higgs

Enterprise Account Executive

Boxed myself in -- Not a true AE, not an Engineer. Something in between.

Looking for some career advice here, guys. My degree was in Physics and I've dabbled in CS but never enough to have a real engineering job. I got into sales because I was able to communicate effectively to both technical and non technical people. I love solving problems and I actually run a great sales process from discovery to close (sans prospecting), and my numbers can prove it. Historically I've acted as my own sales engineer and ran the whole sales process after the initial meeting is booked by SDR or marketing. I've got 10 years experience in technical sales with 4 of them being in SaaS.

However, it seems I'm not able to really advance my career much further because most companies want EITHER a sales engineer OR an account executive. No one seems to want a guy who does a bit of both. I feel like I can provide more value to very specific roles than a non-technical sales person, but I'm having trouble finding those roles.

I know that a typical hunter enterprise account executive provides a ton of value by breaking into targeted accounts that are difficult to penetrate, but that kind of work is just not for me. I'm much more of a problem solver than a relationship builder and I'm finding that has less value than I originally thought.

I'm not sure what I'm looking for here but I'm open to any suggestions or feedback. If you can give me some suggestions for where to look for technical sales roles with minimal outbound I would be stoked, but also not getting my hopes up since every job description I read now is looking for a hunter.

☁️ Software Tech

💆‍♂ Mindset

🎯 Career Development

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10 comments

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TennisandSales

Politicker

1

Head Of Sales

hmm yeah you are looking for something rather specific.

as you get into larger deals / companies you will see things segment out more, SDRs, AEs, and a solutions engineer.

But i would not shy away from roles where you dont need to run your own demos. It is still really important that the AE knows the product and COULD demo if needed.

It will also help your relationship with the SE if you have a good understanding of how to demo, what is important from a technical perspective ect.

Also not all SE are awesome. Ive worked with good ones that make things SO easy, and others that are just bad and its a challenge.

Pachacuti

Politicker

1

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

It seems to me that you’d flourish in a much small company where you can wear many hats or perhaps in a semi-entrepreneurial role like as a technical co-founder.

higgs

1

Enterprise Account Executive

You are correct. I historically have been a small company guy and done very well in those. Not sure about technical co founder, though. I don't have a *real* engineering or development background aside from my Physics degree. However I would love to be told I'm thinking about this wrong.

Pachacuti

Politicker

1

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

You are what you believe you are (within certain parameters of course).

SaaSam

Politicker

1

Account Executive

You're definitely looking for a Goldielocks company with the unicorn that is a good marketing team combined with a strong SDR team.

The truth is though, you're likely going to have to do some prospecting at any given point.

saaskicker

Celebrated Contributor

0

Enterprise AE

sales engineer at a f250 company should be right up your alley

jefe

Arsonist

0

🍁

Could you double down on the SE side?

higgs

0

Enterprise Account Executive

I worry that I will basically have to start over and get an entry level role as a sales engineer. Either that or I won’t have enough coding experience to be one. And my compensation probably won’t be as good.

again, would love for people to tell me I’m wrong though.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

0

🦊

You won't know for sure until to try 🤷‍♀️

ChumpChange

Politicker

0

Channel Manager

Sales Engineers are basically dual threats and great ones with technical and sales chops are HARD TO FIND. From what I've experienced, they're either too technical and can't build on the value prop and corner you into some hard spots. Or they're too pushy and can't speak on the technical jargon from a pragmatic approach. My advice would be to learn the sales discipline first and then leverage your CS experience to build a case for yourself as an SE. SE's are ALWAYS busy so they're always looking to add more "competent" team members to take some of the load.

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