Interview guide for sales roles: a full account executive loop with a pipeline exercise

A sales interview loop has to show what a candidate does with a real buyer and a real pipeline, not how well they talk about selling. This guide gives hiring managers a complete loop for a mid-market account executive: five stages, who owns which competency, core questions with what to listen for, two short work samples (a mock discovery call and a pipeline exercise), the scorecard weights, and the rule the debrief uses to decide. Variations for SDR, account manager and enterprise roles are at the end.

The anchored scale for each competency, and a role-play script you can reuse, are in the interview scorecard for sales roles. First-call questions are in sales rep phone screen questions. This page is how the stages fit together.

The loop at a glance

An example for a quota-carrying account executive selling software to mid-sized companies.

Stage 1: recruiter screen (30 minutes)

• "What did you sell, to whom, at what typical deal size and cycle length?" Listen for numbers stated without hesitation. A two-week transactional sale and a six-month committee sale are different jobs.
• "How was your quota set last year, and how did you do against it?" Listen for an explanation, not just a percentage: territory changes, a big deal that slipped, what made the number.

Pay plan questions (base, variable, accelerators) belong here so the hiring manager does not spend scored time on them.

Stage 2: hiring manager interview (45 minutes)

1. "Take me through the last deal you closed above your average size, from first meeting to signature." Listen for: who the buyers were, what they decided and when, a mutual plan or next steps agreed at each meeting, and what the candidate did to move it rather than wait.
2. "Tell me about a deal you lost that you expected to win." Listen for: when they should have seen it, what they missed in discovery, and one thing they now do differently. Blaming price or the product alone is a weak answer.
3. "Tell me about a quarter where you were behind at the halfway point." Listen for: what they did in the second half, whether they pulled deals forward with discounts, and how they reported it to their manager.

Ask for names of companies or deal values only at the level the candidate can share; confidential detail is not needed to score the process.

Stage 3: the mock discovery call (40 minutes)

The first work sample is a first meeting with a buyer. Send the candidate a one-page brief the day before: the buyer's company, role, how they came in (for example, a demo request), and what your product does.

• 25 minutes of discovery. The buyer works from a written brief with three real problems, one budget constraint and one objection to raise only if the candidate proposes something ("We tried a tool like this two years ago and nobody used it").
• 5 minutes to close the meeting. Does the candidate agree a concrete next step?
• 10 minutes of debrief out of role. "What did you learn? What would you do before the next meeting? What would you do differently?"

Listen for open questions before any pitch, follow-ups that dig into the problem's cost, whether they find all three problems, how they engage with the objection rather than rebutting it, and how accurately they summarize the call in the debrief. The candidate's self-assessment is often the best evidence of coachability. A fuller role-play script with scoring is in the sales scorecard.

Stage 4: the pipeline exercise (30 minutes)

The second work sample tests forecasting, which is hard to get from questions alone. Give the candidate a mock pipeline of six invented deals, each with a stage, amount, close date and three lines of notes. Some notes contradict the stage: a deal marked "negotiation" where the economic buyer has never been in a meeting, or a close date that has slipped twice.

• 15 minutes alone: "Mark each deal commit, best case or not this quarter, and write the next step you would take."
• 15 minutes with the manager: walk through the calls. The manager pushes on one: "My boss needs this one in commit. Can you get it there?"

Listen for: whether they spot the deals whose notes do not support the stage, whether next steps are specific (a meeting with a named person, a decision date) rather than "follow up", and whether they hold an honest forecast under pressure or inflate it to please. That last moment is the most useful two minutes in the loop.

Stage 5: peer conversation (30 minutes)

• "Tell me about a customer you handed over after signing. What did the handoff include?" Listen for: documented expectations, what was promised, introductions made. Weak answers describe signing as the end of their job.
• "Tell me about a time you needed help from a sales engineer or another team to win a deal." Listen for: how they asked, what they prepared for the other person, and credit given.

Scorecard competencies and weights

These are example weights for a new-business account executive. Set yours at intake and lock them.

Discovery is the gate: below 3 from the observer means no hire, because weak discovery shows up later as discounting and churn. The scorecard builder has a sales preset and checks the weights total 100; the arithmetic is explained in weighted interview scorecard.

The debrief decision rule

1. All scorecards are submitted with evidence before the debrief starts.
2. Gate: discovery and qualification at 3 or above.
3. Forecasting floor: a 1 on forecasting honesty is a no. A seller who inflates forecasts under mild interview pressure will do it with real numbers.
4. Weighted total: in this example, 2.8 or higher on the 1–4 scale goes to an offer discussion.
5. References last: a former manager's account of forecast accuracy can confirm or overturn a borderline result; it does not replace the interview evidence. Questions to ask are in the reference check template.

Adjusting the loop for other sales roles

Mistakes that make sales loops unreliable

• Hiring the best interviewer. Confident talk is the job's surface, not its substance. The two work samples exist to get past it.
• A different buyer for every candidate. Without a written brief, one candidate gets a friendly buyer and another a hostile one, and the scores cannot be compared.
• The buyer also scores. Playing a role and taking notes at once produces thin evidence. Use an observer.
• "Sell me this pen." It tests improvisation with no discovery possible. Use a realistic buyer from your market.