachability)

‍Another key factor is the ability to receive feedback and turn it into action. It’s not enough to listen or agree. What matters is understanding, processing, and improving.

In sales teams—especially growing ones—coachability makes a huge difference. People who quickly incorporate feedback and adjust tend to move forward much faster than those who believe they already know everything.

4. Humility as the foundation for learning

‍Humility is closely connected to coachability. In sales, it’s common to find profiles who feel they’ve already seen it all. The problem is that this mindset often shuts down learning.

The more curious someone is, the more aware they are of how much they still don’t know. That mindset—far from being a weakness—builds a strong growth mentality: the understanding that there’s always more to learn and improve.

5. Honesty (the non-negotiable baseline)

‍None of the above works without honesty. Not as an aspirational value, but as a minimum requirement. Without honesty, no sales skill is sustainable over time.

Ultimately...

...hiring well in sales is much less about techniques or past experience, and much more about identifying people who are intelligent, curious, open to feedback, humble, and honest. Not only because they tend to be better salespeople, but because they usually build stronger careers and healthier relationships—both inside and outside of work.