The candidates you're interviewing are, by definition, good at selling themselves. They've practiced their pitch. They know how to read the room. They've been trained on every framework you might bring up. A bad sales interview produces confident, well-presented candidates who fall apart in the actual job. A good one separates the people who can talk about selling from the people who can actually sell.

This article is a role-specific question bank for the three most common sales hires SMBs make: SDRs, AEs, and sales managers. Each section includes the questions worth asking and what a strong answer looks like.

Use these inside a structured interview. Same questions, every candidate, scoring rubric, debrief. Sales hiring without structure is one of the highest-variance parts of company building.

Before the questions: what to actually look for

Three things genuinely predict sales performance, regardless of seniority.

Coachability. Strong salespeople take feedback fast and apply it. Weak ones explain why the feedback doesn't apply to them. You'll spot this in how candidates respond to follow-ups and pushback during the interview itself.

Process discipline. Selling is a craft, not magic. The best salespeople have specific, repeatable methods for prospecting, qualifying, demoing, and closing. Candidates who can describe their process in detail almost always outperform candidates who say "I just connect with people."

Resilience and drive. Sales involves a lot of rejection. Candidates who can describe specific moments of setback and what they did with them are signaling resilience, not just talking about it.

These three predict more than years of experience or impressive logos. Build your interview around them.

Interview questions for SDRs (Sales Development Reps)

The SDR is usually an early career hire. You're looking for grit, coachability, and process discipline more than polish. The candidate doesn't need to know enterprise sales motions, they need to be willing to make 60 calls a day and learn fast.

Past behavior and grit

Tell me about a time you had to do something repetitive and unglamorous to achieve a goal. How did you stay motivated?
Describe a time you worked through a long stretch of rejection or pushback. What kept you going?
Walk me through a time you set a personal goal that required real consistency to hit.

What to listen for: Specific examples of grinding work. Athletic backgrounds, music practice, language learning, building things on the side, all good signals. Watch for candidates who can describe what was actually hard about the experience.

Coachability

Tell me about a time you received tough feedback at work or in school. What did you do with it?
Describe a skill you've deliberately worked on improving in the last six months.
Walk me through a time you tried something new at work or in another setting and weren't immediately good at it.

What to listen for: Specifics. Strong candidates describe what they actually changed in their behavior. Weak candidates describe how they realized the feedback wasn't fair.

Communication and curiosity

If you had to learn what our product does in 30 minutes, where would you start?
Tell me about a time you had to research something complex quickly. How did you go about it?
Pretend I'm a target customer. Ask me three questions to understand whether I'm a good fit.

What to listen for: The third one is the strongest signal. Strong candidates ask open, qualifying questions. Weak candidates pitch immediately or ask yes-no questions.

Drive and ownership

Why sales? Why now in your career?
What does a great month look like for you? What does a bad month look like?
Tell me about a time you missed a goal you cared about. What did you do next?

What to listen for: Genuine reasons, not the rehearsed "I love connecting with people" answer. Strong candidates can articulate what they're trying to learn from a sales role and why they're choosing it now.

Interview questions for AEs (Account Executives)

AEs are senior to SDRs and own deals end to end. The bar shifts. You're now testing for actual sales craft: discovery, qualification, deal management, and closing technique. AEs should be able to walk you through their methodology in detail.

Sales process and methodology

Walk me through your sales process from first call to close.
What's your approach to qualifying a deal? When do you decide a deal isn't worth pursuing?
How do you handle a deal that's stalled? Walk me through how you'd diagnose what's going on.
What's your approach to discovery? What are the questions you always ask?

What to listen for: Specificity. Strong AEs have a clear, repeatable process. They reference frameworks (MEDDIC, Sandler, BANT, Challenger, etc.) but adapt them to their context. Weak AEs talk about "building rapport" and "understanding the customer" without describing a method.

Past performance and self-awareness

Tell me about your biggest closed-won deal. How did it come together?
Walk me through a deal you lost that you really wanted. What happened?
What's your win rate? How do you measure your own performance beyond quota?
Tell me about a time you were under quota. What did you do about it?

What to listen for: The lost deal is the strongest signal. Strong AEs can articulate exactly why they lost, what they'd do differently, and what they learned. Weak AEs blame the lead, the prospect, or external circumstances.

