I failed the 1st round of a Google S&O interview (non-tech , analytics slant). This is the question I believe got me-

New
Vesper Lyn

New

Vesper Lyn
Jan 14 9 Comments

A sales leader noted that Q1 sales are down . He wants to develop a close the gap plan to bring the organisation back to target.

How would you go about thinking through this?

What metrics would you collect?

How would you present this data ?

TC - 120
YOE - 7 yrs in consulting

#data #dataanalytics #datascience
#product

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TOP 9 Comments
  • Dell
    siznizzle

    Go to company page Dell

    siznizzle
    There are no right or wrong answers. You have to show them your thought process. Did you go through a framework to get to a solution? Did you gain acceptance along the way from the interviewer?
    Jan 14 3
    • New
      Vesper Lyn

      New

      Vesper Lyn
      OP
      As Google said…
      Jan 14
    • Meta
      phoric

      Go to company page Meta

      phoric
      There are definitely wrong answers.

      Yes you need a framework and I’d start by talking through the internal and external environment. I’d also ask questions on historic performance for Q4 (and the Q4 that just ended) as well as the historic performance for Q1. For external you’d want to know about changes in competitors products, market share changes, any supply chain constraints, increased supplier power, etc. for internal you’d want to ask about the number of units shipped, any increases in costs for manufacturing, distribution (assuming it’s not a software product if it is focus on the areas specific to that product). You’re trying to gain an understanding for what’s causing the changes.

      Then when you think you have an idea of what could be happening you’d start thinking about what metrics can prove or disprove your hypothesis. But you do need to engage your interviewer both in your thought process and also to make it more of a conversation.
      Jan 14
  • How down? Is this something that happens every Q1? Basically is this expected or not?

    If it isn’t expected, start bucketing sales by different categories to see if any specific bucket(s) accounts for the difference. Start by bucketing by client industry, company size, tenure with your product, product tier, whatever seems reasonable. Interviewer may dig in on a specific bucket. Or they may say that all buckets display the same pattern, so then you can move on from the buckets. If it is bucket specific, you can start talking about putting more resources towards the sales team that deal with those buckets, since you’re working with a sales leader.

    See if the change is due to product/internal changes or market/consumer changes. Did you push a new feature? Discontinue an old feature? Is there a new competitor? Are there general market trends that are relevant?

    At any point in this process, they may ask for a specific metric that would measure some part of this process. Some volume/revenue metric, normalized, is probably good. Presenting the data depends on what path you go down, and what metric you choose.
    Jan 15 3
    • Let's say you and your interviewer decide the drop is mostly coming from a specific customer industry, and it's because there's a new competitor targeting that industry. Your metric could be a ratio for each sales rep where the numerator is the number of their accounts (or summed dollar value of accounts) that fall in this industry (i.e at risk from the competitor), and the denominator is their total book count (or value). The idea would be to keep track of the reps where this ratio is the highest, and either give some of their accounts at risk from the competitor to others with a lower ratio, therefore equalizing the share of threatened accounts per rep, or devote additional help to those reps (like providing exec deal support to those reps and accounts).

      Depends on where the interviewer wants to dig in. Feel free to narrow in on some other scenarios, and I can try to give other metrics.
      Jan 16
    • New
      Vesper Lyn

      New

      Vesper Lyn
      OP
      When you say other scenarios what do you mean ?
      Feb 9
  • New
    Vesper Lyn

    New

    Vesper Lyn
    OP
    Can someone answer this in a comprehensive interview style way? My interviewer was ex-MBB.

    I’ll add more details to the question later
    Jan 14 0