To interview an Account Executive, test full-cycle selling: discovery, deal qualification, objection handling, negotiation, and closing, backed by real quota history. This set covers craft questions on running a sales process and a discovery roleplay, plus behavioral and situational prompts that reveal forecasting honesty and how they recover stalled deals.
Make them sell in the room: run a discovery roleplay and ask them to walk a real deal end to end. Pair that with hard questions about their actual numbers, since past quota attainment is one of the better predictors of future performance.
Run a discovery call with me as your prospect. I'll answer as a buyer evaluating new software.
What to look for: Open questions that uncover pain, business impact, and decision process, active listening, and not pitching before understanding the problem.
Walk me through a deal you closed from first touch to signature. What were the inflection points?
What to look for: A repeatable process, multi-threading across stakeholders, identifying the real decision maker and budget, and naming where the deal nearly died.
What's your actual quota attainment over the last few quarters, and what drove the variance?
What to look for: Specific, honest numbers, ownership of misses, and a clear read on what they control versus market factors.
A champion loves you but the economic buyer is skeptical on price. How do you handle the negotiation?
What to look for: Selling value before defending price, quantifying ROI, protecting margin with trades not just discounts, and reaching the real decision maker.
How do you qualify a deal, and when do you decide to walk away from one?
What to look for: A qualification framework (MEDDIC, MEDDPICC, or similar), disqualifying early to protect time, and not happy-earing every deal into the forecast.
A prospect goes silent for two weeks after a great demo. What do you do?
What to look for: Re-engaging with value not just check-ins, multi-threading to other contacts, and surfacing the real blocker rather than nagging.
How do you forecast a deal, and how do you decide commit versus best-case versus pipeline?
What to look for: Evidence-based forecasting tied to buyer actions and next steps, honest categorization, and calling their own number accurately.
Sell me on the last product you sold, in two minutes, to someone who's never heard of it.
What to look for: Leading with the buyer's problem, a crisp value narrative, and discovery-style questions over a feature dump.
Tell me about the biggest deal you lost. Why did you lose it and what did you change?
What to look for: Ownership over excuses, a clear lesson, and a process change that showed up in later results.
Describe a time you turned around a relationship with a prospect who didn't trust you.
What to look for: Building credibility through follow-through and honesty, patience, and a concrete outcome.
Tell me about a quarter you missed quota. How did you handle it?
What to look for: Accountability, a diagnosis of what went wrong, and the actions that got them back on track.
It's the last week of the quarter and two big deals are slipping. How do you spend your time?
What to look for: Prioritizing the deal with the clearest path, creating real urgency without false discounts, and getting help where it matters.
A prospect demands a discount you can't approve. How do you keep the deal alive?
What to look for: Reframing around value, trading terms for price, escalating smartly, and not caving instantly or losing the deal over ego.
You discover a competitor is in the deal late in the cycle. How do you respond?
What to look for: Reinforcing differentiation and the cost of switching, leaning on the champion, and addressing the real evaluation criteria honestly.
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