Account Executive (AE)

The Account Executive (AE) is the closer in a B2B sales team. Where the SDR’s job is to start conversations and book qualified meetings, the AE’s job is to take those meetings and turn them into revenue. AEs carry a quota measured in closed revenue (ARR or TCV), not in meetings.

A typical AE workflow: receive a meeting from the SDR with a briefing on the prospect (company, ICP fit, initial context from the outbound conversation) → run discovery to understand the problem, stakeholders, budget, and timeline → demonstrate the product or solution → build a business case and proposal → navigate procurement, legal, and security → close.

AE vs SDR

The division of labour matters. An AE spending time on cold prospecting is a misallocation of a $150–$200K resource — their value is in closing, not in starting. An SDR specialising in prospecting can run more sequences, be more persistent, and go deeper on targeting than an AE who’s also managing a pipeline of 20 active deals.

AE productivity metrics

• Meetings held per week (input)
• Opportunities created (SQLs from discovery)
• Pipeline generated ($)
• Close rate (opportunities won ÷ total opportunities)
• Average sales cycle length
• Average deal size (ACV)

AE-to-SDR ratio

Common ratio: 1 SDR supporting 2–3 AEs. An SDR booking 15 meetings/month distributed across 3 AEs gives each AE 5 qualified meetings per month in addition to their self-sourced pipeline.

Related concepts

AEs work downstream of SDRs. They use champions to navigate buying committees. Close rate and ACV are their primary performance metrics.