Enterprise Account Executive

An Enterprise Account Executive sells large, complex products or services - usually software, technology or business services - to big organisations such as banks, retailers, government departments and multinationals. They own the whole sales process for a small number of named accounts: finding the opportunity, running demos and meetings with multiple decision-makers, negotiating contracts and closing deals that can be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds and take many months. The job is quota-carrying, meaning they have a personal revenue target they are measured against each quarter and year.

Starting salary: £25k–£35k
Live graduate jobs: 34 open now
Main way in: The most common route by far
They usually ask for: Degree subject usually does not matter

Approximate graduate salary

For the entry-level roles graduates actually start in (SDR/BDR), base salaries are typically around £25,000–£35,000, with on-target earnings often quoted roughly in the £35,000–£50,000 range once commission is included - but this is approximate and varies a great deal by sector, product and location, with London and software companies at the higher end. Genuine Enterprise Account Executive roles pay substantially more, though they are rarely open to new graduates, and any quoted OTE depends entirely on hitting target.

What you'd actually do

Researching target organisations - reading annual reports, press releases and restructuring announcements - to work out who has a problem the product solves and who inside the company controls the budget for it
Running discovery calls and meetings with multiple people at a client: an IT director, a finance lead, a procurement manager and an end-user team, who all care about different things
Coordinating colleagues into the deal - bringing in a solutions engineer or pre-sales consultant to handle technical questions, a legal or commercial team for contract terms, and sometimes a senior leader for a peer-level conversation with the client's executives
Writing and tailoring proposals, business cases and responses to formal tender documents (an RFP, or 'request for proposal', is a structured questionnaire a large buyer issues to shortlist suppliers)

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Keeping the CRM up to date - the customer relationship management system that records every contact, deal stage and forecast value - because the sales leadership forecasts company revenue from it
Forecasting: sitting in weekly pipeline reviews explaining which deals will close this quarter, what is stuck and what is needed to unstick it
Chasing. A lot of the week is follow-up emails, LinkedIn messages and calls to people who have gone quiet, plus internal chasing to get a price approved or a contract clause signed off

How graduates get in

The most common route by far: start as a Sales Development Representative (SDR) or Business Development Representative (BDR) - an entry-level role booking meetings for the sales team - then get promoted to a closing role. Many tech employers have structured SDR-to-AE pathways. Expect at least a year or two as an SDR before the step up, though it varies widely.
Graduate sales schemes at larger technology, telecoms, software and business services firms, which rotate you through SDR work, product training and shadowing before you carry a quota.
Starting as an Account Executive in a smaller or mid-market patch (selling to smaller companies, shorter deal cycles) and moving up to enterprise accounts as you gain experience. Going straight into enterprise sales from graduation is unusual - enterprise buyers expect credibility and the deals are too valuable to hand to someone untested.
Sideways from a customer-facing or technical role - account management, customer success, consulting, or pre-sales engineering. Someone with a technical degree who knows the product deeply can move into selling it.

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Industry expertise routes: people who have worked in a sector (healthcare, logistics, financial services) and then sell software into that sector, because they understand the buyer's world. Less common straight out of university but a real path later.
Recruitment consultancy is a frequent stepping stone - it teaches outbound calling, objection handling and closing, and tech sales teams hire from it regularly.

What employers ask for

Degree subject usually does not matter. Business, economics and marketing are common but so are humanities and sciences. Where the product is deeply technical (engineering software, cloud infrastructure, scientific instruments) a relevant technical degree genuinely helps and is sometimes asked for.
A 2:1 is a common filter at larger graduate schemes, but plenty of sales employers care far more about how you perform in a role-play or phone screen than about your classification. Some do not screen on grades at all.
Evidence you can handle rejection and targets - commission-based retail or hospitality work, charity fundraising, telesales, running a student society's sponsorship, or anything where you had to persuade strangers. This counts for more here than in most graduate roles.
For the enterprise level specifically, employers almost always ask for prior sales experience with a demonstrable track record of hitting quota. This is why near-enough nobody starts here; you build the track record in SDR or mid-market roles first.

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No mandatory professional qualification. Some people take Association of Professional Sales or ISM qualifications, and employers run their own methodology training (MEDDIC, Challenger, SPIN and similar structured sales frameworks), but these are nice-to-have rather than entry requirements.
A driving licence is often required where the patch involves visiting client sites, and many enterprise roles expect regular UK travel.

