Sales Interview Question Bank by Role (200+ Questions)

Every question organized by role and category so you can build a tight, non-repetitive loop in minutes instead of scrambling the night before. Don't ask all 40 in one interview — pick 6–8 per interviewer, spread across categories, and reserve the situational/role-play questions for later rounds once you've screened for baseline fit.

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SDR (40 Questions)

Motivation & Grit

1. What made you choose sales development specifically, rather than another entry point into sales?
2. Walk me through a day where nothing went right — what kept you making calls?
3. What's the most rejection you've had in a single day, and what did you do right after?
4. Where do you want to be in your career three years from now, and how does this role get you there?
5. What's a personal goal outside work you've stuck with even when it got hard?
6. Tell me about a time your activity numbers were good but your results weren't — what did you do?
7. What does "hitting quota" mean to you beyond the number itself?
8. Describe the last time you had to motivate yourself with no one watching.

Prospecting & Research Skill

1. Walk me through how you'd research an account before your first outreach.
2. What signals tell you a company might be a good fit beyond size and industry?
3. How do you personalize outreach at volume without it taking all day?
4. What's your process for finding the right person to contact within an account?
5. How do you use signals like job changes, funding news, or hiring pages in outreach?
6. Tell me about a sequence or cadence you built — what channels, what order, why?
7. How do you decide when to stop pursuing a lead versus keep trying?
8. What tools have you used for prospecting, and which do you actually rely on day to day?

Objection Handling / Cold Outreach

1. Role-play: I answer and say "we're not interested, please stop calling." Go.
2. Role-play: leave a voicemail for a VP who's never heard of your company.
3. How do you open a cold call in the first 10 seconds to avoid an immediate hang-up?
4. What do you do when a prospect says "send me an email" as a brush-off?
5. How do you handle "we already have a vendor for this"?
6. Tell me about a cold call that didn't go how you expected, and what you learned.
7. What's your approach to gatekeepers, without burning the relationship?
8. How would you follow up with someone who went silent after showing interest?

Coachability & Growth

1. Tell me about the last piece of feedback that changed how you work.
2. How do you feel about having your calls recorded and reviewed?
3. What's a skill you're actively working on right now, and how are you practicing it?
4. Describe a time a manager corrected you in front of others — how did you respond?
5. How do you like to receive feedback — in the moment, in writing, in 1:1s?
6. What's the difference between a manager who's helped you grow and one who hasn't?
7. Tell me about a time you disagreed with feedback you received — what did you do?
8. How do you hold yourself accountable when no one's checking your numbers day to day?

Situational / Role-Play

1. You've hit call quota but haven't hit meetings-booked — what do you do?
2. A marketing-sourced lead is unresponsive after 5 touches — what's your next move?
3. You discover a colleague reusing your outreach templates word-for-word — what do you do?
4. Your manager asks you to prioritize accounts you don't think are a good fit — how do you respond?
5. You book a meeting but the AE says the prospect wasn't qualified — what do you do differently?
6. It's the last day of the quarter and you're 2 meetings short — what do you do, and what won't you do?
7. A prospect asks a product question you don't know, mid-call — what do you say?
8. You're given a new, unfamiliar vertical to prospect — how do you get up to speed?

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AE (50 Questions)

Deal Process & Pipeline Management

1. Walk me through your sales process end-to-end, in your own words.
2. How do you decide whether to invest more time in a deal or walk away?
3. What does a real "next step" look like versus a vague one in your notes?
4. How do you forecast — commit vs. best-case vs. pipeline?
5. Tell me about a deal you correctly predicted would slip, and how you knew.
6. Tell me about a deal you forecasted to close that didn't — what did you miss?
7. How many active opportunities can you effectively run at once, and why that number?
8. What CRM hygiene habits do you have, and which do you skip when busy?
9. How do you re-qualify a deal that's been sitting in pipeline for months?
10. Describe how you prioritize your day across prospecting, active deals, and admin.

Discovery & Qualification

1. Walk me through your discovery framework — what are you learning, in what order?
2. How do you find the real business problem when a prospect only describes symptoms?
3. What's a qualification question you ask that most reps skip?
4. How do you identify the economic buyer when they're not on the first call?
5. Tell me about a deal where discovery revealed a poor fit — what did you do?
6. How do you uncover the cost of inaction?
7. What do you do when the champion can't get you access to the decision-maker?
8. How do you handle a prospect who wants a demo before any discovery?
9. Tell me about the best discovery call you've ever run — what made it work?
10. How do you qualify budget without asking "what's your budget?" directly?

