if you've got an account executive interview coming up this is the one for you I'm going to break down how to crush every stage of the AE interview process this is coming from someone who's been in Enterprise software sales for seven years now I've helped dozens of people promote at every layer of AE from SB midmarket Enterprise I've done so myself many times in my own career so in this video we're going to be covering the general structure of the interview process it's important to be aware of that the make or break factors that you
need to nail in all of your interviews the specific traits that get you hired what makes you a good fit why are you good fit strengths weaknesses things like that and then acing the discovery call it's very likely you're going to have to conduct some form of Discovery call as a mock exercise I know what these hiring managers are going to look for I'm going to give you word for word things to do and say in order to Ace that the most important AE interview questions and answers there's so many you could prepare for these
are the ones you need to nail and I'm going to give you again word for word answers how to efficiently prep for a lot of these interviews especially if you have a lot going on how to actually make that process more efficient must ask questions for your interview when you get asked at the end do you have any questions for me this is a critical part of the interview again I'm going to give you actual specific things to do and say that you can Implement and then how to end those last 60 seconds of the
interview on a strong note so let's dive into it but first if you want more Hands-On guidance actually implementing all of this more Firepower for your interview and more Direction on where to focus those first 30 60 90 days in seat so that you ramp up quickly and crush it and roll check out the links in the pin comment and description below to AE Mastery it's our course Community where we do just that we have top Tech sales reps across a variety of different companies at a variety of different AE levels that you can network
with so hope to see you in there and with that let's actually get into the video all right so first I think it's important to just understand what the general account executive interview process looks like because there's a lot of different companies that do a lot of different things but a lot of these interview processes are structured very similarly so the first call is generally going to be a recruiter screening interview it's going to be set for 30 minutes it's probably not going to take 15 more than 15 to 20 you probably don't want it
to either and this is going to look extremely similar to your Str interview whenever you had that so it's going to be tell me about your background and your sales experience up to this point why are you interested in this specific company so it's going to be those why sales why this company type questions again you want to absolutely be ready for these and nail these you don't want to worry about anything the rest of this video Until You Nail this down here's where it gets a little bit different specific to account Executives they're probably
going to ask a highlevel question about what your sales methodology look like looks like are you familiar amiliar with things like medic spin B there's no right answer they just want to see that you have some sort of sales methodology in process because that's going to be what your the hiring manager interview asks you about if they move you on to the next round then they're going to ask you basic things about your quota attainment what that looked like and they're probably going to ask about compensation expectations don't get thrown off by this I always
just tell people use whatever they listed in the job description just if they don't get trapped or defensive just say that what posted in the job description is good with me and you'll have a time later on in the interview if you get an offer to negotiate but here I don't think is the time so that should all look pretty familiar then you're going to get to your first interview which is likely going to be with the hiring manager this is probably going to be 30 to 45 minutes and a lot of this is just
looking to validate the positive feedback from the recruiter so the recruiter is generally going to leave some notes oh yeah this person had a great attitude carried themselves well they knew exactly why they wanted to move to an AE role and why at this company and the manager is going to be like all right let's see like that those first questions in the hiring first hiring manager interview are going to be very very similar but here's where it's going to level up a little bit they're really going to want to dig into your sales processes
so it's nice they're going to look at your attainment oh is 150% 250% 300% to them once you meet a certain bar they're like okay this person did well and passed their quota but do they they know why cuz a lot of times the difference between 150% and 200% means absolutely nothing to a hiring manager especially because the person who got 200% it could have been just because they had a good AE or got a bunch of inbound leads and the person with 150 is like no here's exactly what I did here's how I broke
down my territory they want to hear that you can articulate why you're successful and we're going to go a lot more detail into that in the rest of this video there's going to be a lot of Behavioral questions regarding your SDR previous sales experience again it's going to be around your sales processes who did you work with how did you leverage your extended team things like that and they're going to be looking for very specific character traits which I'm going to cover exactly what these are later in this video then there could be one maybe