Skills that matter

Qualification - judging early whether a deal is real

With long sales cycles you can lose a whole quarter chasing a prospect who was never going to buy, so working out quickly whether there is budget, a genuine problem and a decision-maker is the difference between hitting target and missing it.

Navigating multiple stakeholders

Large purchases are signed off by committees, so you need to work out who champions you internally, who can block you, and how to give each person the argument that matters to them.

Commercial and financial literacy

You have to build a business case in the buyer's language - cost saved, risk reduced, headcount redeployed - and hold your own on pricing, discount structures and contract terms.

Written clarity

Much of the deal lives in emails, proposals and tender responses that get forwarded to people you have never met, so sloppy writing quietly kills opportunities.

Resilience and emotional discipline

Most outreach is ignored and large deals collapse late for reasons outside your control, so the job requires picking up the phone again the next morning without carrying it.

Enough technical fluency to be credible

You do not need to be an engineer, but you must understand your product well enough to answer the first layer of technical questions and know when to bring in a specialist.

Putting these on a CV? We counted which skills 12,914 live graduate adverts ask for, and what to do with the answer — part of our application advice.

Where it leads

Entry as an SDR or BDR, focused on generating meetings rather than closing. Many employers set out an expected timeline to promotion, often framed around a year or two of consistent performance, but it depends heavily on how quickly closing roles open up.
Account Executive on smaller accounts (often called SMB or mid-market), carrying your own quota with shorter, simpler deals.
Enterprise Account Executive, with a smaller number of large named accounts, longer cycles and bigger deal values. Many people stay here for a long time by choice - senior individual contributors in enterprise sales are often well paid and in demand.
From here paths split: specialise further as a Strategic or Global Account Director handling a handful of the biggest clients; move into management as a Sales Manager then Head of Sales or Sales Director; or move sideways into sales enablement, revenue operations, partnerships or customer success leadership.
Longer term, routes include Chief Revenue Officer or commercial director roles, or using the client network and commercial skills to move into consulting, founding a company, or venture-backed startup leadership. Timelines here vary enormously and depend far more on results than on years served.

What people get wrong

“It is mostly charisma, persuasion and taking clients to lunch.”

Enterprise selling is closer to project management and research. A large chunk of the week is reading about the client's business, writing documents, coordinating internal specialists and keeping a deal moving through someone else's procurement process. Smooth talking does not get a multinational's legal team to sign a contract.

“You can walk into an enterprise sales job from university.”

The 'Enterprise' prefix signals seniority. Graduates almost always enter one rung below, as an SDR, BDR or mid-market AE, and move up once they have a proven record of hitting target. A graduate advert using this exact title is worth reading carefully - it may be a mid-market role labelled aspirationally, or it may genuinely expect prior experience.

“Pay is enormous and guaranteed.”

Pay is split into base salary and commission, usually described as OTE, or 'on-target earnings' - what you earn if you hit 100% of quota. OTE is not a promise. In a bad year or a difficult patch you may earn close to base only, and underperformance against quota is managed firmly in most sales organisations.

“Once you close the deal, you move on.”

Enterprise accounts are long relationships. Much of the revenue comes from renewals and selling additional products to existing clients, so you often stay involved after signature, work closely with customer success teams, and handle it personally when something goes wrong with delivery.

Where this varies

Practice varies a lot. In software and cloud technology the role is highly structured, with formal sales methodologies, strict CRM discipline and quarterly forecasting rigour; in smaller firms or less mature sectors you may be left to run your patch with far less process and support. What counts as 'enterprise' also varies - at a startup it might mean a company with a few hundred staff, at a large vendor it means FTSE-scale organisations and public sector framework contracts. Public sector selling is different again, dominated by formal procurement frameworks and tenders rather than relationship-led deals. Geographically, the densest concentration of these jobs is London, Reading and the Thames Valley, Manchester, Edinburgh and Cambridge, though remote and field-based patches covering a UK region are common. Commission structures differ sharply too: some employers pay uncapped commission, others cap it, and the split between base and variable pay is worth checking in any offer.

See all 34 live Enterprise Account Executive jobsFrom employers' own careers sites, updated daily Tailor your CV for this roleFree with an account, 3 a month

General guidance about the role across the UK market, not about any specific employer. Entry routes and requirements vary — always check the individual job advert.