I had already met one of the managers at a job fair so I only had one interview. It was a panel-type interview with three interviewers. They had really good energy and were joking from the start--it was pretty relaxed. The questions were pretty standard.

I applied at Avalara and actually figured out some of the sales managers email addresses so before they reached out for an interview, I sent emails expressing my interest. I got great responses and they thought that showed how interested I was in the job - I was referred to as "tenacious." Anyways, I connected with a field sales rep on LinkedIn who gave me some great insight on how to transfer my retail experience into the software sales job. She is really successful with Avalara and had a very similar background to mine before she started there. I had an interview with 6 managers over a 1.5 hour time frame. There were 2 managers at a time asking me questions for 30 mins before I would move into the next panel. I liked how they made the interview process not so drawn out. Each set of interviewers asked me the same questions so I basically repeated myself 3 different times. I kindof wish they would have had different questions to ask me or all interviewed me at one time for an hour. They were smiling at me the whole time and seemed really impressed. I was honestly pretty surprised when I did not get the job BUT I can tell you what I did wrong.... I learned a TON of interview etiquette for software sales during my month and a half long grueling search. I followed up with each manager after my interview thanking them. One manager responded saying "reach out with any questions" - Well..... my dumb self thought it would show how interested I was... bad idea. I should have just asked those questions in my interview because sales managers are busy and I think I honestly rubbed them the wrong way. I also felt like I was doing well in the interview so by the end I thought I was for sure getting the job and may have seemed cocky. Definitely a HUGE learning experience!