Mid Market Account Executive

A Mid Market Account Executive is a business-to-business salesperson who closes deals with medium-sized companies - typically organisations too big to buy software or services off a website, but not large enough to need the months-long procurement process of a multinational. The job is to run sales conversations from first proper meeting through to signed contract, usually for a software, technology or business services company. "Account Executive" (AE) is standard sales jargon for a closing role: you own the deal and carry a revenue target, rather than just generating leads for someone else.

Starting salary: £25k–£32k
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Main way in: Promotion from an SDR or BDR (business development…
They usually ask for: Degree subject almost never matters

Approximate graduate salary

For an SDR starting role, typically around £25,000–£32,000 base to start, with OTE often quoted in the £35,000–£45,000 range. Moving into a mid market AE seat, base salaries are commonly around £40,000–£60,000 with OTE often roughly double the base. These are approximations only and vary widely by sector, by how well-funded the employer is, and by location - London technology roles sit at the higher end and regional or non-tech roles considerably lower.

What you'd actually do

Running discovery calls - structured video or phone meetings where you ask a prospective customer about how they currently work, what's going wrong, what it costs them, and who else needs to be involved in a buying decision
Giving product demonstrations, either solo or alongside a technical specialist (often called a sales engineer or solutions consultant) who handles the deeper technical questions
Building and sending proposals, pricing and quotes, then negotiating terms - discounts, contract length, payment schedules - often with a procurement or finance contact rather than the person who actually wants the product
Keeping the CRM (customer relationship management system - the database where every call, email and deal stage is logged) up to date, because your forecast and your manager's forecast are built from it

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Prospecting your own pipeline: emailing, calling and messaging companies in your patch who haven't approached you, usually alongside leads passed over by the SDR (sales development representative) team
Weekly pipeline review with your manager, going deal by deal through what will close this month and this quarter, and being challenged on why you think so
Chasing deals that have gone quiet, coordinating legal and security reviews, and handing closed customers over to account management or customer success

How graduates get in

Promotion from an SDR or BDR (business development representative) role - by far the most common route. Graduates typically start in these outbound prospecting jobs, where the work is booking meetings rather than closing, and move up to AE after demonstrating they can consistently hit targets.
Graduate sales schemes run by larger technology and business services companies, which rotate you through prospecting and then into a closing seat on a defined timeline. Common in the bigger software firms, less so elsewhere.
Direct entry as a junior or 'commercial' AE handling the smaller end of mid market - possible but less common straight from university; most employers want to see you've survived a target-carrying role first.
Moving across from retail, hospitality, recruitment or estate agency, where you've already handled targets, rejection and real customers. Employers in sales genuinely do rate this experience.

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Moving sideways from a transactional or SMB (small and medium business) AE role, where deals are quick and low-value, into mid market where deals are bigger and slower.
Sales academies and bootcamps that place graduates into SDR roles - a real route, though the quality varies enormously and you should check what employer you'd actually be placed with before paying anything.

What employers ask for

Degree subject almost never matters. Business, economics and marketing are common but humanities, science and social science graduates are equally welcome - this is one of the genuinely subject-blind graduate areas.
Degree classification requirements are usually loose or absent. Some larger graduate schemes ask for a 2:1; plenty of employers don't filter on grades at all and will interview non-graduates with the right experience.
A track record of hitting targets, from a previous sales role, a part-time job, or something like fundraising or student sales societies. This matters far more than academics.
No professional exams or chartered status exist for this path. Sales qualifications (such as those from the Institute of Sales Professionals) exist but are rarely required and are more often picked up on the job.

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Many mid market roles expect prior closing or quota experience, so expect to need one to three years in SDR or a smaller-deal AE seat first - though this varies and some employers will promote faster.
A driving licence and willingness to travel matters for field-based mid market roles in sectors like manufacturing, logistics or medical sales; for most software roles the job is largely remote or office-based.

Skills that matter

Structured questioning and listening

Mid market buyers won't volunteer their real problem or budget, so the whole deal depends on you drawing out what's actually broken and what it costs them.

Multi-threading - building relationships with several people inside one customer

Mid market deals usually need sign-off from an end user, a budget holder and sometimes IT or legal, and deals die when your only contact leaves or goes quiet.

Pipeline and forecast discipline

You're judged not just on closing but on accurately predicting what will close and when, which means honest deal qualification rather than hopeful guesswork.

Commercial numeracy

You'll be building pricing with discounts, multi-year terms and per-user calculations, and working out whether a deal is still worth doing after the customer has pushed you down.

Written persuasion

A huge share of the job is cold emails, follow-up summaries and proposals that your contact will forward internally to people you've never spoken to.

Resilience and self-management

Most outreach is ignored and most deals slip, so you need to keep activity consistent through weeks where nothing lands - and nobody is checking your calendar hour by hour.

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

SDR or BDR for roughly a year or two, booking meetings and learning the product and market - this is where most graduates start, though the time to promotion varies a lot by employer and by how quickly the team is growing.
Mid market AE, carrying your own revenue target. Many people stay here for several years because earnings can be strong without taking on management.
Enterprise AE, selling to large organisations - bigger deals, longer sales cycles, more stakeholders, usually higher earning potential. A common and well-trodden step up.
Team lead or Sales Manager, running a group of AEs or SDRs. Worth knowing this is a genuinely different job - coaching and forecasting rather than selling - and strong sellers don't automatically make strong managers.
From there, routes diverge: Head of Sales or Sales Director; sales enablement or sales operations (training and tooling rather than selling); customer success leadership; or moving into partnerships, product marketing or founding your own business. Timelines vary enormously and depend far more on company growth than on years served.

What people get wrong

“"Account Executive" means you look after existing accounts.”

In most UK tech and B2B companies it means the opposite - you win new business and hand customers over once they've signed. Looking after existing customers is usually account management or customer success. The title is a legacy of American sales structures and confuses a lot of applicants.

“It's mostly cold calling and smooth talking.”

Mid market selling is closer to project management. Much of the week is coordinating demos, chasing security questionnaires, building business cases and managing internal stakeholders at the customer. Being likeable helps; being organised is what actually closes deals.

“The advertised salary is what you earn.”

Sales pay is usually split into base salary and commission, quoted together as OTE (on-target earnings). You only reach OTE if you hit quota, and commission structures, accelerators and how quickly commission is paid differ hugely between employers - it's worth asking directly what proportion of the team hit target last year.

“Mid market is just enterprise sales with smaller numbers.”

The buying process is genuinely different. Mid market customers often have no dedicated procurement team, so you're helping a busy manager build an internal case from scratch, while deals move faster and you juggle far more of them at once than an enterprise seller would.

Where this varies

"Mid market" has no fixed definition - at one employer it might mean companies of a few hundred staff, at another several thousand, and some firms segment by revenue or by deal size instead. Check what deal values and customer sizes the role actually covers. The sector matters too: in software-as-a-service the job is largely remote or hybrid with video demos and fast cycles, while in manufacturing, industrial or medical sales it can be a field role with significant driving and on-site visits. Commission structures also vary a great deal - some pay monthly on closed deals, others quarterly with accelerators once you pass quota, and some have long clawback periods if a customer cancels early. Finally, how structured the training is differs sharply: large tech employers often run formal onboarding and ongoing coaching, whereas smaller firms may expect you to learn by doing with minimal support.

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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.