Negotiation & Closing

1. Walk me through your approach to a pricing objection.
2. Tell me about the hardest negotiation you've run — what was at stake and how did it end?
3. How do you respond when a prospect asks for an unearned discount?
4. What's your process for building and defending a mutual close plan?
5. How do you create urgency without fake deadlines?
6. Tell me about a deal you walked away from, or should have.
7. How do you handle procurement/legal dragging past your forecasted close date?
8. What do you do when the prospect goes quiet in the final stretch?
9. How do you negotiate internally — with your manager, legal, or finance — to get a deal done?
10. Tell me about a time you lost a deal in the final stage. What would you do differently?

Competitive Selling

1. How do you handle "we're also evaluating [Competitor]"?
2. Walk me through how you position against your toughest competitor.
3. Tell me about a competitive deal you won — what tipped it?
4. Tell me about a competitive deal you lost — what did the competitor do better?
5. How do you talk about a competitor's weakness without sounding like you're trashing them?

Behavioral / Ownership

1. Tell me about your best quarter — what specifically drove it?
2. Tell me about your worst quarter — what did you do about it?
3. Describe a time you missed quota. What did you change afterward?
4. Tell me about a time you had to rebuild trust with a prospect after a mistake.
5. How do you handle a stretch where your pipeline is thin through no fault of your own?
6. Tell me about feedback that stung, and what you did with it.
7. Describe how you've changed as a salesperson in the last two years.
8. Tell me about a time you helped a peer close a deal or improve.
9. What does "coachable" mean to you, concretely?
10. Tell me about a time your manager was wrong about a deal call — what did you do?

Situational / Role-Play

1. Role-play: cold discovery with a skeptical VP who says "we've tried this before and it didn't work."
2. Role-play: a champion says their boss killed the deal for budget reasons — your next move, live.
3. A competitor undercuts your price by 30% the week before close — what do you do?
4. Your champion just left the company mid-deal — your next 3 actions.
5. Legal sends back a redlined contract with 12 changes two days before quarter-end — what do you do?

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CSM (40 Questions)

Onboarding & Adoption

1. Walk me through how you run a kickoff call in week one of a new customer relationship.
2. How do you measure real adoption versus a customer just paying?
3. Tell me about a customer who stalled during onboarding — what did you do?
4. What's your process for setting success criteria with a new customer?
5. How do you handle a customer who wants to go faster than your onboarding process allows?
6. Tell me about a time low month-one adoption predicted a later problem.
7. How do you get an internal champion to actually drive adoption?
8. What does a "healthy" 90-day account look like to you, specifically?

Renewal & Expansion

1. How far in advance do you start a renewal conversation, and why?
2. Tell me about an account you saved from churning — what did you do?
3. How do you spot expansion opportunity without it feeling like a sales pitch?
4. Tell me about an account you expanded — what triggered the conversation?
5. How do you handle a renewal where the champion loves the product but budget is being cut?
6. What's your process when a customer goes quiet ahead of a renewal date?
7. How do you build a renewal business case that isn't just "please don't leave"?
8. Tell me about a renewal you lost — what would you do differently now?

Escalation & Conflict

1. Walk me through how you handle an angry customer on a call, live.
2. Tell me about the worst escalation you've managed — how did it end?
3. How do you deliver bad news (an outage, a missed deadline, a bug)?
4. What do you do when the customer is right, but the fix is out of your control?
5. How do you manage a customer who threatens to churn every time something goes wrong?
6. Tell me about a time you had to say no to a customer request.
7. How do you advocate internally without overpromising externally?
8. Describe a time internal teams were slow to respond to a customer issue — what did you do?

Relationship & Communication

1. How do you build a relationship with a stakeholder who barely responds?
2. Tell me about a QBR you're proud of — what made it land?
3. How do you tailor communication between a hands-on user and an exec sponsor?
4. What's your cadence for proactive check-ins, and how do you decide it?
5. Tell me about managing multiple stakeholders with conflicting priorities at one account.
6. How do you handle a customer who only calls when something's broken?
7. What does "trusted advisor" mean to you in this role, concretely?
8. Tell me about the best customer relationship you've built — what specifically did you do?

Situational

1. A key champion is leaving next week — walk me through your next steps.
2. Your product had a major outage yesterday affecting this customer — what do you say today?
3. A customer wants a feature not on the roadmap — how do you respond in the moment?
4. You inherit 40 accounts with no handoff notes — how do you prioritize the first two weeks?
5. Usage has dropped 60% over two months but they haven't complained — what do you do?
6. The exec sponsor asks directly, "should we renew?" — how do you answer?
7. You discover the account was mis-sold — expectations don't match reality — what do you do?
8. Two stakeholders at the same account want opposite things — how do you manage it?

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Sales Engineer (35 Questions)

Technical Discovery

1. Walk me through how you run technical discovery on a call.
2. How do you uncover requirements the prospect hasn't articulated yet?
3. Tell me about a time technical discovery revealed a deal-breaking gap.
4. How do you assess a prospect's current stack before a demo?
5. What questions surface integration or security requirements?
6. How do you handle a technical stakeholder clearly looking for a reason to say no?
7. Tell me about pushing back on an AE's read of technical requirements.