two of these types of interviews maybe you interview with a different hiring manager then there's likely going to be some sort of mock Discovery call role playay this is where they want to weed out the frauders so there's a lot of people who crush it in the screening interview they crush it in these interviews and they say all the right things and they can articulate their process but then they're put in a very basic mock Discovery call they're given some information here's who you're meeting with here's the company here's what they're struggling with and they
just fall flat on their face so we're going to cover exactly how to nail this portion of the interview they want to see your ability to command the room like an account executive what types of questions you ask your ability to identify pain second and third level pain we're going to touch on that and and how you handle basic objections and close the call and then a lot of times if you make it past that there's some sort of final panel or leadership interview if it's a final panel that usually means you're not the sole
Choice yet maybe there's a few they considering that did pretty similarly well up to this point and they're trying to make a tiebreaker leadership interview like introduction to a gvp or something usually means you got the nod and they just want to make sure it's a culture fit so a lot of times when you're at this level it's either a tiebreaker or you're actually over the hard part and it's more just a culture fit culture check type interview so what are some of those make or break factors in AE interviews I've already touched on this
a little bit this is number one most important being able to clearly articulate your sales process and methodology why were you successful was it random or this is what's going to give them confidence especially if it's to an external company that you may have done well as an SDR at the company you're at but are you going to do well here that's the risk in their head so if you're able to identify and articulate what your process is you're really going to reduce risk in their eyes so again like I was saying look at these
numbers they're all good it means nothing to these managers it's better than if it said 72% or something that's going to draw red flags but once you're over that 100% Mark and at in doing so consistently you're basically you met requirement one you passed the bar now you need to deliver proof that your results are not a fluke and will actually translate into the AE role number two is you need to command the room like an account executive so this isn't exactly have to anything to do with the specific answers you give but one of
the most important things of being account an account executive is can you command a room can you lead prospects who have prospects or sorry problems and challenges recommend next steps things like that so you want to bring the energy have to overdo it but be high energy and knock their opening question out of the park this is always the free the freest lay up in any interview process when it comes to sales this is all true all the way up to the Enterprise level role AE role they're going to ask why this role why this
company why this career path if you nail that those first two to three minutes you really set the tone for the rest of the interview next try and answer questions using the star framework a lot of companies will explicit it l state to use the star framework but if you're not familiar with it it stands for situation task action result when you give good answers they kind of naturally come out this way so don't overthink oh I got a situation task action result like especially if they don't explicitly ask you to but an example would
be like how would you approach a territory if I was to put you in this territory on day one how have you done so in the past or something like yeah I situation you don't have to say situation but yeah in the past when I was a new SDR I got a brand new territory this is the situation I got a brand new territory there were no existing install base and I was tasked with breaking into a lot of our top key accounts so the first thing I did was segment our key accounts by the
industry they were in identify the top personas within those accounts and create targeted messaging based on their Persona the industry they worked in and how our value proposition aligned with that and the result was out of the 10 accounts they assigned to me I was able to break in and set quality meetings with VP levels and above in eight of those accounts that's just an example of where I went here's the situation here's what I was tasked with here's what I did to achieve that task and here was the result and then close the interview
confidently and follow up like a pro this is very basic I give you an example at the end but as a little sneak peek all you have to do is say yeah and I guess my last question is based on the discussion today do you think I would be a good fit for the AE role at XYZ company and if so what are the next steps here but I'll touch on that later and then the mock Discovery and roleplay is definitely a key deal breaker again your ability to command the room in this role play
they're often assessing your coachability and your ability to implement their recommendations so a lot of times the first thing they're going to ask at the end of the role play is how do you think you did they want to hear about your thought process and again your your sales process and methodology why you structured the call the way you did but they want to get some they they're going to give you feedback sometimes they'll ask you to run it back otherwise they want in that conversation they're kind of assessing when I'm this person's manager and
