salezkween profile picture
salezkween profile picture

salezkween

Enterprise Account Executive

Opinionated
Fire Starter
Contributor
+1

AMA - BDR ➡️ ENT AE 👩🏻‍💻

I've been a bdr, enterprise bdr, smb ae, commercial ae, and now an enterprise ae.

I've worked for 4 startups that I've joined at Series A who are all now either Series D or acquired.

Im a female in tech, who's seen the good and bad in sales team culture.

I've closed F100 and 6-figure ARR deals when people were slinging sub $50k. Prez club. Rookie of the year. 

and Im drinking my morning coffee so why not
🤴 AMA
🎯 Career Development
🤠 Culture
15

24 comments

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braintank
Politicker
6
Enterprise Account Executive
How do you avoid shit series A's?
saaskicker
Celebrated Contributor
1
Enterprise AE
yes - great q, following.
CuriousFox
WR Officer
5
🦊
How do you know you're choosing a good Series A? I made one bad decision and haven't looked back.
TennisandSales
Politicker
4
Head Of Sales
I would also suggest taking some key learnings from each stage and making posts about them. this could be more helpful for the community at large.
Sunbunny31
Politicker
3
Sr Sales Executive 🐰
^^^ This. Because I think there are quite a few good learnings here throughout, and I'm interested in the steps along the way.
TennisandSales
Politicker
1
Head Of Sales
yeah its the steps on how you went from one to the next that i think most ppl care about.
jefe
Arsonist
2
🍁
I think that would be VERY helpful
Gasty
Notable Contributor
3
War Room Community Manager
You forgot you're a Good Citizen too
saaskicker
Celebrated Contributor
1
Enterprise AE
Any tips for speeding up a sales cycle? I'm in this hybrid mid-market/enterprise ish space right now and some deals feel like they're just being dragged out for the sake of evaluation. How do I tighten it up to close in 45 days instead of 6 months?
Smilesndialz
Politicker
1
SDR
I just got a new role as an SMB AE, any advice on how I can ramp up fast?
salezkween
Opinionated
1
Enterprise Account Executive
If you have conversation intelligence (Gong, Chorus), I highly recommend spending time in there watching the top performing reps calls (or even better, filter down by closed won revenue). Explicitly focusing on Discovery calls - Take notes on the discovery questions and the prospect questions (so you're prepared when they ask you).

I would also listen to a ton of discovery calls and focus on where customers are talking about their challenges and pain points. Make a list. If you know why people come to your company, you can start off calls strong: Typically when I speak to TITLE like you, I hear they are struggling with.... does that happen to you or something else?

Dig into competitive differentiation - what you do better, where the competitor is better.

If you are required to demo, read demonstrating to win. It will help you figure out a framework to keep demos concise and engaging.

Prospect, prospect, prospect. The more meetings you have the faster you can practice all of this.

Always set next steps - even if it's 15 min sync to see what's up. If they don't want to, it's not a real deal and move on.
TennisandSales
Politicker
0
Head Of Sales
very impressive i do not know many people that have done ALL of the roles.

how many different companies have you been at to do all of this? or has it been at the same company
salezkween
Opinionated
2
Enterprise Account Executive
I was BDR ➡️ SMB AE at one company, AE at 2 companies, ENT AE at current company. Will def post key learnings it’s been a ride
TennisandSales
Politicker
0
Head Of Sales
ah ok very nice. Ive had a similar ride except i havnt had all the different AE titles. just AE and ENT AE haha
salezkween
Opinionated
2
Enterprise Account Executive
Yeah unfortunately I was at an organization when they began segmenting SMB from MMKT, so you had to start at growth accounts. Same thing happened when I went from Commercial to Enterprise, my company was re-segmenting to add a segment between to MMKT. So I followed my mentor to a company and became ENT.

Honestly, I can count at least 5 times when male leaders wanted to “hold me back” and gave the promotion to a male or bro-chick.
TennisandSales
Politicker
1
Head Of Sales
hahah damn those bro chicks! (ive never actually heard this term, how would you describe a bro chick???)

I love that you were able to follow a mentor to a place that gave you the ENT opportunity.

Same thing happened with me. Im convinced its the best way to get into ENT sales is to have someone on the inside vouch for you!
salezkween
Opinionated
1
Enterprise Account Executive
Bro-chick fits the mold of a stereotypical #basic. Their dad is usually a VP of sales at another company (I’ve seen this play out twice before).
TennisandSales
Politicker
0
Head Of Sales
OUCH! yeah that would be frustrating to deal with.
Kosta_Konfucius
Politicker
0
Sales Rep
What’s more important having a good territory or a good product
salezkween
Opinionated
1
Enterprise Account Executive
Loaded question. What makes a good territory? The majority of my career I had an average territory. I also had a brand new territory which was challenging because you have to educate and it’s not the norm of that territory.

Good product will always be more important though. It makes life easier. That said, I’ve worked at a company where we weren’t the leading product and won on sales execution alone.
DungeonsNDemos
Big Shot
0
Rolling 20's all day
Sounds like quite the ride! Definitely share what you've learned.
RomyJax2020
Valued Contributor
0
Enterprise Sales Dev
I love you
salezkween
Opinionated
0
Enterprise Account Executive
That’s not a question
SoccerandSales
Big Shot
0
Account Executive
Biggest advice when closing bigger deals that involve much larger people maps?

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