Tech Sales Career Path Explained: SDR, AE, and Beyond
If you’re considering a career in tech sales, you’re probably wondering what a typical tech sales career path looks like.
In this post, we’ll give an overview of the most common tech sales jobs and walk through every possible tech sales career path.
We’ll also answer these questions:
- Is tech sales a good career?
- How much money can you make in tech sales?
- Which tech sales jobs are entry level?
- How long do people stay in tech sales?
- How fast will you get promoted?
Tech sales career path explained
First of all, there’s really no such thing as a “typical” tech sales career path.
You’ll probably start out as an SDR, but after that, there are countless different ways to advance your tech sales career.
The most common next step for an SDR is to get promoted to AE.
But you could also go straight into management and become an SDR Manager.
Or, you could transition to customer success, marketing, operations, etc.
I’ve even seen tech salespeople go on to become software engineers and product managers.
One thing’s for sure: tech sales is not a dead-end job.
Overview of tech sales jobs
It’s impossible to predict every step along your tech sales career path with 100% accuracy, but here’s a list of the most common tech sales jobs:
- Sales Development Representative (SDR)
- Enterprise SDR
- SDR Manager
- Account Executive (AE)
- Enterprise AE
- Sales Manager
- Sales Director
- Head of Sales
- VP of Sales
- Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)
Let’s dive deeper into each tech sales job …
Sales Development Representative (SDR)
Note: Business Development Representative (BDR) and Account Development Representative (ADR) are also entry-level tech sales roles that are very similar to SDR.
If you’re just getting started in tech sales, you’ll probably begin your career in one of these three entry-level tech sales roles:
- Sales Development Representative (SDR)
- Business Development Representative (BDR)
- Account Development Representative (ADR)
As an SDR, these are your goals:
- Generate new leads and opportunities
- Set appointments for AEs
And this is how you achieve those goals:
- Outbound prospecting via cold calls, cold emails, social selling, etc.
- Inbound qualifying, which usually means taking initial calls with inbound leads to qualify them in order to see if they’re actually a good fit for the product you’re selling
I won’t sugarcoat it, SDR, BDR, and ADR are probably the most difficult jobs in tech sales.
You’ll be doing high-volume cold outreach and you’ll face a lot of rejection. ❌
Many of your colleagues will quit. ✌️
When I got started in tech sales, I joined a company as part of a “training class” with 40-50 other new hires. Most of us were recent college grads. Some were switching from other industries.
Before our one-year anniversary, more than half of our training class had already quit.
And that’s why most people fail to be really successful in tech sales.
They don’t have the perseverance and drive to make it through the entry-level role.
1-2 years.
That’s about how long you need to be hitting your quota as an SDR before your manager will start to talk to you about promotion opportunities.
After SDR, these are the most common promotions:
Click here to find out how much you can make as a Sales Development Representative.
Enterprise SDR
In tech sales, everything is broken up by “account sizes.”
Bigger accounts have more employees and higher revenue. They also buy bigger deals, which is why most companies only entrust big accounts to more experienced sales reps.
These are the most common account sizes:
- SMB
- Mid-Market
- Enterprise
When you start out as an SDR, you’ll probably be reaching out to smaller accounts (SMB, maybe Mid-Market).
If you do well with those smaller accounts, you can get promoted to generate opportunities with Enterprise accounts.
SDR Manager
If you’re successful as an SDR, your company will want to leverage the skills and knowledge that you’ve developed by making you a manager in charge of coaching new SDRs on how to achieve the same success that you did.
Or, you can get promoted to AE.
It’s a tough decision.
You’re basically deciding between staying as an individual contributor or making the transition to management.
❌ Here’s one mistake that I’ve seen made far too many times: being an SDR is a lot different than managing SDRs. Just because you’re good at the job, that doesn’t mean you’ll be good at managing people.
Account Executive
Note: Inside Sales Representative (ISR) is another tech sales job that is very similar to AE.
In some rare cases, you can actually start your tech sales career as an Account Executive (AE).
