The 8 Best Sales Development Representative Interview Questions

Are you looking to hire an exceptional Sales Development Representative? In this article, we have compiled a list of the key interview questions and a detailed breakdown of the role and what the ideal candidates look like.

What is the role of a Sales Development Representative?

A Sales Development Representative (SDR) is a key member of a sales team, whose primary responsibility is generating and nurturing new leads and qualifying them for further engagement. They’re often referred to as "finders" because of their focus on prospecting. They introduce qualified prospects to Sales Executives or Account Executives, who are responsible for working leads further down the funnel and winning deals.

SDRs typically focus on both inbound and outbound sales. The inbound sales process focuses on nurturing and qualifying prospects that have shown some interest in your product or service. In contrast, outbound sales involve generating new leads that are "cold" because they have not shown any explicit interest in your product/service.

What makes a good Sales Development Representative?

Since SDRs are often the first point of contact a potential customer has with your organization, they must have the right personality and sales skills-set to serve the customer professionally. At TalentMesh, we’ve conducted deep research with industry professionals to understand exactly what makes a great Sales Development Representative.

Personality fit

Our research shows that in terms of personality fit, a good Sales Development Representative should demonstrate, above all conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion, and agreeableness. These are regarded as the four personality factors shown to correlate highly to sales performance.   Sitting within these personality factors, the 8 most desired characteristics are:    

1. Dependability: An SDR should follow through on work commitments and display a high level of reliability to meet and exceed targets set consistently.  

2. Achievement-oriented: An achievement-oriented SDR will be self-motivated and naturally strive to hit and exceed sales targets. They embrace difficulties and are driven to excel in their sales performance.   

3. Non-aggressiveness: An effective SDR will remain calm and composed without resorting to confrontational behavior in challenging work situations. This characteristic is also essential to build rapport and establishing a positive long-term relationship with clients.  

4. Resilience: Possess the ability to recover quickly from rejection and setbacks in the sales process. Able to keep a positive attitude, learn from these experiences, and continuously improve their sales skills.   

5. Salesmanship: A skilled SDR knows and has a talent for communicating and influencing potential customers by understanding their needs and proposing compelling solutions to meet those needs.    

6. Social Confidence: Socially confident SDRs will be comfortable in social settings such as networking events and sales presentations. This characteristic helps to establish rapport and create meaningful connections, enhancing sales effectiveness.   

7. Politeness/Tactfulness: An SDR should have the capacity to be diplomatic, respectful, and professional in daily work interactions. This fundamental trait builds trust with clients and establishes positive relationships with colleagues.   

8. Team Player: An SDR works in a collaborative environment that often requires teamwork within the sales team and across departments to achieve sales success. This quality contributes to individual role success and fosters a positive team culture. 

Role and Responsibilities

What does a Sales Development Representative do? The 5 core responsibilities are outlined below: 

1. Lead identification: Identifying potential customers who will likely be a good fit for your offering. 

2. Customer communication: Contacting potential customers using various methods, like cold-calling, cold-email campaigns, and networking. 

3. Lead qualification: Evaluating the potential of a lead by assessing factors such as their needs, current challenges, and budget and determining whether they would benefit from the product or service. 

4. Product understanding: Offering prospects relevant information about the product or service, answering questions and addressing concerns. 

5. Time management: Scheduling appointments or demos with qualified prospects for Account Executives or Sales Executives.

Skillsets  

1. Customer needs identification/analysis: An SDR must possess analytical skills, an understanding of customer pain points and behaviors to qualify and communicate to potential customers.  

2. Strong communication and active listening skills: This skill set is critical for the SDR to build rapport, trust, and clear communication to establish a strong engagement with customers.    

3. Effective time management and task prioritization skills: The SDR manages customer communication through multiple touchpoints. These skill sets allow them to create an efficient workflow and focus on high-priority tasks, maximizing sales productivity.  

4. Proficiency in CRM systems: By leveraging CRM systems (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho), SDRs can effectively streamline their sales processes and better manage leads, automate tasks, track, and analyze sales performance.

Now that we understand in more detail what the ideal candidate looks like, we can qualify talent better and create more relevant interview questions.

What Interview Questions to ask a Sales Development Representative?

Talk me through your research process to identify new prospects. What process do you follow? 

A systemic approach is crucial. A good candidate will outline what they are looking for and why. They will also highlight which tools/methods they leverage at various stages.  

When prospecting, which contact methods do you use, and which is most effective? 

Certain methods, such as cold email and cold calling, should be a given. What you want to listen out for here is how they evaluate the effectiveness of different methods. As well as how regularly they iterate and experiment with new approaches. 

How do you qualify a prospect? Outline your approach. 

Listen out for the questions/criteria the candidate uses to qualify a prospect. Further, understand if the applicant can rank the qualified prospects based on importance. Their response should be second nature to them.  

Describe a time when you collaborated with marketing to identify or attract new customers. What was your involvement, and what was the outcome of this collaboration? 

The best candidates will regularly collaborate with their colleagues in marketing on sales copy/assets, social media initiatives, etc. Therefore, they should have some success stories to share. 

What type of networking events have you attended in the past? Can you tell me about your experience and any successful outcomes? 

A forward-thinking SDR will understand that the first win is a new relationship before a sale. Does your interviewee outline how they manage prospects met at events over the subsequent months? 

How do you track prospects in the sales pipeline? What metrics and systems do you use to measure their status? 

Which CRM systems are they familiar with, and what is their proficiency level with the systems? Thorough administration skills are crucial to the success of the role & team. 

How do you use sales data to improve performance and achieve goals? Can you tell me about a specific sales strategy you have implemented based on insights or feedback from a sales report? 

It’s not enough to simply report on activity. You want to hear how they use sales data to improve their daily performance and identify areas of opportunity.  

How do you conduct market research? Can you give me an example of a time when you used market research insights to improve your prospecting strategy?

A great SDR is not only an expert on your product/service but also on the market and competitive landscape. To educate and sell to prospects, a grasp of the overall industry they operate in, and the competing offerings is crucial.

Summary 

In summary, the Sales Development Representative plays a key role in a sales team, ensuring promising prospects make their way into your sales funnel. A great SDR should have a specific combination of personality traits and sales skills that are necessary to deliver in the role. These can be broken down to the 8 personality characteristics and the 5 main sales skills listed above.

We recommend you focus on skills-based questions during the interview to assess whether a candidate has the right skill set for the job. The 8 key interview questions provided are particularly useful since they’re directly linked to the responsibilities of an SDR.

Make exceptional hiring decisions

Despite being crucially important, the interview is still just one stage of the full hiring process. A process that can be time and resource-consuming, often based on subjective data, and prone to biases. This is why 46% of new hires fail within 18 months.

At TalentMesh, we help you avoid failed hires and find top performers by creating a bias-free recruitment process structured around quality talent assessment tools.

For our talent assessment, we’ve developed powerful pre-employment tests highlighting top talent to help our clients make exceptional hiring decisions.

We combine personality, aptitude, emotional intelligence, and skills tests and build a uniquely detailed and holistic picture of candidate potential.

Equipped with this knowledge, our clients have more confidence at every stage of the hiring process. And, crucially, they’re more likely to make the right hire every time.