[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":103},["ShallowReactive",2],{"lesson-/academy/account-executive/what-does-an-account-executive-do":3},{"path":4,"data":5,"html":51,"toc":52,"prev":65,"next":71,"track":76},"/academy/account-executive/what-does-an-account-executive-do",{"title":6,"description":7,"primaryQuery":8,"secondaryQueries":9,"module":13,"order":14,"tier":15,"intent":16,"asset":17,"publishedAt":20,"author":21,"reviewedAt":22,"relatedTool":23,"challenge":24,"exercise":48},"What Does an Account Executive Do? The Job, Day to Day","An account executive (AE) owns the full B2B deal from the moment a lead is qualified: discovery, demo, proposal, negotiation, and the close. Day to day that means running buyer conversations, presenting the product, drafting proposals, handling objections and procurement, and keeping an honest forecast — all while carrying a revenue quota. It is the seat you promote to from SDR, and the job is ownership of revenue, not meetings.","what does an account executive do",[10,11,12],"account executive responsibilities","account executive job description","what does an ae do day to day",1,3,"A","informational",{"type":18,"title":19},"reference","The AE's week: the four workstreams and what each one owns","2026-09-10","closers","2026-09-24",null,{"type":25,"id":26,"brief":27,"buckets":28,"items":31},"sort","ae-m1-l3-ae-scope","Which of these are core AE work, and which belong somewhere else?",[29,30],"Core AE work","Not the core AE job",[32,35,37,40,42,45],{"key":33,"text":34},0,"Answer every inbound chat message the day it lands",{"key":13,"text":36},"Present the demo and tie features to the buyer's specific outcomes",{"key":38,"text":39},2,"Run full discovery on a qualified prospect's problem, budget and process",{"key":14,"text":41},"Book meetings to fill the very top of the funnel",{"key":43,"text":44},4,"Draft the proposal and negotiate price to get the contract signed",{"key":46,"text":47},5,"Keep an honest forecast of which deals close this quarter",{"prompt":49,"successCriteria":50},"Classify each task as core AE work or not, then write one sentence describing the boundary you'd draw between where the SDR hands off and where your ownership starts.","You can state the handoff boundary cleanly — the AE owns the deal from the qualified meeting to signature.","\u003Cp>An \u003Ca href=\"/glossary/account-executive/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">account executive\u003C/a> is the person who owns the deal from the moment a lead is \u003Ca href=\"/glossary/qualified-meeting/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">qualified\u003C/a> to the moment it signs. The \u003Ca href=\"/glossary/sdr/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">SDR\u003C/a> fills the top of the funnel with qualified meetings; the AE takes each one and runs \u003Ca href=\"/glossary/discovery-call/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">discovery\u003C/a>, the demo, the proposal, the \u003Ca href=\"/glossary/negotiation/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">negotiation\u003C/a>, and the close — while carrying a revenue \u003Ca href=\"/glossary/quota/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">quota\u003C/a>. If the SDR's output is a meeting that shows up, the AE's output is a contract that signs. \u003Ca href=\"/academy/sdr/sdr-vs-ae/\">What changes at promotion\u003C/a> is that single swap.\u003C/p>\n\u003Ch2 id=\"the-ae-owns-the-full-deal-not-a-piece-of-it\">The AE owns the full deal, not a piece of it\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>The simplest way to understand the job is the boundary you cross at promotion. Before it, your number was meetings booked. After it, your number is revenue closed — and everything between first call and signature is yours to drive. The day is made of conversations that move a real buyer from "interested" to "signed," backed by the admin that keeps the deal honest.\u003C/p>\n\u003Ch2 id=\"the-four-workstreams-and-what-each-one-owns\">The four workstreams (and what each one owns)\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>Almost every AE week is these four blocks. See them as the job's skeleton.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Discovery — owning the problem.\u003C/strong> You don't qualify-and-route; you dig into the buyer's \u003Ca href=\"/glossary/icp/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pain\u003C/a>, budget, decision process and timeline until you know whether this is a deal worth your quarter. Shallow discovery here is why deals die late.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Demo and proposal — making it concrete.\u003C/strong> You present the product around the buyer's specific outcomes, then turn it into a proposal they can defend internally — including to people who weren't on the calls.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Negotiation and the close.\u003C/strong> Price, \u003Ca href=\"/glossary/objection/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">objections\u003C/a>, legal, procurement, the champion who needs ammo. This is where the AE earns the title of \u003Ca href=\"/glossary/closer/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">closer\u003C/a>: carrying the deal across the line.