An Account Executive (AE) is the salesperson responsible for closing B2B deals end-to-end, owning the sales cycle from qualified opportunity through contract signing. AEs typically pick up opportunities from SDRs or self-source, then run discovery, demo, proposal, and negotiation. Quotas scale with deal size, and the AE role is the most directly revenue-tied position in most sales-led companies. It's the closer role; sales productivity often pivots on AE quality and capacity.
The AE role specifics:
Owns the deal: from qualified opportunity to closed-won (or closed-lost). End-to-end accountability.
Carries a quota: typically $0.8M-$2M+ annual quota for SaaS AEs, scaled to ACV band and segment.
Compensation structure: 5...