Just find an org with great product-market fit. It’ll be easy, they said. You’ll hit your number, they said.  

Yes, product-market fit is the most important determinant of success in your next sales role. It’s also likely the hardest to properly vet when looking at companies.

In addition to checking out how other sellers rate the org’s product-market fit on RepVue, here’s how I would recommend evaluating product-market fit.

Make Sure You Understand the Product & Benefits

You can’t evaluate product-market fit if you don’t understand the product.  

Do your homework before the interview and then when they offer an opportunity to ask questions, ask questions. Don’t be shy about starting with some very basic questions and confirming your understanding of basic concepts about how customers get value.

Request to have a conversation with a sales engineer or solutions consultant on the team, with the goal of asking deeper product questions. Funny how this works, but they’ll typically be very forthcoming with you (i.e., more so than hiring managers).

Also, read every case study and product brief you can find. If anything doesn’t make sense to you, ask the hiring manager.

Related Article: 10 Must-Ask Questions When Interviewing for Sales Jobs

Research Competitors & Talk to Customers

Comparing the Competition

Find out who the competitors are and stack rank them in terms of market position (based on your research). Then ask the hiring team who the competitors are to see if you missed any, and ask them how’d they rank their position in the market.

This will help you understand how the company’s offering aligns with customer needs and where it stands relative to competitors.

Backchannel a Customer

What!? That’s right you should be able to backchannel a customer pretty easily. The org probably has customer lists, case studies, etc. And based on your product research, you probably know who the end users would be. 

“This would be hard to do!” You’re in sales, figure it out. If you can’t figure it out, maybe you’re not cut out for this.

When you mention you did this backchanneling in the interview and tell the hiring manager what you’ve learned, watch what happens. (Next level would be backchanneling a competitor’s customer and see how “on the radar” the org is that you’re evaluating. Did they look at them? If not, why not? If so, why’d they not buy? Etc.)

See which orgs rank highest for product-market fit here

Ask About Retention & Churn

Ask the hiring manager about their retention metrics. Even more importantly, ask them what the top three reasons are for customers not to renew or why they would cancel. 

Is the answer fluff or are they being real with you? If they can’t share metrics, ask them to generalize. Ask them if they have initiatives in place to improve retention.

This should help you assess how well (or poorly) the product meets the needs and expectations of its target audience.

Final Thoughts

If you’re a candidate that the org and hiring manager are truly interested in, you shouldn’t be afraid to ask these questions. And if you’re not on their short list, you actually might make it onto their short list if you start asking these questions.

And if you don’t get the right answers, but take the role anyway with an org with crap product-market fit, just keep your resume updated.