This is how I started my tech sales career at Yelp in 2017.
Off the top of my head, I know there are two other companies that hire AEs as an entry-level role: Angi and ADP.
But it’s definitely not normal for your first tech sales job to be as an AE.
More than likely, if you become an AE, it’ll be because you were promoted after being an SDR for 1-2 years.
You’ll go from setting appointments for AEs to being the AE, so now you’re the one doing demos and closing deals.
As an AE, this is your goal:
- Get money
And this is how you achieve that goal:
- Attend pitch appointments, do demos, handle objections
- Follow up, get contracts signed, collect payment
After 1-2 years of hitting your quota as an AE, you’ll likely be up for another promotion.
After AE, these are the most common promotions:
Click here to find out how much you can make as an Account Executive.
Enterprise AE
You can make millions as an AE in tech sales.
And you never even have to go into management.
To grow your career (and increase your paycheck), you just have to sell to bigger accounts.
You’ll likely start out selling to small SMB accounts.
Then you can get promoted to Mid-Market.
Then Enterprise.
There are even AEs for accounts bigger than Enterprise. These mega-sized accounts are referred to by different names at different companies, e.g., Strategic, Majors, Global, Large, Key.
Click here to find out how much you can make as an Enterprise AE.
Sales Manager
Just like we explained above for SDRs that get promoted to SDR Managers … If you’re successful as an AE, your company will want you to teach other AEs how to achieve the same success.
And again, you’re going to have to decide between continuing as an individual contributor (doing the selling yourself) or transitioning into management (managing the people who are doing the selling).
In my own tech sales career, I got promoted to Sales Manager after just 10 months of being an AE.
In hindsight, I wish I had stayed as an AE for longer.
I could have worked my way up to Mid-Market and then Enterprise.
Instead, I was dazzled by the prestige of being a manager.
I even went on to work for another company as Head of Sales before I realized that I preferred to work as an individual contributor, which is when I transitioned to yet another company (tech salespeople move around a lot) and became an Enterprise AE.
Click here to find out how much you can make as a Sales Manager.
Sales Director
After Sales Manager, you’re basically just climbing the tech sales management ladder.
After each promotion, you’ll be managing the people doing what you did before:
- Sales Managers manage AEs
- Sales Directors manage Sales Managers
- Heads of Sales manage Sales Directors
- VPs of Sales manage Heads of Sales
- CROs manage everyone who touches revenue
A smaller tech sales organization might not have all of these management positions.
For example, a small tech startup might have a Head of Sales and that’s it.
Or, a mid-sized tech company might have a VP of Sales and two Sales Managers.
Head of Sales
Read the Sales Director section above.
VP of Sales
Read the Sales Director section above.
Click here to find out how much you can make as a VP of Sales.
Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)
If you become a CRO, you’ve made it to the top of the tech sales world.
You’ll oversee all the departments at the company that are directly involved with generating revenue. Usually, this includes marketing, sales, and customer success.
Click here to find out how much you can make as a CRO.
CEO/Founder
Sales is one of the most important business skills. It’s literally the skill of making money.
So it’s no surprise that a lot of tech salespeople go on to start their own companies.
Some of the most powerful CEOs in the world started their careers as sales reps.
Other tech sales career paths
Just because you start in sales doesn’t mean you have to stay in sales for the rest of your career.
I actually know quite a few people who accepted an entry-level tech sales job just to break into the tech industry. Then they transitioned to a different role in tech.
Here are some non-selling tech jobs that tech salespeople commonly transition into:
- Sales Enablement
- Sales Operations
- Revenue Operations
- Sales Engineer
- Customer Success
- Account Management
- Content Marketing
- Demand Generation
- Product Marketing
- Event Marketing
If you want to break into tech but you’re not sure if you want to do sales, you can still break into tech with an entry-level sales role and then pivot.
Is tech sales a good career?
Based on my own personal experience, I sure think so.
But don’t take my word for it.
Check out these data-backed reasons why tech sales is a great career.
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