I listen to one of their calls on gong or or live even and we debrief after this is probably what it's going to be like working with them so you want to thank them for their feedback like acknowledge it and tell them how you're going to apply it going forward and then it's generally how you structure the meeting how you uncover business pain and impact and confidently summarize and secure next steps again going to go into word for word examples of to do this so before that traits that get you hired so you're probably going
to get questions asked like why are you good fit why are you why are you go why do you think you're going to succeed here what has made you successful up to this point things like that and these are tra traits you want to highlight in your answers to even if you don't explicitly State them but the qualities you can't go wrong with I think any manager is going to be looking for these are that one your base you're you're a hard worker no matter what's going on you're showing up early you're working late you
take this job seriously you take your career seriously and you're there you're going to be the hardest worker in the room that you're coachable that you're a team player this is big in the AE role it's big as an SDR but especially as an AE because you're really leveraging your extended team you're working with Solutions Engineers often multiple of them there's a lot of people involved to get these deals across the finish line and you're kind of the quarterback in a lot of the scenarios your adaptability things are always changing in most sales departments in
most roles you get a new territory new products they change the kpi structure things like that and your ability to compartmentalize this is really important in the AE role especially when you have a ton of deal cycles that you're now in charge of you're not just responsible for setting the meeting anymore and then passing it off to your AE like these oftentimes can take many months depending on the company you work for and what you sell and some of the top characteristics of elite account Executives intellectual curiosity they're curious genuinely curious when they get on
these calls about learning about the Persona they're speaking with and the business they work for you've strong business Acumen in control of the sales process anywhere you can highlight these characteristics whoops didn't mean to go there anywhere you can hire these characteristics you're doing yourself a big favor and when it comes to control of the sales process demonstrate your sale your self-awareness and your understanding of their sales process especially if you're an SDR who hasn't been an account executive yet don't pretend like you know everything throughout the whole course of the sales cycle but make
sure they know and you understand I'm very good at the front end of the sales cycle the I on day one when you hire me I will be able to B meetings I know how to plan my territory I know how to prospect I know how to generate pipeline I can get them to that demo stage it's those later stages the proof of value negotiations and contract where I'll probably need a little more of your help in the beginning but I'm not going to need my hand held in the front end of the sales cycle
you don't have to say it exactly like that but that's kind of what they're looking for these managers want to know think about it they're busy they have ton of different people they manage they're responsible for so much they don't want to hire someone who they have to hold their hand with stuff that sdrs are supposed to already have command of like prospecting and territory planning they want to help they want you to bring the deals to them and then they'll help you and teach you how to get them across the Finish Line that's their
job in their eyes is to get the deal across the Finish Line in a lot of cases so now let's get to the Discovery call this is really the probably biggest maker break once you get to this stage and it's important to understand how you'll likely be evaluated so they're going to give you some form of prompt like you've already met with these people and now you're meeting with this title and this title and these are the challenges they've shared with you here's the industry the name of the company it's a real company you can
go research it they want to see do you pay attention into the little details and just follow basic instruction instructions two is your overall execution of the meeting we'll talk about that in a second three is your ability to uncover business pain and impact this I'm going to teach you how to do this so what's happening in their business what's the pain and what's the impact it's really important to get to this impact stage and I'll show you how in a basic framework to do so how you handle basic objections they're usually not going to
grill you but they'll give you some pretty fluffy objections that should be pretty easy to overcome they're not going to go too hard on it but they just want to see how you handle and push F push past and then how you close the meeting wrap up and set those next steps like you would in an AE role so how to structure these role plays and these calls at a high level I'm going to go into more examples of how you can actually do so but one set a strong agenda at the beginning of the
call those first 30 seconds that signals a lot about how you command the room too two you want to come in with a highlevel point of view so here's why I set up the call I think I can help you with ABC but in order to do that I have to learn more about XYZ so if we want to start with X and go into it doesn't need to be anything crazy but you want to come in with some sort of perspective around why you set up the call three I'm going to show you how
