What is an Account Executive Job?
With so many companies downsizing their sales teams, it’s difficult to find an Account Executive job. The only thing you can do is start applying for jobs and hope that one sticks.
After 500 hours of research and hundreds of interviews, we’ve identified the best companies to apply to. We then went through a list that has been narrowed down from years worth of work experience in order to find your ideal account executive role.
- Which companies are the most profitable, and which ones were forced to cut staff because of poor sales?
- How many are quota-carrying sales reps in most companies?
- What are the major software companies with a large number of account executives?
In this article, we’ll be going over the different account executive jobs and what they entail. We will also give you a framework for thinking about which job is best for you right now.
Need Help Automating Your Sales Prospecting Process?
LeadFuze gives you all the data you need to find ideal leads, including full contact information.
Go through a variety of filters to zero in on the leads you want to reach. This is crazy specific, but you could find all the people that match the following:
- A company in the Financial Services or Banking industry
- Who have more than 10 employees
- That spend money on Adwords
- Who use Hubspot
- Who currently have job openings for marketing help
- With the role of HR Manager
- That has only been in this role for less than 1 year
Just to give you an idea. 
You Can Still Apply for Account Executive Jobs Even in the Middle of Crisis!
Many teams are currently in crisis mode, as the founders try to figure out how best to deal with it.
Several companies have decided to hire top talent, even as others lay off employees.
The Top Hirers of Sales Account Executive Jobs Today:
Freshworks has grown so much in the past three months, and now their sales team is 334 strong. Their total team size is 3,111.
Freshworks has tools that help small businesses scale, like live chat and invoicing. They are also expected to have a high-velocity low ARPU model.
The average annual deal size a new account executive closes is about $657. This means they will need to do lots of demos.
So for those of you who are unfamiliar with 247, it is a customer success tool that has the goal to close deals at high prices. They do this by having new account executives work on contracts worth $100k or more.
They’ve expanded their sales team in the first quarter of this year by 104 new employees, and now they’re at 77 strong. That’s 2% of their total company.
The customer experience management company, Sprinklr, has hired 255 new employees over the past 3 months. They are expecting their account executives to close deals in the $50k-$150k range within their first 12-month period with them.
Consider what sales motion you feel most comfortable with before joining a company.
Companies with high average contracts, typically over $100k per year, will require more touch but less volume. They have a higher concentration of risk in the customer base.
These Companies Are Shrinking Their Teams During the Crisis
Here are a couple of tips for when you’re looking to find your next account executive role.
The following paraphrased sentences would be better if they were rewritten in the active voice: Article: I had always wondered what it was like to work at Google, so after taking my job search global last year.
Datastax is a popular company that sells exclusively to CTOs. In 2018, many people predicted Datastax would go public in 2019 after their CEO said they hit between $100 million and $200 million in annual revenue.
The company never really diversified.
Over the last 3 months, they let go of 100 people on their team. At first, there were 627 employees in January 2020, but now it’s down to 527.
They have a team of 11 salespeople today.
COVID-19 has been a major hit to local small business owners. Fewer people are going out, and as such, they’re getting fewer leads.
The company has 109 employees, 53 of which are account executives.
Thirty-one employees were let go in the past three months.
The company was doing well before the lockdown, but they had to let go of 25 employees in 3 months.
Account executives at Hotschedules are encouraged to book a high volume of demos, but their ARPU is not very profitable.
They now have 368 employees and 45 salespeople.
We’re not saying that these companies are bad places to work most of them should bounce back as soon as the world economy opens up again. But if you want a new account executive role in the near future, it might be best for you to look elsewhere.
Ideal Sales Organization Size
A company’s dependence on its sales team is a strong indicator of the health of that company. When considering an account executive role, make sure to assess how much they rely on their salespeople.
For example, a company that sells customers through the freemium model would not care as much about field sales and more about no-touch onboarding.
One way to measure how dependent a company is on its sales team and on the AE role, you can look at the percentage of employees that are dedicated to being in a sales role.
There are about 2% to 30% account executives for teams larger than 1,000 employees. Most companies fall around 715%.
Ping is a good example of an organization that actively hires. They have about 9% account executives, and they’ve IPOed, which means they’re financially stable.
The following companies have a high percentage of AEs:
- ICIMS has 1,034 people on their team, and 10% of them are account executives.
- Workfront has 1,189 employees in total, and 11% of them are account executives.
- Zoom is a company with over 2,000 people on staff, and 29% of those are account executives.
When we look at companies with 100 to 1,000 employees, the percentage of salespeople doesn’t change much, but a new pattern pops up.
When a company is small, the sales motion has more to do with account executives than any other metric. For example, Quizlets freemium model means that they only have one salesperson because their average price point is $18year.
They have a free model with no account executives, which is perfect for people who don’t want to touch their customers.
Quizlet has a lot of account executives, but they only have 29% of their team in that position.
When you are hunting for your next job as an Account Executive, remember to take pay into consideration.
The Top 3 Sales Organizations for Account Executive Jobs Today
If you’re looking for a new opportunity where you can learn and grow quickly, it might be best to go with the team that has the strongest sales machine.
There are many salespeople today, but the largest teams seem to be from Qualtrics, Zoom, and Cvent with 619, 609, and 427 account executives respectively.
Vista Partners is a private-equity firm that owns stakes in some of the world’s top software companies. They are most famous for their Cvent playbook.
If you’re not interested in working with 600 other account executives, consider companies like Smartsheet, Socialbackers, and Podium. They have teams of 99, 96 and 95 respectively.
3 Things to Remember For Your Next Account Executive Job
In the end, you don’t have to pick one of these companies for an Accounts Executive job. You might find a perfect fit with another company despite their odds.
If the product is cheap, you will have to do a lot of demos. If it’s expensive, then each demo has more stakes because there are fewer leads.
If you want to be a part of different kinds of sales motions, then consider being an AE.
What does an account executive do? The sales team needs to have a certain number of people in it before they are ready for you. If there are less than five, the company hasn’t found its rhythm yet.
If you’re looking for a higher risk, start-from-scratch approach, that could be the perfect fit.
However, if you want to show up and do your job without any sort of motivation or development opportunities, make sure the company is well-established. You’ll be better off with a team that’s been around for longer.
Make sure you’re applying to companies that are hiring and not shrinking in this economic crisis.
You want to be sure that if you join a company, they won’t let go of you after only one month.
Now that youve taken the time to prepare your resume, all you need to do now is start applying.
If you know of any other opportunities for account executives, please let us know in the comments.
Need Help Automating Your Sales Prospecting Process?
LeadFuze gives you all the data you need to find ideal leads, including full contact information.
Go through a variety of filters to zero in on the leads you want to reach. This is crazy specific, but you could find all the people that match the following:
- A company in the Financial Services or Banking industry
- Who have more than 10 employees
- That spend money on Adwords
- Who use Hubspot
- Who currently have job openings for marketing help
- With the role of HR Manager
- That has only been in this role for less than 1 year
Just to give you an idea.