DoorDash Sales Development Representative (SDR/BDR) Interview Questions

1.You're pitching a restaurant owner on DoorDash Marketplace, and they push back saying delivery fees hurt their margins. How do you handle that conversation?

2.Tell me about a time you had to hit a hard deadline — something where being even a day late would have genuinely mattered. What did you do to make sure you delivered?

3.Walk me through a time you went out of your way for a teammate or colleague when it wasn't expected or required. What prompted you to do it?

4.Tell me about a prospecting or outreach effort you ran where what worked for one audience completely flopped with another. How did you adjust?

5.Imagine you're the first SDR DoorDash has ever hired in a new city. There's no playbook, no existing merchant relationships, and your manager is remote. How do you figure out where to start?

6.You have 200 restaurant leads to work through this week, but your manager just told you that two large enterprise merchants in your territory are ready to talk. How do you restructure your week?

7.Roughly how many independent restaurants do you think exist in a mid-sized U.S. city like Nashville? Walk me through how you'd estimate that.

8.A restaurant owner says she gets plenty of walk-in traffic on weekends and doesn't need DoorDash. How do you make the case that weekday lunch delivery could still be worth her time?

9.You're looking at two cities in your region — City A has high restaurant density but low DoorDash consumer adoption, and City B has strong consumer demand but only a thin merchant selection. Where do you focus your merchant prospecting efforts first, and why?

10.DoorDash is testing a new program that gives restaurant partners a 30-day free trial with zero commission. You're told to pitch it to your top 10 prospects this week. Three of them already said no to standard DoorDash last month. How do you approach those three differently than the other seven?

11.DoorDash's average order value on the consumer side has been flat for two quarters while order volume is growing. As an SDR focused on merchant acquisition, what's one hypothesis for why that's happening and what types of restaurants would you prioritize signing to help address it?

12.Imagine DoorDash gave you a list of 50 restaurants that signed up for DoorDash Drive — the white-label delivery product — but have never been approached about joining the standard Marketplace. How would you think about whether and how to pitch them on Marketplace?

13.What's the difference between an MQL and an SQL, and how would you decide when a restaurant lead is ready to pass to an account executive?

14.Walk me through how you'd structure a cold outreach sequence for a local restaurant owner — what channels, how many touches, and over what timeframe?

15.Your manager gives you a territory of 500 independent restaurants and tells you to hit 20 qualified meetings this month. How do you figure out which 20% of those restaurants to contact first?

16.A restaurant owner says they already tried DoorDash two years ago and it wasn't worth it. How do you handle that conversation without just dismissing their experience?

17.You're looking at your activity data for the past month: 300 calls made, 45 connects, 12 meetings booked, 4 of which became opportunities. Which conversion rate worries you most and why?

18.DoorDash is launching a new city and you're tasked with building out the merchant side of the Marketplace from zero. How do you think about the chicken-and-egg problem — you need restaurants to attract consumers, but restaurants want proof of consumer demand before they sign up?

19.You're mid-conversation with a restaurant owner who seems genuinely interested, but you realize you misspoke about DoorDash's commission rate — you quoted something lower than the actual rate. What do you do?

20.You book a demo meeting with a local pizza shop owner, but when the Account Executive gets on the call, the owner barely remembers agreeing to it and clearly wasn't expecting a sales pitch. The AE messages you after saying the meeting was a waste. How do you handle that?

21.You're prospecting a fast-casual chain with five locations in your territory. The owner loves the pitch and wants to sign, but says she needs three weeks to 'talk to her accountant.' Your manager is pushing you to close this month for quota. What do you do?

22.You've been crushing your call volume and meeting quota all month. With one week left, you notice that almost none of your booked meetings are converting to opportunities. Your manager hasn't said anything yet. What do you do?

23.A well-known local restaurant group with eight locations is interested in DoorDash, but their owner tells you they're also in active conversations with Uber Eats and want a side-by-side comparison before deciding. You don't have formal competitive battle cards. How do you handle the next 48 hours?

24.You're assigned to a territory that a previous SDR burned — they sent aggressive, templated emails to dozens of local restaurants, and several owners complained to DoorDash directly. Some of those owners are still on your prospect list. How do you approach this territory?

25.Tell me about a time you had to get help or information from someone who wasn't your manager — maybe a peer, someone in a different department, or even a vendor. How did you get them to prioritize you?

26.Have you ever been asked to deliver a message or update that you knew the other person wasn't going to like? How did you handle it?

27.You've been working a restaurant lead for three weeks — calls, emails, the works. The owner is interested but wants more info before committing to a demo. Your Account Executive tells you to drop the lead and move on. How do you handle that conversation with your AE?

28.You're working a lead on a local restaurant owner who's ready to talk, but your manager just told you that Marketing is launching a new DoorDash promotional offer next week that would make your pitch significantly stronger. The offer isn't public yet and you haven't been given approval to share it. How do you manage this?

29.You've just started at DoorDash and you notice that the way leads are being handed from Marketing to the SDR team is causing confusion — some leads are getting contacted twice, others are falling through the cracks. You're three weeks in and nobody has asked for your opinion. What do you do?

30.A restaurant owner you've been building a relationship with calls you directly — not your AE, not support — furious because their DoorDash onboarding has stalled and their menu still isn't live three weeks after signing. You had nothing to do with onboarding. What do you do?