to do this prepare question funnels for yourself you can never prepare every for every single little detail but you can usually pick a few key areas that you're the the company has a value proposition in some questions I call them question funnels or question pillars that you can fall back on if you ever get in a bind or is your ability to uncover second and third level pain using the Ted framework so Ted you should look it up if you're not aware of it it stands for tell me explain for me describe for me so
they're going to give you a lot of first level pain which is something like oh yeah our processes are really manual right now and what they want to scan for is do you just take that and say got it yeah and move on to the next question or do you pause and use the Ted something like the Ted framework so oh yeah you said your processes were manual can you tell me more about that which parts of those workflow are most manual for your team I'm going to show you examples of this in a second
but now they're going to start sh sharing second and third level pain and actual business impact related to manual processes so look that framework up there's two benefits to it one it helps you run effective Discovery calls but two you're able to say when they debrief that call how do you approach the call you can say I was using and employing the Ted framework to get to second and third level pain even just saying that alone is going to be a huge green flag in their eyes five confirm how your company capabilities align to their
pain and show how you differentiate you almost end with a mini highlevel pitch about here's what I heard here's how I think we can help in how we're different from the competition and then you want to recap everything and recommend the next step so let's get into how to actually do that so when it comes to the agenda and point of view here is an example you can take make it your own but you can say something like great yeah you probably start off with some small talk for a minute or less and then say
all right great so really appre appreciate your time today here's why I was looking to set up some time to speak with both of you I held some productive conversations with John and Mark in your blank department and I want to validate some of this with you what we discussed because I think we have some pretty interesting solutions that could really help you guys with X Y or Z but before we get into that I can I just get a quick round of introductions from you so I can hear a little more about your specific
roles and responsibilities and while you're doing that is there anything else specifically you'd like to get out of the call today 100 different variations of this but they want to see some quick 30 second thing where you take control you command the room you let them know how you think this call is going to go you share a highle point of view with them about how you think we can help them but it's a it's a opinion that's loosely held if they want to take the call a different direction they're probably not going to they're
probably just going to roll with what you give them but if they want to take the call a different direction then what your hypothesis was you want to be willing and able to do that and then when it comes to question funnels so these are just some highlevel examples there's a million different companies and value propositions but a lot of them sound the same a lot of times it's with Silo tooling or manual processes generally around a cloud monetization strategy security you want to have like three to five questions prepared underneath each of these funnels
I'm going to show you examples on the next slide but now let's get to the Ted framework this is how you get to second level pain so if they say something like we have way too many Tools in our processes are just incredibly manual right now here's some examples of the Ted framework can you tell me that's the T tell me more about what that process looks like which parts of that workflow are manual and just let them talk there's another key you want them to do more of the talking you can do more of
the talking at the very outset of the call but after that you want them to just start gushing their pain to you or explain for me how your team currently manages this process and any work workarounds you've tried implementing or describe what an ideal workflow would look like if this challenge were to be solved and then like I was saying let them vent and do a lot of the talking after that just zip your mouth and let them go off and then at the end based on what they tell you throughout that conversation write two
or three just highlevel takeaways down about the pain points that they're struggling with and you can wrap and say something along the lines of and keep conscious of time too don't if they give you 30 minutes don't go past 30 minutes be conscious of that that's important but you can say hey look so here's a couple things I've taken down it sounds like there's some challenges around areas 1 2 and three and it also sounds like solving this would make a big impact on some key priority they mention so what I'd like to propose is
can we come back I'll bring my engineer on and we can give a very prescriptive demo around how we solve for these specific areas you've shared with me today so does that sound like a good next step and if so one's a good time in the next couple weeks to get that scheduled something like that the framework is basically reiterate some of the challenges you heard relate them to a key impact or sorry key priority or goal if you can and then recommend that next step to them that's really going to impress the hiring managers
