The Sales Director hire that makes or breaks the APAC quarter
There are four questions that separate a real Sales Director candidate from an impressive one. If your interview process does not answer them, you will find out at end of quarter three, when the pipeline has not materialised.
The Sales Director hire is the single most common senior-search request we get from Australian scaleups selling into APAC. It is also the search that most often produces a hire the client regrets. Not because the candidates are dishonest - most are impressive people. Because the interview process routinely fails to answer the questions that actually matter.
There are four.
One: what does their pipeline actually look like?
Every candidate you interview will describe a pipeline that closed. The interesting question is not “what closed”, it is “what shape was the pipeline that produced it”.
Ask them to describe the last twelve months in detail. Ask specifically what proportion of closed revenue came from inbound versus outbound. Ask what proportion came from named-target account planning versus opportunistic responses. Ask what proportion came from existing relationships versus cold-open new accounts. The answers tell you what the candidate is actually good at.
A candidate whose closed revenue is 70% inbound is a strong closer but may not be able to build pipeline from scratch. A candidate whose closed revenue is dominated by pre-existing relationships is a good networker but may not be able to originate at your specific accounts. A candidate whose numbers are heavily weighted to renewals is a great account manager wearing the wrong title. None of these are bad candidates. They are different candidates for different roles. Match the shape to the role.
Two: what is their opinion on the customer they will be selling to?
Ask the candidate to describe the profile of your target customer as they understand it. Do not give them the customer research pack in advance - ask them to describe it based on what they have inferred from the conversation so far, from your website, from public knowledge of the market.
If the candidate cannot describe your buyer with specificity by round two, they are unlikely to build a pipeline efficiently. Sales leaders who consistently produce results have strong, opinionated views on the customer they sell to. Sales leaders who do not tend to sell generically, and generic selling has a low close rate at senior enterprise level.
Three: what will they do in the first ninety days that produces revenue in month six?
This is the question most interview panels ask badly. They ask “what is your ninety-day plan” and get a slide deck. The better question is more specific: given the pipeline they inherit on day one, what specifically do they do in the first ninety days that produces revenue in month six?
The answer should be uncomfortable to hear. It should involve some accounts the candidate expects to disqualify and remove from pipeline. It should involve outbound activity to accounts you are not yet touching. It should involve a change to how the SDR / BDR team is briefed. It should involve pushback on the current pricing or packaging. Candidates who describe a ninety-day plan that reads like continuity are candidates who will not change your revenue trajectory. That is fine if that is what you are hiring for. Most Sales Director searches are not.
Four: what have they walked away from?
Ask the candidate to describe a role they turned down and a role they left because it was not working. Their answers are diagnostic in a way most other interview questions are not.
The candidate who cannot name a role they walked away from is either unusually risk-averse or unusually vague. Both are worth digging into. The candidate who describes leaving a role that was not working, without blaming the CEO or the product, is a candidate with self-awareness. The candidate who describes leaving a role that was not working entirely in terms of the CEO or the product is worth a follow-up conversation.
The signal is not perfect. Some candidates have genuinely bad luck with their last CEO. But over enough conversations the pattern is real.
What the process usually gets wrong
Most Sales Director interview processes we see over-index on cultural fit and personal chemistry, and under-index on operational specificity. The result is an offer to a candidate who is impressive in interviews and produces a plan that is directionally correct but operationally shallow. Six months later the pipeline has not materialised, the CEO is frustrated, and the candidate is either underperforming or has already started looking again.
The fix is not more interview rounds. It is fewer, better questions - and a willingness to accept that a candidate who cannot answer the four above is not the candidate. Even if they are extremely likeable.