oldfashioned

Account Executive

SDR to AE

Well I pushed myself and landed a new job in SaaS for a great company as a SMB AE - moving up as an SDR in my prior role. Stoked.

To all my AEs out there, what advice would you offer a new B2B Account Executive transitioning from the SDR role? Anything you wish you had known then or would have helped you out when starting a closing role?

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☁️ Software Tech

🤘 Personal Growth

18 comments

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GingerBarbarian

Opinionated

Lead Sales

Imagine being the best hunter in your village. You are great at going out into the wilderness, tracking animals, and coming back with meat. Imagine you are so good at it that the village mayor says you are going to be promoted to fisherman.

If that does not make sense to you, congrats, it makes no sense to me either. Yet this is the career path that many salespeople have.

SDRs are like hunters. They go out into the wilderness and try to make something from virtually nothing. AEs are like fishermen. They are responsible for reeling in from a stocked pond. SDRs stock the lake for AEs in a way.

Don't expect all the techniques you learned as an SDR to translate. I would highly suggest reading The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon. It will help give you a different mindset when talking to prospects as opposed to a "book the appointment" style role.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Really great analogy here.

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

Inputs are no longer your targets. Outputs are the only things that truly count. 100 bad cold calls as an SDR? No biggie. 100 bad cold calls as an AE? That’s a day or two wasted and an opp or two you can’t add into your funnel.

Get very good at planning your activity and curating your prospect data.

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

it was much harder for me to break out of this mind set than I thought it would be when I became an AE. Especially if the product has a low price, its easy to still fall into the "dial for dollars" trap.

GingerBarbarian

Opinionated

Lead Sales

I totally get this. Most SDR managers run their teams like KPI factories. It is all about outbound call counting and appointment setting as opposed to revenue. If that behavior is constantly rewarded, it becomes pretty strongly conditioned in your mind

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

there is a difference between knowing what your product does, and being able to connect it to what problems it solves.

step 1. understand your product
step 2. really understand what your customer does, and how they do things BEFORE they use your product.

if you can do THAT, than you will have better discovery and higher close rate. most SDRs dont really need to know step 2 super well.

Maximas

Tycoon

Senior Sales Executive

I second this!

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Add to pbc: try not to get happy ears. Not every less is a good opportunity. Really understand why your product/solution, why now?

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

great point! my career would have advanced much faster if I had been able to avoid the happy ears.....

Coffeesforclosers

Notable Contributor

Director Sales and Market Development

Don't think prospecting stops cause you're an AE. Keep prospecting no matter what and you'll be successful.

SalesinSeattle

Valued Contributor

Account Executive

Develop your relationship skills. People buy from those they like and trust, all other things roughly equal. Know your product/service's value, I.e what difference it makes for the client at a business level as well as what kinds of personal wins it can deliver for your contacts, as you'll need both to help win your deals.

TheColdestColdCall

Executive

Enterprise Account Executive

A few things I eventually learned:

Your talk tracks are all about framing the conversation. Your weaknesses become your strengths, and your strengths become your differentiators. Ask to learn from the best who are smooth and have conviction in what they speak.

There are major steps in every deal (discovery, technical discovery, demo, etc etc) but it’s what you do between those steps that is the thing margin that wins you the deal.

Fail quickly - fail fast. You will only learn to spot your own gaps in thinking this way. An after action report always gleans new insights.

You can’t fake caring - if you genuinely believe in your product and care about the value it delivers. Every line of questioning should be driving to what the prospect cares about. They will sense that you give a shit and you can’t fake that.

I have more but you’ll just have to find out on your own 😉

General Labor Supervisor

Always know your position responsibilities before you begin! That's a win-win!

MattClark

Executive

Senior CyberSecurity Consultant

Keep prospecting every day. Once you lose that muscle memory it’s really hard to convince yourself to go back and do it again.

More than that, you’re a problem solver now, not an appointment setter. Your company will likely measure on tight metrics, but your mission shouldn’t change. Customer first attitude. Find the gap between current and future state, assess whether it’s worth what you’re charging to solve it, move forward or move on. You need to get really good at understanding your specific solutions strengths and where you have the highest win percentages…put your energy into those opps. Flip side, know when you’re in a fight you won’t win and expend less energy there, no matter how big the payday “could” be.

oldfashioned

Fire Starter

Account Executive

great advice - thank you!

Joel23

Good Citizen

Community Manager

Congrats!

cw95

Politicker

Sales Development Lead

Depending on com plans, you can earn way more when not an AE. Build yourself up to a senior SDR etc and move on. Learn the hard parts and be ready to join a commercial company as an AE.

Darkstar

Good Citizen

-5

Account Executive

It's not too late to find a fun career that is not soul-sucking.

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oldfashioned

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