Notion Sales Development Representative (SDR/BDR) Interview Questions

1.Tell me about a time you were pitching or recommending something — a product, a project, an idea — and feedback from the other person made you completely rethink your approach. What did you change?

2.Think about a time you were preparing for a sales conversation, cold outreach, or any kind of pitch — and you realized mid-prep that your planned approach was too complicated or off-base for that specific person. What did you simplify or cut, and how did you figure out what actually mattered to them?

3.Tell me about a time you had a hard deadline — maybe a quota close, an event, a launch — and you had to move faster than felt comfortable. What did you cut or compress, and did quality hold up?

4.Describe a time you said no to something that seemed like a good opportunity — a lead you didn't pursue, a project you passed on, a path you declined. How did you make that call?

5.Tell me about the most useful piece of feedback you've received from a customer, a manager, or even a classmate that genuinely changed how you work. What did you do with it, and can you trace a specific outcome back to it?

6.You're prospecting into a new segment — say, ops leaders at mid-market companies using Notion — and your first two weeks of outreach are getting zero replies. Walk me through exactly how you'd figure out what's wrong and what you'd change.

7.Notion has a free tier, a Plus plan, and a Business plan. If a prospect asks you why they should pay for Business instead of staying on Plus, how would you walk them through that?

8.Estimate how many outbound emails you'd need to send in a month to book 15 qualified meetings. Walk me through your assumptions.

9.You're prospecting into a company that uses Microsoft 365 heavily — Teams, SharePoint, the whole suite. Their CTO just posted on LinkedIn about rolling out Copilot for M365. Is this a good Notion prospect or not? Make the case either way.

10.Notion's ICP includes both individual power users and large team buyers. If you had a list of 100 inbound sign-ups from last week with no other context, how would you figure out which ones are worth a phone call?

11.Notion is expanding its enterprise motion and wants SDRs to start sourcing accounts in a vertical — let's say financial services — where Notion has almost no brand recognition and a lot of compliance skepticism. How would you approach building a pipeline in that vertical from scratch?

12.You've just learned that Notion is about to launch a major upgrade to Notion AI — new features, new pricing tier. Your manager asks you to figure out which accounts in your current pipeline should be re-engaged around this launch. How do you approach that, and what do you actually do with the list you come up with?

13.If you're cold calling a head of operations at a 200-person company, what's your goal for the first 30 seconds of that call — and what are you actually trying to get them to say?

14.Walk me through the key metrics you'd track week-over-week as an SDR — what numbers tell you whether you're on track to hit your monthly meeting quota?

15.You're building a sequence to target engineering managers at fast-growing SaaS companies who might be using Notion for team docs. How do you structure your multi-touch outreach — what channels, what cadence, and what does each touch actually say?

16.You've booked a discovery call with a VP of Engineering at a 400-person company, and the AE asks you to brief them before the call. What do you include, and how do you figure out what to include?

17.You're six weeks into the role, you've been running the same email sequence for a month, and your reply rate has dropped from 4% to under 1%. Your manager says the product and ICP haven't changed. How do you figure out what broke, and what do you do about it?

18.A prospect replies to your outreach saying they already evaluated Notion last year and went with Confluence because of IT security requirements. How do you respond — and is this worth pursuing?

19.You've just gotten off a 15-minute intro call with a prospect who seemed genuinely excited about Notion. They asked you to send over 'some info' before they loop in their team. What do you send, and what are you hoping happens next?

20.You're working a list of 50 outbound targets your manager gave you last Monday. By Thursday, you've contacted 20 of them and haven't gotten a single reply. Your manager asks for a status update in an hour. What do you say?

21.You're prospecting a head of product at a 300-person SaaS company. Mid-sequence, you find out through LinkedIn that they were just promoted — three weeks ago, from senior PM to VP of Product. Do you change your outreach? How?

22.You've been sourcing leads for a new campaign targeting legal teams — a segment your AE says is heating up. You pull 80 contacts and feel good about the list, but when you look at it closely, 30 of them are at companies that already have Notion licenses. What do you do with those 30?

23.You've booked a meeting with a director of operations at a logistics company — a vertical Notion hasn't targeted much. Your AE tells you they can't make the discovery call and asks you to run it solo. What do you do?

24.A prospect replies to your outreach saying they're actually in the middle of evaluating Notion right now — but they're about to sign with a competitor next week. The deal was never in your pipeline, and your AE doesn't know about this company. What's your next move in the next two hours?

25.Tell me about a time you needed something from someone who had no reason to prioritize you — a teammate, a professor, anyone. How did you get them to actually help?

26.Think about a time you had to relay bad news — to a manager, a customer, or a teammate. How did you handle it, and how did they react?

27.Your AE wants you to prioritize a list of enterprise accounts they've identified, but your manager's campaign is focused on mid-market companies this quarter. Both are telling you what to work on. How do you handle that?

28.You've been working a prospect for three weeks — they've engaged with your emails, attended a webinar, and responded warmly. You brief your AE, and they tell you the account isn't a fit and to drop it. You disagree. What do you do?

29.You're on a discovery call with a prospect who starts asking detailed product questions you can't fully answer — pricing tiers, API integrations, compliance certifications. Your AE isn't on the call. How do you manage the next ten minutes?

30.Marketing runs a campaign that generates 40 inbound leads for your segment, but after working through them, you're convinced the targeting was off — these people aren't actually good fits. How do you raise that with the marketing team?