none of this has to be perfect they just want to see oh this person does have a process they do understand generally how to run these calls and this is someone I can coach and work with from here now when it comes to those question funnels here's some examples you're likely and probably shouldn't ask all of these questions but it's just good to have some prepared to fall back on so Silo tooling how many if if in this scenario you were selling CR maybe you were applying to like HubSpot or something how many different CRM
or sales automation tools are currently being used across your team do these tools talk to each other or are your teams jumping between tools what kinds of issues does that cause when reps I won't read all of them you can pause and take these down but you can kind of see how the theme of Silo tooling that's a that's a funnel and you can have specific questions underneath prepared on that specific topic because then when you go to wrap up the call you can talk about how there's sounds like there's some issues with Silo tooling
and that a lot of your sales processes are manual and you can use that to wrap up the call so now let's get into some of the most important questions and answers and when I said word by word for word I meant it so there's a lot of questions but if you nail these it's very similar to your s Str interview this is going to these are the two most important ones to have down so the first one is why sales why do you want to be be in AE why this company why this specific
team or group and the second one is tell me about your sales process in methodology how you will approach your territory this one is just you it's your opportunity to knock it out of the park the first five minutes of the interview set a strong or good strong first impression and really take control of the interview because in their head they're like if they can't answer this basic question then how hard did they really prepare for an interview like this or how serious are they about wanting to work for this company and then telling about
your sales process and methodology this is what reduces risk in their eyes the a manager worst case scenario their worst fear is that they hire someone who just has no idea what to do do and totally need their handheld in the beginning even if they have the right attitude they want someone who generally is going to come in with a plan that's going to be able to control that front end of the cycle book meetings generate Pipeline and then they're there to help on the back end of the sales cycle so here's an here are
word forword examples that you can use you want to take them make them your own read them out loud but if you're saying these things you're going to put yourself ahead of a lot of AE candidates so when it comes to to preparing for these interviews so there's three main categories I bucket them into you want to understand the company obviously you're applying for and it's product or products platform whatever it is but deeper than that you want to understand at a high level you don't need to be an expert but what problems does the
company solve for what pain points do their customers experience who are its ideal customers their icps and personas and what's their unique value proposition if you can communic these in an interview even just at a high level it's usually a green flag and it shows you've done your research and understand what's important for you to understand if you were to start as an AE at this company so here's some places you can find it obviously their company website press releases and news articles my favorite is to go to their investor relations page if they have
one a lot times they have Decks that lay out the company strategy literally everything I put on the left who the customers they serve are what pain points and challenges they solve for where they're trying to go in the future but if not you should be able to get enough information just off the website like the about us page y XYZ company Etc the next one you want to definitely don't skip on this is the job role and expectations a lot of it is just understanding the job description they posted whether it was on LinkedIn
or on their website they want to make sure you actually understand the type of role is it a pureet new role that they mention is it more you're managing you're more of an account manager managing an existing install BAS because those are different types of sales one's not better than the other but they don't want if it's an account management type role and you come in and you're like oh I'm I'm going to be gung-ho generate net new business they're like well wait wait wait your entire territory is going to be existing installs you just
want to have an understanding of what the roles and responsibilities are it's generally going to be laid out for you what are the key performance metrics you can go to other people's AE profiles at that company and see what they list as like I hit 127% of my number what did that mean did they do a certain number number of poc's ons sites is it tied to revenue things like that here's where you can generally find some information on that and then the third one is the interviewer or interviewers in general team who's interviewing you
before every interview just pop on their LinkedIn what was what's their background at the company have they promoted from within did they come externally what's their role things like that if you can find it the AE team size and general structure of the organization and then things about the company culture so pop on their LinkedIn profiles you can look at other managers and other AE profiles or places like glass door and rep view you're never going to know all of this 100% but you want to be able to speak to all of it and use
it in your interview process and then now at the end of the interview you've crushed everything up to this point effective questions for you to ask this is a really important part of the interview I generally say prepare five questions don't ask five again keep to the time of the interview if there's only one one minute left maybe ask squeak in one question but don't go over time and generally don't ask more than three if you ask start to ask more than three the manager not all of them but some of them will be like
