Sales Development Representative interview scorecard template
A structured scorecard for interviewing a Sales Development Representative: six weighted competencies, what a 1 and a 5 actually look like, and questions that surface evidence instead of opinions. Print it, or copy it into your ATS.
The Sales Development Representative scorecard
| Competency | Weight | Score 1 — what it looks like | Score 5 — what it looks like |
|---|---|---|---|
| Verifiable pipeline generation evidence Whether the candidate can break meetings booked into activity volume, conversion rates by channel, and how many meetings became qualified opportunities. | 22% | Reports meetings booked per month with no view of dials, emails, or connect rates, and no idea how many meetings the closer kept. | Gives activity and conversion at each step — touches to connects, connects to meetings, meetings held to accepted opportunities — and knows the show rate. |
| Account research and list building How target accounts and contacts get chosen: the signals used to prioritize, and whether lists are built by the candidate or simply handed over. | 18% | Works whatever list is assigned and describes prioritization as moving top to bottom through a queue. | Names the triggers used to prioritize accounts — hiring patterns, funding, tooling changes, org moves — and shows how a self-built list outperformed an assigned one. |
| Cold outreach and sequencing Quality of written and spoken outreach: whether messages reference something specific about the account and whether sequences were tested and changed. | 18% | Sends the template as provided and measures success by volume sent, unable to recall a single line that was rewritten and why. | Can recite an opener that worked, explain the account-specific detail it used, and name a variant that was tested and the reply rate it moved. |
| Live objection handling What happens in the first thirty seconds of a cold call: whether early brush-offs get worked through or are accepted as a no. | 16% | Describes cold calling mostly through voicemails and says the main obstacle is that people do not pick up the phone. | Reproduces the actual words used against a 'not interested' or 'send me an email' brush-off, and knows roughly how often that recovery holds the call. |
| Qualification discipline and handoff Whether meetings passed to closers meet an agreed standard, and what context and notes travel with the handoff. | 16% | Counts every booked meeting as a win and cannot say how many were rejected by the closer or for what reason. | States the qualification criteria used, the share of meetings accepted by closers, and what notes and context were attached before the call. |
| Coachability and consistency Response to call reviews and changing targets: what feedback was applied, and whether output held up across consecutive months. | 10% | Cites one strong month repeatedly and attributes weak months to territory or lead quality without describing any adjustment made. | Names a specific change made after a call review — a question moved earlier, a shorter opener — and the metric that moved over the following weeks. |
Weights sum to 100. Agree them before the first interview, not after — adjusting weights once you have scores is how a panel rationalises a favourite.
Questions that surface evidence
Each one asks for something that already happened, in enough detail to verify. Hypotheticals reward rehearsal, not track record.
- What were your numbers last quarter — dials, connects, meetings booked, and meetings the closer accepted? Walk me down that funnel step by step.
- Read me the opener you used on cold calls last month, word for word, and tell me what happened the last time someone said they were not interested.
- Which account did you book that nobody else could get into? How did you find the right person, and what did the message that worked actually say?
- How many of your booked meetings were rejected or disqualified by the closer last quarter, and what did you change after the first few came back?
- When did a manager last review one of your calls? What did they flag, what did you change, and what happened to your numbers afterward?
Red flags
- Reports meetings booked but has no connect rate, no reply rate, and no count of meetings the closer actually accepted.
- Cannot recall any wording from their own outreach, and describes messaging entirely as whatever the template said.
- Describes prospecting as pure volume, with no criteria for which accounts get worked first.
- Blames every weak month on lead quality or territory and names no adjustment made in response.
How to use this scorecard
- Agree the weights with the panel before anyone interviews, and write them down.
- Every interviewer scores every competency independently, adding a note that quotes what the candidate actually said.
- Compare scores before discussing them. Discussing first anchors the panel on whoever speaks loudest.
Build a custom scorecard → · Boolean string to source a Sales Development Representative →
Frequently asked questions
What should an SDR interview scorecard measure?
Weight the funnel evidence highest: activity, connect and reply rates, meetings booked, and how many of those meetings closers accepted. Then score account research, outreach craft, live objection handling, qualification discipline, and coachability. Anchors matter more here than anywhere, because SDR interviews reward candidates who sound energetic rather than candidates who produced pipeline.
What interview questions separate a strong SDR from a weak one?
Ask for the funnel one step at a time and ask for the opener word for word. Strong candidates recite their own messaging, know their connect and reply rates, and can say how many booked meetings the closer rejected. Weak candidates report only meetings booked and describe outreach as whatever the template said.
How do you compare SDR candidates whose targets were different?
Compare conversion rates rather than raw meeting counts, since quota, segment, and lead flow differ by company. Score every candidate against the same anchors so a rep from a low-volume enterprise team is not penalized against a high-volume one. Recording the evidence behind each score, with the numbers the candidate actually gave, keeps that comparison auditable later.
When the stakes are a real hire, use evidence
These tools are quick heuristics. Verdict reads the CV against your job description and scores six dimensions with verbatim quotes as evidence — a hiring document you can defend.