T
T

techp

Account Executive

Opinionated
Personal Narrative
Contributor
+2

SDR - AE relationship advice

Hey ya'll - Senior SDR / Team Lead here. I have this one AE that I have been working with for 8 months and I wanted to get your opinion on how to go about the relationship.

context: I am the first SDR he has ever had. he is 38 and has a extensive sales background in the music industry & is now at a SaaS series b startup. he has been extremely apprehensive to throwing me a bone for the meetings I booked & in todays instance - he botched the end of the call for next steps by saying what blockers we could be.

our working relationship is purely transactional and I feel like he doesn't make an effort to see how I'm doing or be my teammate.

have you ever dealt with an AE like this? what do you do if you want to flat out say "is there something wrong with our working relationship"?
🧠 Advice
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5 comments

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E_Money
Big Shot
1
💰
At the end of the numbers talk, especially to sales people. Do you have deals you have helped other AEs close? Or any examples of revenue you've sourced. 


Then you sit them down and basically lay it out as a partnership that you can only help to support if they trust you and do their part. If that doesn't work then they suck and it's time to escalate to your manager.
BitcoinAddict
Opinionated
1
AE
I was there last year OP and the worst part is, I ended up getting this AE so many opportunities but they treated me like dirt (and threw me under the bus at every turn). The first thing I would do is GET YOUR MANAGEMENT INVOLVED ASAP. Some AEs are just like this and you can't help it, it sucks when they get a good territory. As much as it sucks, a lot of AEs see BDRs as purely transactional and nothing else.

I tried to reason with my then AE but they just took everything out of context and ran to my manager as me being unreasonable. Luckily, I had a good manager that saw through it and we were able to work things out. 

Do not leave this out of the eyes of management in the off-chance that this AE has a meltdown. Have a meeting with management involved and have your manager be the middle-man/woman.

Finally, it might be worth it to switch AEs. Believe me, it's not worth the headache to deal with a tough and ungrateful AE. I only did it because my AE had a really good territory that I had managed to get a ton of momentum in, if not that then I would have switched ASAP.
techp
Opinionated
0
Account Executive
My only problem is 1. I’m the only SDR until we get this new one ramped and hire this one others 2. I am gonna be promoted in 3 months to AE and this will most likely be a piece of my territory 3. It’s a series b startup so management is not all there on his side
CuriousFox
WR Officer
1
🦊
Moving forward it would be wise to have a pre-call to formulate a plan together. 
SultansofSales
Opinionated
0
Commercial Account Executive
Franchise meetings weekly. Meet with the whole team on a weekly basis, SE, SDR, CSM, Partners, AE, etc. and make sure everyone is on the same page and has a clear vision of the goal. Give updates from each party on new info they find week over week.
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