The Core 4 Pillars of Being an Account Executive
Account executives are the tip of the spear in the organization. Love it or hate it they are the folks that are the frontline of all things the company is attempting to execute.
It’s their responsibility to validate the value proposition that marketing creates or justify product’s roadmap decision through powerful demonstrations. They work with legal and finance teams on contract structure, pricing and legal terms. Literally, every aspect of the business is run through the AE.
I have always felt that there are 4 core things that AEs should be held responsible for. They are able to:
Run successful evaluations for prospective clients
Maintain pipeline hygiene and forecast accurately
Source opportunities from cold accounts as well as customer accounts
Work with internal resources to drive revenue
They are involved in all revenue generating activities... they have an intimate understanding of a prospect's objectives and goals. Good ones provide effective advice toward creation of successful evaluation. The AE directly works with, and provides services to, one or more resources within the company as stated above.
Run successful evaluations for prospective clients
Every team as the seller that “goes rogue” and misaligned steps in the process, doesn’t fill out their CRM, etc. Putting in a repeatable process allows for sellers to deliver a great experience for the buyer.
If you think of a time you had to buy something or stay at a luxury hotel can you remember the experience? Great sales experiences have a long lasting effect. People like to talk about a good mechanic or dentist that they discovered. Prospects ABSOLUTELY love to talk about a great software purchase they made.
The phrase usually goes something like this, “the software was great and the buying process was fantastic.” Delivering this type of experience is hard but totally worth it in the end. Business will come just from delivering a great experience. It also enhances you and the company’s brand.
Maintain pipeline hygiene and forecast accurately
Simply put; the more organized your pipeline is then the less work you create for everyone else. Having opps that are not filled out, at the wrong stage or a forecast that is over/under committed.
It leads to frustrating experiences for managers, sales engineers, SDRs, VPs, C-Level, marketing, product leaders and finance… essentially if you want to p*ss everyone off just have a sloppy pipeline.
In contrast if your pipeline is updated, clean and managed then you become the shining light for the team. If you are a leader and have a team with this discipline then it’s a reflection of your great leadership. More importantly it sets the proper expectations with everyone across the org when cross functional meetings are occurring.
If the pipeline is clean then all those fancy reports you see have accurate metrics. Bad data in means bad data out. Good pipeline means good data and great KPI reports.
Source opportunities from cold accounts as well as customer accounts
This took me a while to understand but found the importance of being able to source your own deals. Sometimes your product market fit is still being established. Other times marketing is still tinkering with its messaging or pipeline sources.
You don’t want to wait around for deals to come. That creates a future where you are totally dependent on other resources. If the well dries up then you are completely exposed. Think about it as a financial portfolio… if you are solely invested in Oil companies and prices dip then your whole portfolio is at risk. It’s better to be diversified with your pipeline strategy. The ability to control your destiny is priceless.
Work with internal resources to drive revenue
As the AE you are the quarterback. You have to be able to use all the resources appropriately to drive the conversion of revenue. SDRs, DemandGen, Marketing Managers, Sales Engineers, Professional Services…How you use your pipeline resources to drive conversion of revenue.
This is a measurement of how effective you can become as a leader. The amount of voices you have underneath you is immense. Can you corral, manage and drive all these resources? Your time in the AE seat is how you learn to do this. As you step up in roles this ability needs to become greater because your effectiveness will rely on collaboration.
How you deliver the product to the market place, manage interested parties, drive conversations on your own and use your resources are the keys to becoming an effective AE. The better you get at each of these allows for great opportunities professionally.
More importantly, the company greatly benefits if you are able to effectively execute this. The better you are…the better they are.
