Interview scorecardReviewed by Adroit Staffing editorial reviewPractice guidance, no data claims7 min read
The short answer
Assess a Sales Manager on coaching, diagnosis, forecast discipline, hiring judgement and how they hold a difficult conversation. The single most useful stage is a live coaching exercise on a real recorded or role-played call, because managing is a practised skill and describing it is not.
Key facts
- Dimensions
- Coaching, diagnosis, forecasting, hiring, hard conversations
- Core exercise
- Live coaching on one real call or deal
- Scoring
- 1-5, written before the panel talks
- Use it live
- Printable and copyable scorecard on this page
Sales Manager scorecard
Run the five dimensions in this order across two conversations and a live coaching exercise. Score in writing during each stage - the panel compares scores only after everyone has submitted.
Scores and notes stay in this tab. Copy, print or download the sheet — nothing is uploaded.
Sales Manager — interview scorecard
Adroit Staffing — adroitstaffing.co.uk
Dimension 1
Coaching in practice
Tests: Whether they can change what a seller does next week, rather than describe coaching models.
“Coach my colleague through this call as if they reported to you. Fifteen minutes.”
Strong answers show
- Asks the rep what they think happened before offering a view
- Picks one behaviour to change, not seven
- Ends with a specific action and a date
Weak answers sound like
- Lectures, or retells the call back to the rep
- Names a framework instead of a behaviour
- Leaves the conversation with no agreed next step
Follow-up prompts
- “What would you check on Friday to know it worked?”
- “What would you do if nothing changed by the second week?”
Dimension 2
Diagnosis
Tests: Whether they can find the cause of a miss instead of applying more activity.
“One of your reps has hit 60 per cent for three months. Talk me through how you find out why.”
Strong answers show
- Separates volume, conversion and deal quality before acting
- Looks at stage conversion rather than activity totals alone
- Names the two most likely causes and how to tell them apart
Weak answers sound like
- Immediately increases activity targets
- Treats motivation as the default explanation
- Cannot say what data they would look at first
Follow-up prompts
- “What would tell you it is a targeting problem rather than a skill problem?”
- “When does this become a performance conversation rather than a coaching one?”
Dimension 3
Forecast discipline
Tests: Whether the number they give leadership is defensible.
“How did you decide what to commit last quarter, and how close were you?”
Strong answers show
- Distinguishes commit, best case and pipeline explicitly
- Cites evidence per deal, not rep confidence
- Volunteers a quarter they got wrong and what changed after
Weak answers sound like
- Reports the CRM number without inspection
- Rounds up habitually to protect the team
- No view of forecast accuracy over time
Follow-up prompts
- “What evidence moves a deal into commit for you?”
- “How do you handle a rep who consistently over-commits?”
Dimension 4
Hiring judgement
Tests: Whether they can build a team rather than inherit one.
“Tell me about the best and worst hire you have made. What did you miss on the worst?”
Strong answers show
- Names the specific signal they overweighted
- Has a repeatable structure they run rather than gut feel
- Speaks about ramping and onboarding as their responsibility
Weak answers sound like
- Blames the process or the recruiter entirely
- Hires in their own image without noticing
- Cannot describe how they assess anything other than presence
Follow-up prompts
- “What did you change in your process afterwards?”
- “What would you insist on in our process?”
Dimension 5
Difficult conversations
Tests: Whether standards are held early and humanely, or avoided until it is a formal matter.
“Take me through the last time you told someone their performance was not good enough.”
Strong answers show
- Evidence was specific and the timeline was clear
- The person was not surprised by the conversation
- Describes the support offered alongside the standard
Weak answers sound like
- The first conversation was a formal process
- Softened the message until it carried nothing
- Speaks about people as headcount
Follow-up prompts
- “What did you say in the first thirty seconds?”
- “How long had you known before you spoke to them?”
Average score: not scored yet
Coaching and diagnosis are the two dimensions that cannot be trained quickly. A 2 on either is a decline even where the average looks acceptable.
The 1–5 scoring language
Agree the wording with the panel before the first interview. Most disagreement in a debrief is two people using the same number to mean different things.
- 1 — No evidence
- Could not give a real example, or the example contradicted the claim.
- 2 — Weak evidence
- General answer, or evidence that belonged to someone else on the team.
- 3 — Meets the bar
- Specific example, owned by them, holds up under one follow-up.
- 4 — Strong
- Specific and measured, plus a clear account of what they would change.
- 5 — Exceptional
- Evidence you could hand to the board, and they taught you something.
Where this scorecard sits in the process
Structured screen
Evidence of team results and how they were produced.
30 minutes, same questions for every candidate.
Live coaching exercise
See coaching happen rather than hear it described.
15 minutes with a briefed rep or a real call recording.
Leadership conversation
Forecasting, hiring and standards.
45 minutes with the person they would report to.
How this maps to the Adroit Five Stage Screening Process
Adroit screens management candidates against the dimensions you set, using the structured evidence conversation and a practical exercise as stages two and three of the Five Stage Screening Process. The coaching exercise is yours to run in your own room - we prepare the shortlist and the evidence, you make the call.
Why manager interviews go wrong
Most manager processes test whether somebody can talk about management. The candidates who present best are often the ones who have read the most about it. The fix is to put a real artefact in front of them - a call recording, a stalled deal, a rep who is missing target for the third month - and watch what they do with it.
How to run the live coaching exercise
- 01Pick one real call recording, or brief a colleague to play a rep with a specific weakness.
- 02Give the candidate the same context you would give a manager on their first Monday.
- 03Ask them to run a 15-minute coaching conversation, not to critique the call to you.
- 04Score what the rep would actually do differently tomorrow as a result.
Common questions
- Should we promote internally instead?
- Often yes, and the same scorecard works for an internal candidate. Score them on the same dimensions and the same evidence, and be explicit about what support the step up will need.
- Do we ask a manager to present a 30/60/90 plan?
- Only after they have met the team and seen real numbers. A plan written from the job advert tests writing, not judgement.
Sources and review
- Written by
- Adroit Staffing
- Reviewed by
- Adroit Staffing editorial review
- First published
- Last reviewed
This page is practice guidance from our own Sales and GTM recruitment work. It makes no claims about current market data, so it cites no external figures.