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SgtAE profile picture

SgtAE

AE

WR Officer
Politicker
OG Sales Savage
+8

BDR to Partner channel sales - But the pay/career jump is quite large?

Hi team,


I've been posting here a few times about my motivation to want to join the partner channels sales team instead of the AE pathway. Had a meeting with the director of APAC partner channels sales for a role and said I was too junior, but now a more junior role is opening up in August and I'm now working diligently with the partner teams towards that.


Our company has grades for roles, for example a BDR is grade 5, grade 15 being the highest (CEO).


SMB AE is considered Grade 6, and the traditional path in the company is a promotion = 1 grade in normal circumstances e.g BDR to SMB AE = grade 5 to grade 6


The role that I'm going for in August turns out it's grade 9, which is a great opportunity, I called this out to my manager in my 1:1 and could see it in their eyes when they realised what the implications of this were.


I told them "look can you let me know if theirs going to be any problems with me going for a role that's 4 grades up from my current one, I don't want to get to August just to be told we have a policy that we don't promote that many levels in one go".


I'm still confident that I have a good shot as i'm working with the partner teams now taking a small part of their bandwidth and helping them on it which is what that role would be full time, I'm just curious to know if anyone else has made a similar jump of that calibre?

🚀 Career Goals
🎯 Career Development
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8 comments

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looper1010
Celebrated Contributor
1
Solutions Specialist
My coworker was a bdr before he made the jump to channel sales manager.  So it's not entirely unheard of.  However, he did have traditional sales experience before this company and before that, he was pro baseball player.  If you can do the job, you can do the job!
braintank
Politicker
1
Enterprise Account Executive
Great job asking the tough questions! Curious how they responded to your question.
SgtAE
WR Officer
0
AE
Honestly like they had a big ol' apple in their mouth they we're trying to swallow haha. It definitely came out of left field for me and was surprising so when the penny dropped as well.

They mentioned they'll speak to HR and get back to me if theirs any hard roadblocks. 
CuriousFox
WR Officer
1
🦊
Where u from 👀
SaaSam
Politicker
1
Account Executive
You handled it super well by asking the right questions to gain clarity.

My suggestion, talk to someone with more pull than your manager. Like the person who would be your manager if you got the promotion. He is the one you need to impress anyways.

I'm always wary of potential bullshit from people not wanting me to succeed more than they have. I don't know what kind of person your manager is, but I wouldn't put it in their hands if it were me.

I made a jump from SDR to Sr. AE. Not all that impressive when you consider the fact that I was the company's first actual AE because previously, the CEO and COO were the ones closing deals. I did have some issues with the guy who was essentially my manager as an SDR trying to muddy the waters for me because he didn't like the idea of someone doing better than himself.
SADNESSLieutenant
Politicker
1
Officer of ♥️
That sounds like a good career move and way to go about it
FoodForSales
Politicker
0
AE
Is that Grade 5, Grade 6 stuff Canadian? 
SgtAE
WR Officer
1
AE
Straight out of seattle washington apparently, although we we're originally from Netherlands back in the super early days and we still have the same CEO, so could be that? 
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