Breaking Into Tech Sales: How to Nail Your First SDR Interview

Landing your first role as a Sales Development Representative (SDR) in tech is exciting but can also feel intimidating — especially if you’re coming straight out of college or transitioning from a completely different career path. The good news is that you don’t need years of sales experience to succeed. What you do need is preparation, self-awareness, and the ability to translate your existing skills into a sales context.

Here’s how to get interview-ready, highlight your value, and avoid common mistakes along the way.

Step 1: Do Your Homework

It’s tempting to focus only on general interview prep, but the most successful SDR candidates take time to learn about both the organization and the role.

• Research the company: Understand their product, target market, and competitors. Check recent press releases, their LinkedIn page, and even customer reviews.

• Understand the SDR role in their context: SDRs don’t all do the same job. Some focus on inbound leads, others on outbound prospecting. Learn what their SDRs actually do and tailor your preparation to that reality.

  
  

Walking into an interview without specific knowledge of the role is one of the fastest ways to look unprepared.

Step 2: Translate Your Past Experience into Sales Language

Many entry-level SDR candidates underestimate how much their previous jobs, education, or life experiences can apply to sales. Here’s how to reframe:

• Customer service → Relationship buildingIf you’ve worked in retail or hospitality, highlight how you handled tough customers, resolved complaints, and built trust. That’s directly transferable to prospect conversations.

• Teaching, coaching, or training → Simplifying complex ideasIf you’ve explained difficult concepts to others, you already know how to make technology approachable — a critical SDR skill.

• Entrepreneurship, freelancing, or gig work → Initiative and resilienceShow how you’ve built opportunities for yourself. SDRs need persistence and creativity to book meetings.

The trick is to frame your story in sales terms. Instead of just saying, “I managed a coffee shop,” you might say, “I learned how to read customer signals, manage a pipeline of daily tasks, and upsell promotions under time pressure.”

Step 3: Speak the Language of Sales

Even if you’ve never worked in sales, you can still reference fundamental strategies during your interview:

• Prospecting: Show you understand the process of identifying and reaching out to the right potential customers.

• Qualification: Be ready to talk about what makes a lead “worth pursuing.”

• Value-driven conversations: Stress that sales isn’t about pushing products — it’s about solving problems.

• Follow-up discipline: SDR success is often measured by consistent outreach, not just flashy one-off wins.

You don’t need to recite a playbook, but weaving these terms naturally into your answers demonstrates you’ve done your homework and can think like a salesperson.

Do’s and  Don’ts in SDR Interview Prep & Execution

 

Do’s

• Prepare concrete examples of how you’ve shown persistence, communication, or adaptability.

• Practice mock calls or pitches — some interviews include role-plays.

• Dress professionally (even for video interviews).

• Show curiosity by preparing thoughtful questions about the team, goals, and metrics.

• Acknowledge the challenges of sales — like handling rejection — and explain how you plan to push through them.

 Don’ts

•  Don’t “fake it till you make it.” Interviewers can spot surface-level sales talk a mile away.

•  Don’t overemphasize unrelated achievements without connecting them back to sales skills.

•  Don’t skip company-specific research — saying “I just want to get into sales” won’t cut it.

•  Don’t avoid the topic of rejection. Instead, show how you handle setbacks constructively.

The Bottom Line

Breaking into tech sales as an SDR is less about having the “perfect background” and more about demonstrating coachability, curiosity, persistence, and communication skills. Employers are looking for potential, not polish.

How to Accelerate Your Preparation

While you can self-study and practice, a structured program can give you a serious edge. The Adgility B2B Tech Sales Certification (ATSC) was built specifically to help new or transitioning professionals master SDR fundamentals.

Through hands-on training and scenario-based learning, you’ll gain direct, practical talking points that set you apart in interviews — showing not only that you understand sales strategies, but that you can apply them in real-world situations.

If you’re serious about starting strong in tech sales, the ATSC can equip you with the confidence, language, and skills to stand out from day one.