Handling objections and pressure

A prospect tells you "I love it but the price is too high." How do you respond?
A senior decision maker drops out of a deal three weeks before close. Walk me through what you do.
A prospect ghosts you after a strong demo. What's your sequence?

What to listen for: Practical, specific responses. Strong AEs have actually been here before and have a playbook. Weak AEs give generic answers like "follow up with value."

Coachability and collaboration

Tell me about a piece of feedback from a manager that changed how you sell.
Describe how you work with marketing, customer success, or product teams.
What's the most useful sales book or resource you've read recently? What did you take from it?

What to listen for: Active, ongoing learning. Strong AEs see themselves as continuously improving. Weak AEs treat their current method as fixed.

Interview questions for Sales Managers

Sales manager hiring is where most teams burn the most money. A great individual contributor is not automatically a great manager. Different role, different skills.

The questions below test for the things that actually matter in a sales manager: coaching ability, process building, hiring judgment, and operational discipline.

Coaching and developing reps

Walk me through how you coach a rep who's underperforming. Be specific.
Tell me about a rep you turned around. What did you actually do?
Tell me about a rep you couldn't turn around. What happened?
How do you balance coaching call quality versus pipeline reviews?

What to listen for: Specifics. Strong sales managers describe weekly 1:1s with structured agendas, call reviews with specific feedback, role plays, deal coaching. Weak ones describe "checking in" and "providing motivation."

Building process and operating cadence

Walk me through your weekly operating rhythm as a manager.
How do you run pipeline reviews? What's the agenda?
What's your approach to forecasting? How accurate are your forecasts?
How do you decide when a rep is ready for promotion?

What to listen for: Detail and discipline. Strong sales managers run a tight operating system. Weak ones run on charisma and check-ins.

Hiring and team building

Walk me through how you hired your last rep. What did you assess for and how?
Tell me about a hire you made that didn't work out. What did you miss?
What does your ideal team composition look like? Hunters versus farmers, junior versus senior?

What to listen for: Hiring discipline. Strong sales managers have a structured interview process and can articulate what they look for. Weak ones say things like "I just know within five minutes."

Working with the broader business

How do you partner with marketing? What does a healthy relationship look like?
How do you engage with the founder or CEO on commercial strategy?
Tell me about a time you had to push back on a target you didn't believe was achievable.

What to listen for: Maturity and political intelligence. Strong sales leaders can navigate the broader business, push back constructively, and partner across functions.

Self-awareness and growth

What's a piece of feedback you've consistently received throughout your career?
Where are you weakest as a manager? What are you working on?
Tell me about a moment in your career where you realized your style needed to change.

What to listen for: Genuine self-awareness. The "weakness" question is often handled badly. Strong candidates name a real weakness and describe what they're doing about it.

A practical interview structure for sales roles

Don't run all of these in one interview. The strongest sales interview process is structured across rounds, with each round assessing something specific.

A workable five-round structure:

Phone screen (30 min): Motivation, fit, dealbreakers. See Questions to Ask in a Phone Screen.
Hiring manager interview (45 min): Sales process, methodology, past performance.
Role play or live exercise (60 min): Discovery call, demo, or objection handling depending on role.
Cross-functional interview (45 min): Collaboration with marketing, CS, leadership.
Founder or leadership conversation (30 min): Final fit, motivation, and ability to commit.

The role play in round three is often the most predictive. Salespeople who interview well sometimes can't actually sell. The reverse is rarer.

Red flags to watch for

A few patterns to watch for across sales interviews.

Vague answers about past performance. "I exceeded quota" without specific numbers, time periods, or context is usually a warning. Strong candidates are precise about their numbers.

Always blaming the system. Bad leads, bad territories, bad managers, bad products. Some of this is real, all of it being external is a flag.

No process language. Candidates who can't describe how they sell, just that they're "good with people," tend to be high-variance hires.

Inability to articulate what's hard about selling. Selling is genuinely difficult. Candidates who don't acknowledge this are either junior or not self-aware.

Selling you on the role mid-interview. Some candidates will pivot from being interviewed to interviewing you, which sounds confident but often masks inability to answer the actual question. Bring them back to the question politely.

Build your sales interview guide

The fastest way to hire consistently across sales hires is to use the same questions, in the same order, with a scoring rubric for each. Sales hiring is high-variance enough without adding inconsistency.

Build your free interview guide with Oryx →