Senior Account Executive job description

B2B sales — Senior Account Executive
Runs complex multi-stakeholder deals and mentors newer sellers.

RESPONSIBILITIES
- Coach a seller through a live deal, agree next actions with them, and follow up on whether those actions happened.
- Give a manager written input on a seller's performance, with call and deal evidence, or on a candidate's fit against the hiring criteria.
- Run discovery across several stakeholders in one account, reconcile conflicting accounts of the problem, and requalify deals first qualified on the wrong basis.
- Cultivate a personal network of buyers and partners over time, and name several closed deals that began as an introduction you earned.
- Lead demos on complex or competitive deals, direct a specialist alongside you, and prepare individual attendees before the session.
- Navigate committees spanning divisions or geographies, and show how you changed the deal plan after a reorganization or a sponsor change.

REQUIREMENTS
- Experience at the Account Executive level (level 2 of 5) or equivalent

REQUIRED SKILLS
Prospecting
- Account Research and Targeting — You can build your own target list for your assigned territory, rank it by fit and timing, and defend that ranking with evidence when a manager challenges any single account.
- Outbound Prospecting — You can sustain a personal outbound number quarter after quarter, diagnose a falling reply rate from your own data, and change the channel mix to fix it.
- Cold Outreach Messaging — You can adapt tone and framing per persona and channel, hold a reply rate at or above the team benchmark, and rewrite a failing message from the replies it drew.
- Discovery and Qualification — You can run discovery across several stakeholders in one account, reconcile conflicting accounts of the problem, and requalify deals first qualified on the wrong basis.
- Inbound Lead Handling — You can convert inbound interest into qualified opportunity at or above the team rate, and say from your own records which sources convert and which return no qualified opportunity.
- Referral and Network Development — You can cultivate a personal network of buyers and partners over time, and name several closed deals that began as an introduction you earned.

Deal Management
- Solution Demonstration — You can lead demos on complex or competitive deals, direct a specialist alongside you, and prepare individual attendees before the session.
- Buying Committee Mapping — You can navigate committees spanning divisions or geographies, and show how you changed the deal plan after a reorganization or a sponsor change.
- Champion Development — You can develop more than one champion on a large deal, prepare them for internal opposition, and recover the deal when one of them leaves mid-cycle.
- Sales Objection Handling — You can handle objections raised by a hostile stakeholder in front of the committee, and keep the deal moving without conceding commercially.
- Commercial Negotiation — You can lead negotiations involving procurement or legal and structure multi-year or multi-product terms, putting the case for any price exception to its approver.
- Proposal and Business Case Writing — You can write proposals for deals spanning several workstreams or legal entities, and shape them so the document works unaccompanied in a board paper.
- CRM Pipeline Hygiene — You can spot the data problems across a pipeline you do not own, chase the specific records that distort the number, and explain why they matter.
- Competitive Positioning — You can lead displacement deals, plan against the likely counter-moves of a specific incumbent, and brief the team on what worked and what did not.
- Product and Solution Expertise — You can shape a solution for a complex deal across several products or custom scope, and state what the product cannot do for it.
- Closing and Purchase Agreement — You can close a deal with several approvers by agreeing a dated close plan with the buyer, and clear the approvals on your own side before it slips.

Account Management
- Customer Onboarding Handover — You can run the handover for accounts with several stakeholders and non-standard scope, and stay involved until delivery confirms it has what it needs.
- Account Relationship Management — You can hold senior relationships in complex accounts and restart contact with one that has had no senior meeting for six months, bringing in internal colleagues so it does not depend on you alone.
- Renewal and Churn Prevention — You can see renewal risk months ahead from usage, sponsor changes and support history, and put a plan in place that changes the outcome.
- Upsell and Cross-Sell — You can expand into parts of a large customer where you have no sponsor, structuring terms so the original contract stays intact.

Commercial
- Territory and Account Planning — You can plan a handful of large accounts with a written view of buying centers, competitors and sequence, and review other sellers' plans to sharpen them.
- Sales Contract Review — You can negotiate the usual commercial terms yourself, separating harmless customer edits from risky ones, and involve legal while it can still change the outcome.
- Sales Forecasting — You can commit a number and land within the team's agreed forecast tolerance of it, calling lost deals early and naming the specific reason when you miss.

Sales Leadership
- Deal Coaching — You can coach a seller through a live deal, agree next actions with them, and follow up on whether those actions happened.
- Sales Enablement — You can produce enablement material, such as an objection guide, checking it against what the product does and trying it with a seller before publishing.
- Quota and Territory Design — You can gather what quota setting needs, such as account counts, past performance and territory boundaries, and check the data against the source system before anyone builds on it.
- Sales Team Hiring and Performance — You can give a manager written input on a seller's performance, with call and deal evidence, or on a candidate's fit against the hiring criteria.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can coordinate a small team's work on a shared goal: who does what by when, what has to wait for what, and a revised plan when things change.
- Planning & Estimation — You can estimate a whole project including its risks and unknowns, split it into stages, and defend the estimate when it is challenged.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can hold accountability for outcomes delivered mostly by other people, taking the blame when it fails and passing on the credit when it works.
- Quality Focus — You can set how quality is checked on complex work shared by several teams, and you spot the problems that only appear where their pieces meet.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can make the call on a problem outside your expertise and explain its cost, time and risk.
- Domain Expertise — You can advise the team on your area and apply new developments in the field where they pay off.
- Continuous Learning — You can judge which new ideas are worth the team's time and which are not, and you make room for the people around you to learn too.

Communication
- Communication — You can bring disagreeing groups to agreement on the facts and the next steps, and help colleagues frame a difficult or sensitive message.
- Collaboration — You can align teams with competing priorities on a common goal, surfacing the conflict early instead of letting it harden into resentment.
- Writing & Documentation — You can own the documents behind a large piece of work, coordinating contributions so that people who were not involved can carry it on.
- Stakeholder Management — You can win support for a proposal, reset expectations when the plan changes, and turn down a request with a reason the other side accepts.

Leadership
- Leadership — You can lead one piece of work shared by several people, on your own team and beyond, and make calls that they act on.
- Mentoring — You can mentor someone over months, tell them the uncomfortable thing they need to hear, and adapt how you teach to how they learn.
- Strategic Thinking — You can look a year ahead in your area, name what will matter by then, and turn that into work people can pick up now.