Demo & Presentation Skill

1. Walk me through customizing a demo rather than running a canned script.
2. Tell me about the best demo you've ever given — what made it land?
3. How do you handle a demo when the product breaks live in front of the prospect?
4. How do you demo to a mixed technical and non-technical room?
5. What's your approach when a prospect wants to see something the product can't do?
6. A competitor is demoed back-to-back with you — what do you do differently?
7. Tell me about thinking on your feet during a live demo.

Cross-functional Collaboration

1. How do you divide responsibility with an AE during a deal?
2. Tell me about disagreeing with an AE on what the prospect actually needed.
3. How do you escalate a product gap so it actually gets prioritized?
4. Describe how you handle a proof-of-concept (POC) that's going poorly.
5. How do you hand off technical context to implementation/CS post-sale?
6. Tell me about telling an AE "no, the product can't do that" mid-deal.
7. How do you balance being the "yes" person versus being technically honest?

Objection / Technical Objection Handling

1. How do you handle "your API can't do what our current vendor's can"?
2. Walk me through a security/compliance objection you haven't heard before.
3. How do you handle an engineering team skeptical of a vendor's technical claims?
4. Tell me about a technical objection that killed a deal — what would you do differently?
5. How do you respond when asked for something "coming eventually" on the roadmap?
6. What's your approach to a build-vs-buy objection?
7. How do you handle being technically outmatched by the prospect's own expert?

Situational

1. Mid-POC, the prospect's environment reveals an unanticipated integration issue — what do you do?
2. The AE promises a capability that doesn't exist — how do you handle it live?
3. A technical champion goes dark mid-evaluation — what's your move?
4. You're double-booked on two POCs closing the same week — how do you prioritize?
5. A security review flags something you can't immediately answer — what do you do?
6. You discover mid-demo the prospect was given inaccurate information earlier — what do you say?
7. A prospect asks you to compare your product unfavorably against a specific competitor feature — how do you answer honestly without sinking the deal?

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Manager (45 Questions)

Coaching & Development

1. Walk me through how you structure a 1:1 with a rep.
2. Tell me about a rep you coached from underperforming to hitting quota — what did you do?
3. Walk me through your framework for giving feedback after listening to a call.
4. Tell me about a coaching conversation that didn't land — what did you learn?
5. How do you tailor your coaching style to different reps?
6. What does a skill-development plan look like for one of your reps, concretely?
7. How do you know the difference between a will problem and a skill problem?
8. Tell me about a rep you decided not to try to save — what led to that decision?
9. How do you build a peer-coaching culture rather than every piece of feedback coming from you?
10. What's your philosophy on recorded call review — how often, what you look for?

Forecasting & Pipeline Management

1. Walk me through how you build your team's forecast each week/month.
2. Tell me about a quarter your team's forecast was significantly wrong.
3. How do you handle a rep who consistently sandbags or oversells their pipeline?
4. What's your process for a pipeline review — what questions do you ask on every deal?
5. How do you push for accurate forecasts without creating fear of reporting bad news?
6. Tell me about using historical data to improve forecast accuracy.
7. How do you handle a late-quarter gap between forecast and target?
8. What's your approach to territory or account planning across your team?

Hiring & Team Building

1. Walk me through your interview process for hiring a rep.
2. Tell me about a hiring mistake you made — what did you learn and change?
3. What are the 2-3 things you look for that most interviewers miss?
4. How do you build a diverse team without lowering your bar?
5. Tell me about the best hire you've ever made — what made them successful?
6. How do you structure onboarding/ramp for a new rep?
7. What's your approach to reference checks — what do you actually ask?
8. How do you decide between promoting internally and hiring externally for a manager role?

Performance Management

1. Walk me through how you handle a rep who's missed quota two quarters in a row.
2. Tell me about the hardest performance conversation you've had.
3. How do you document performance issues, and when does it become formal?
4. Tell me about a time you had to let someone go.
5. How do you handle a high performer with a behavior or culture problem?
6. What's your process for a performance improvement plan — what makes one fair?
7. How do you balance compassion and clarity in a tough conversation?
8. Tell me about delivering feedback a rep strongly disagreed with.
9. How do you handle a strong individual performer who resists coaching?

Leadership / Strategic

1. What's your leadership philosophy in one or two sentences?
2. Tell me about disagreeing with your own manager's direction.
3. How do you handle competing priorities from sales, marketing, and product leadership?
4. Tell me about a change you drove that reps initially resisted.
5. How do you keep morale up during a slow quarter?
6. What's a mistake you made as a manager you'd tell a first-time manager to avoid?
7. How do you decide when to step into a rep's deal versus let them run it?
8. Tell me about handling a territory or comp plan change reps were unhappy about.
9. What does success look like for you in this role a year from now?
10. How do you keep your own skills sharp rather than drifting away from the craft?