Lesson 5 of 5 · 3 min

Cheat sheet

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Cheat sheetReferences & further readingDrill bank

The 10 answers you must have cold

  1. The 90-second career narrative (Archetype 6): the thread → the turn → the proof of intent → why this role. Ends on them.
  2. The gap / awkward-chapter one-liner (Archetype 7): one calm factual sentence per awkward fact. Full stop.
  3. The quota answer (Q13/14): honest concession — no quota carried, first sales seat by design — then the evidence stack (your quantified results, your trained-and-drilled process), then the reframe (clean slate, coachable, domain-credible) and the close ("what would you need to see in the first two quarters?").
  4. Why sales (Q2): a tested decision with evidence, plus clear eyes about the unglamorous parts.
  5. Why this sector (Q3): committed action and accurate specifics, not mission-statement sentiment.
  6. Biggest achievement (Archetype 1) — with every [YOUR NUMBER] filled in.
  7. The failure and the fix (Archetype 2) — owned, diagnosed, with the changed behaviour shown working later.
  8. The sceptic story (Archetype 3): question before arguing; convert the objection into a test.
  9. The salary answer (Q29): researched range plus a question back — "what's the band and the split?" — with a total-comp posture.
  10. The stage close: "Do you have any reservations about my candidacy that I could address now? …And what's the next step?"

The 5 questions you must always ask

  1. What proportion of the team hit quota last year?
  2. What's the ramp expectation, and is there a guarantee or draw?
  3. Why is this seat open?
  4. What's the real sales cycle and deal shape here?
  5. How much pipeline is marketing-sourced versus self-sourced?

Before every interview

Company one-pager (facts verified live, same week) · two stories rehearsed aloud · three discovery questions pre-written · notebook out · follow-up email same day.

References & further reading

  • The Sales Acceleration Formula — Mark Roberge (2015). The hiring chapters are effectively the answer key to your interviews: the five traits HubSpot screened for, and the regression data showing coachability matters most — the best available evidence that a no-experience candidate can win these processes.
  • Hire With Your Head — Lou Adler (2021 edition; first published 1998). Performance-based hiring from the interviewer's side of the table — seeing how a trained interviewer digs into a single accomplishment for twenty minutes tells you exactly how deep your story bank needs to go.
  • SPIN Selling — Neil Rackham (1988). The 35,000-call research base behind everything Section 5 says about questions and listening; still the definitive case that discovery beats pitching in complex sales.
  • Never Split the Difference — Chris Voss with Tahl Raz (2016). Tactical empathy, calibrated questions and a directly usable treatment of negotiating pay — read it before the offer stage, and borrow its techniques for objection role-plays.
  • Founding Sales — Pete Kazanjy (2020). Written for founders with no sales background, so it explains the craft honestly from first principles — the closest thing to this curriculum's worldview in book form, and its discovery, demo and pipeline-maths material maps cleanly onto interview role-plays and case briefs.
  • The Sales Development Playbook — Trish Bertuzzi (2016). The standard text on pipeline generation and top-of-funnel craft — sharpens the Archetype 4 vocabulary for any role with a self-sourcing expectation.
  • The Best Ways to Hire Salespeople — Frank V. Cespedes and Daniel Weinfurter, Harvard Business Review (2015). A short, sober essay on why sales hiring fails so often — it shows you the mistakes your interviewer is consciously trying not to make.
  • The Anatomy of the Perfect Sales Hiring Process — First Round Review, with Pete Kazanjy. A rare inside view of how a rigorous sales hiring funnel is designed — written screens, role-play construction, scoring — so no stage in Section 1 ever surprises you.

Drill bank