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Forecast and pipeline.\u003C/strong> You keep an honest view of what will close this quarter, what's at risk, and what you're feeding next. Your \u003Ca href=\"/glossary/quota/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">quota\u003C/a> only lands if the forecast is real.\u003C/p>\n\u003Ch2 id=\"what-is-not-your-core-job\">What is not your core job\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>Two things that people assume are AE work usually aren't. Filling the \u003Cem>very top\u003C/em> of the funnel with brand-new contacts is the entry seat's job — you inherit the \u003Ca href=\"/glossary/qualified-meeting/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">qualified meetings\u003C/a> they book. And answering every inbound message the moment it lands is an intake or support flow, not deal ownership. That's not to say you never prospect — \u003Ca href=\"/glossary/pipeline/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pipeline\u003C/a> is part of the job — but your defining work is the owned deal, not the intake queue.\u003C/p>\n\u003Ch2 id=\"the-day-to-day-is-ownership-not-glamour\">The day-to-day is ownership, not glamour\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>A real AE day is mostly unglamorous discipline: a discovery call that reveals the buyer's actual problem, an hour building a proposal someone else will present to their boss, a negotiation where you hold your price, a forecast review where you tell the truth about a deal that's slipping. If owning that — all of it, including the risk — sounds like the job you want, the next thing to understand is \u003Ca href=\"/academy/account-executive/account-executive-compensation/\">how the money actually works at the AE level\u003C/a>, because the pay structure is where most people are surprised.\u003C/p>\n",[53,56,59,62],{"id":54,"text":55},"the-ae-owns-the-full-deal-not-a-piece-of-it","The AE owns the full deal, not a piece of it",{"id":57,"text":58},"the-four-workstreams-and-what-each-one-owns","The four workstreams (and what each one owns)",{"id":60,"text":61},"what-is-not-your-core-job","What is not your core job",{"id":63,"text":64},"the-day-to-day-is-ownership-not-glamour","The day-to-day is ownership, not glamour",{"path":66,"title":67,"description":68,"module":13,"order":38,"kind":69,"practiceCall":23,"core":70},"/academy/account-executive/is-being-an-account-executive-a-good-job","Is Being an Account Executive a Good Job? The Honest Tradeoffs","Being an account executive is a good job if you want to own revenue, close deals, and be paid on outcome — and a bad fit if you want a guaranteed check and no quota risk. The AE is the B2B closer: you carry a revenue quota, earn commission on the deals you close, and eat the slow quarters yourself. Compared with the SDR seat, it is more ownership, more upside, and more variability.","order",false,{"path":72,"title":73,"description":74,"module":13,"order":43,"kind":69,"practiceCall":23,"core":75},"/academy/account-executive/account-executive-compensation","Account Executive Compensation: How the Money Changes at Promotion","An account executive's compensation is base plus commission on closed revenue, expressed as an on-target earnings (OTE) figure tied to a revenue quota. At promotion the real change is the risk transfer: more of your pay is variable, earned by hitting quota, and a slow quarter pays less. It is not the SDR salary with a bigger base — it is a larger OTE that you only actually collect in full by closing.",true,{"slug":77,"title":78,"shortTitle":79,"crumb":79,"path":80,"positioning":81,"totalLessons":82,"modules":83},"account-executive","Certified Account Executive (CAE)","Account Executive Certification","/academy/account-executive","The free certification for the promotion from SDR — learning to run the full deal, from discovery and demo to negotiation and the close. The AE is the closer.",27,[84,87,90,93,96,99],{"id":13,"name":85,"lessonCount":43,"description":86},"The Promotion: SDR to AE","What changes when you move from booking meetings to owning a book and a revenue quota — and why the AE is the closer — 4 core lessons.",{"id":38,"name":88,"lessonCount":43,"description":89},"Discovery at AE Depth","Full discovery and multi-stakeholder qualification — the pain, the money, the people and the path to yes — 4 lessons.",{"id":14,"name":91,"lessonCount":43,"description":92},"Demo, Value and the Proposal","Turn discovery into a demo and proposal the buyer can defend internally — 4 lessons.",{"id":43,"name":94,"lessonCount":46,"description":95},"Negotiation and the Close","Price, concessions and the final objections — then the ask. The AE is the closer — 5 lessons.",{"id":46,"name":97,"lessonCount":43,"description":98},"Pipeline, Forecast and Quota","Run a real book: honest pipeline, forecasting, and hitting a revenue quota — 4 lessons.",{"id":100,"name":101,"lessonCount":100,"description":102},6,"Getting Hired as an AE","Land the AE job — resume, interview answers, comp plan, and the certification assessment — 6 lessons.",1792888517967]