35 SDR Interview Questions (Organized by Competency)
What separates great SDR hires from mediocre ones isn't the interview questions — it's whether you evaluate the same things consistently across every candidate. Here's how.
What Makes a Great SDR — and How to Measure It
The five competencies that consistently predict SDR success are: prospecting ability, resilience under rejection, coachability, communication quality, and intrinsic drive. Past quota attainment matters but is table stakes. Your job in the interview is to find evidence for or against each of these five things.
Ask behavioral questions — "tell me about a time..." — not hypotheticals. What someone has actually done is far more predictive than what they say they'd do.
🎯 Prospecting & Pipeline Building
Can they identify, qualify, and engage the right prospects — or do they just work the list they're given?
Describe your process for building a target account list from scratch. What signals or triggers do you use to prioritize?
Tell me about a time you sourced a great lead that wasn't in any existing list or CRM. How did you find them and what happened?
Walk me through your multi-touch outreach sequence for a cold account. How do you structure it and when do you stop?
Tell me about a time your messaging wasn't converting. How did you diagnose why, and what did you change?
What's your process for researching a prospect before a cold call or email? What specifically do you look for?
Describe the best cold outreach you've ever sent. What made it stand out — and how do you know it worked?
Tell me about a time you turned a cold no into a booked meeting. What happened?
💪 Resilience & Rejection Handling
The single biggest predictor of long-term SDR success. Most candidates will say the right thing — dig into the specifics of how they've actually handled adversity.
Tell me about the worst week you've had on the phones or in your pipeline. What kept you going?
Describe a quarter where you missed quota. What happened and what did you do about it?
Tell me about a time you got strong negative feedback from a prospect. How did you handle it in the moment and afterward?
Give me an example of when you hit a wall — a process, a market, a product limitation — that made it really hard to perform. What did you do?
How do you reset after a run of rejections? Give me a specific example.
Tell me about a time your manager was critical of your approach. How did you respond?
📈 Coachability & Learning Speed
For a startup's first SDR especially, how fast they absorb feedback is as important as their current skill level.
Tell me about a piece of coaching you received that significantly changed how you work. How did it land initially and what changed?
Describe a time you got feedback you disagreed with. What did you do?
Give me an example of something you've changed about your sales approach in the past 6 months. What drove the change?
Tell me about the most useful call coaching session you've been part of. What made it click?
Describe the worst feedback you've ever received from a manager. How did you process it?
🗣️ Communication Quality
In an SDR, this means: clear, concise, prospect-centric messaging. Not polished corporate speak.
Explain your understanding of our product to me in 30 seconds (based on the website).
Tell me about a time you had to adapt your pitch or messaging mid-call because your prospect's situation was different than expected.
Describe the most complex objection handling scenario you've navigated. Walk me through exactly what you said.
Give me an example of a time you made a prospect feel heard and understood before they'd even committed to a demo. What was the outcome?
Tell me about a time your written outreach drove an unusually high response rate. What was different about it?
🔥 Intrinsic Drive & Ownership
The difference between SDRs who improve fast and those who plateau is usually intrinsic motivation, not skill level.
Tell me about something you've done at work — related to sales — that wasn't your job. What drove you to do it?
Describe a time you pushed for something at your company that didn't exist yet — a new sequence, a new territory, a new process. What happened?
Tell me about your sales career goals. Where do you see yourself in 2 years and what does it take to get there?
What do you do outside of work to get better at selling? Be specific.
Tell me about the most disciplined stretch of work you've had. What drove that level of output and how did you sustain it?
Give me an example of when you took ownership of a result that went wrong — even when you could have blamed something external.
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