Brian LaMannaAE @ Gong | Closed Won 🦙 | 7x President’s Club

Don't Make this Interview Mistake - SaaS

28 Jan 2025 · 1 min

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1:23

Brian LaManna warns that candidates often focus only on answering questions and forget interviews are two-way. He advises preparing 3–4 thoughtful, research-oriented questions to vet the company and demonstrate preparation. LaManna mentions he created an interview guide containing 27 questions across topics (equity, earnings, attainment, culture, career paths) to help candidates pressure-test employers and earn respect during interviews.

Chapters

The number one mistake I see when folks are interviewing is that while they're preparing, they focus all of their time on how they're going to answer different questions for the interviewer. However, you need to not lose sight that this is actually a two way interview and that it's just important in terms of the questions that you ask them, in terms of how you're actually interviewing them. On the other side of it, typically during prep, you're more focused on yourself with why you're the right fit, why you might like sales, why that company is the best fit for you. I want to challenge you to think really intentionally about in your last five to seven minutes, what are three or four really thought provoking, detail, research oriented questions where you can flip the script and you can showcase to them that you've done your homework, that you're not 100% sold on this company yet, and that you need to learn and further vet out if they're also the best fit for you in a very, very respectful way. What I did is I created an interview guide with 27 questions around equity, around earnings, around attainment, around culture, around career paths, so that you can pressure test the other side, earn their respect, and that they will know that you know what you're talking about.