ah is this what it's going to be like working with them or they just going to have a bunch of questions every time we meet so here are some word for word ones you can take one is here's what I've been doing to prepare for the role so don't just ask what else should I be doing to prepare for the role Tell them I've been reading these books I've been following these people I've been studying value proposition the personas the pain points tell them what you've done what else should I be doing to best prepare
myself to ramp up in the role as quickly as possible this is a really good question it'll tell you if the you have a good manager on your hands too because they should be able to identify and tell you what you should be focusing on to ramp up and roll question two simply what are you looking most for in a new hire on your team this is a good question because they're going to they're going to tell you what to say after especially if this is just a first interview if they're like we need people
honestly this is going to be a net new territory not a lot of existing installs we need people who are going to grind who want to grind and want to pick up the phone and email and whatever they give you you respond back and tell them that's exactly what you're going to bring to the team I'm going to I'm there to work hard I like to show up early work late I like to make the most dials here's how I do it and you you take whatever they give you and you use it and tell
them throughout the rest of the interview process that that's what you're going to bring to their team question three what are some of thep top buying triggers and use cases you look out for and generating new business for example in my current role I look for prospects or companies that have experience with a certain solution or have a certain background or we just promoted to a certain role this is a good question because it shows you understand what your role is going to be as an AE and you again it's more process oriented you know
that there are top buying triggers and you use cases you should be looking out for and then you tell them how you currently so in your current role again this reduces risk in their eyes and it's just a good question that shows you you know what you're going to need to do those first 30 60 days question four I'd be curious to hear from you an example of a recent deal on your team and how it was structured what did you do what did you and your team do well they'll start talking they'll start gushing
it's just a good question you can you can ask them follow-up questions so when you say this or how did when when did you bring in this this person person this solutions engineer the partner it's just a good I've found this to be a good effective question that just gets managers talking then question five what are some of the common obstacles you face in sales cycles and how you overcome them again it's just a good question reduces risk in their eyes shows you understand the sales process a lot of it's about reducing risk and identifying
risk proactively and doing what you can to lower it or mitigate it and then when it comes to closing the interview I kind of alluded this to earlier in the video but this has always been my favorite last question usually you could ask three questions up to this point and then I don't really even count this as a question it's just sort of a way you close the interview you just you thank them you're like great yeah this has been awesome really enjoyed the conversation and I guess my last question is based on the discussion
today do you think I'd be a good fit for the AE rooll at XYZ company and if so what are the next steps from here and it's just it's exactly what you're going to be doing as an AE you got to wrap up these meetings set the next step it's simple easy to implement don't overthink it you basically just tell them it's been great my last question is based on the discussion today do you think I'd be a good fit for the role and if so what are the next steps and then lock in those
next steps and then combin with this immediately within 30 minutes if you can send them a brief follow-up email the reason I say 30 minutes is because a lot of times they have to make a decision on whether you're moving to the next round like right after that call so if you wait till the end of the day the email might not have the ability to impact that decision but send a brief follow-up no more than four to five sentences simply just thank them for taking the time today acknowled acknowledging that they're probably busy you
appreciate it tell them you took a lot away from the conversation and name a couple specific things you learned in in the conversation reiterate briefly why you're a strong fit for the role use those character traits I gave you and then tell them you're looking forward to whatever Next Step they they said I'm looking forward to speaking with John on Tuesday if that was The Next Step boom that's it that's a template you can have ready to go just plug it in based on what you learn in the conversation that can be out the door
in 15 minutes and that's really going to impress them and you'd be shocked most people don't do this so hope this help again if you're looking for more Hands-On guidance check out the links in the pin comment and description below AE Mastery it's where we work on with AES on everything we talked about this video and much more but with that thank you for being a part of this hope you got some value out of it subscribe if you did and I will see you all on the next one
