Hiring the right Account Executive
You need to make the right "type" of hire and sometimes that top performer isn't right for your company (yet)
As it becomes increasingly challenging to raise rounds, especially Series A and B, founders are looking for shortcuts to reach their next revenue milestone. There is misleading guidance suggesting the need to hire someone with extensive sales experience who has closed major enterprise deals and earns well over $500K per year. When such professionals are good, they are worth it. They navigate dozens, sometimes hundreds, of stakeholders and secure $2 million+ transactions. This requires a tremendous amount of work and skill.
However, those skills are usually best complemented by a proven product, a team ready to support this type of seller, and a company built to support clients of this size on a repeatable basis. In this market, the best sellers are staying locked into their current roles. Why walk away from all that commission and stock? The ones who are "looking for a change" are incredibly confident they can close anywhere, but how do you test for it? Every seller at this caliber will be incredibly convincing, so you need to test what’s best for your company today.
Questions to ask yourself even before you interview candidates of this type:
Am I limited on bandwidth after I’ve LEARNED and KNOW our sales process and have closed many deals myself, or am I hitting a skills gap? (Remember, sales and GTM is a skill and you’ll need to learn it yourself first)
Where do most deals come from today? (Inbound vs. outbound) What types of companies experience the same type of GTM motion?
What’s our ACV (average contract value), what does it actually look like with a good seller? (If they come in, are they helping us get an extra $10k-$100k per deal, or just closing more of the same?)
In 6 months, what slightly stretches us? Does this candidate put us in that position or disrupt our focus on the wrong deals? (If you are closing $30k deals today, you probably want to get closer to $100k. The whale hunter closing $1m+ previously probably wants to do the same joining your company. Is this productive right now if you can’t serve your existing customers and pipeline the same way? Would a seller of this caliber be comfortable with the speed and velocity of your $30k deals? Will they want to sell small deals if needed? How long ago did they sell deals this small?)
How many deals are we closing today? Will this person increase the volume of deals or purely the volume of dollars? (Meaning, you may have higher ACV with this person, but what happens to your pipeline coverage, net retention rate, and customer adoption metrics if they join? Remember, it’s not just the revenue metrics that matter for your next raise, it’s both sides of the funnel as well)
If I bring someone in this good, can I pay them what they’re expecting? ($150k+ in commission means you are paying a lot per deal OR you have enough deals for them to make their expected compensation)
Does this person truly understand HOW to sell to our audience and execute on “landing” deals vs building out large formal org charts? (Both are important but the latter is far more important when you need to get to $100M+ in revenue)
In most cases, you’re looking for product-oriented folks who are selling in similar price ranges (and slightly higher ACV) than what you’re selling today. These folks help get the wins, lighthouse accounts, and customer stories that get Enterprise sellers excited to join so they can come in and make a true definitive impact on your company. My recommendation is to understand what folks like this do on a daily basis to learn WHEN you’ll want to bring someone on with that level of skill. Keep them warm and in your orbit for 1-2 years so when you need your first Enterprise seller you’ll have the best in class ready to join.
There’s much more here but starting with the above will help you get a better sense of the type of candidate you need. We’re always here to help too :)