Roles we recruit
Seven practices, 27 functions. Start at the practice when you cannot yet name the title; go straight to the function when you can.
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Eleven seats sit under sales, from the SMB account executive closing in days to the commercial director carrying the company number. We split them by the motion each one runs, screen for attainment we can verify rather than adjectives, and charge a flat 15% only once your hire starts.
Most sales briefs arrive titled account executive and describe four different motions. We start with the deal size and cycle you sell, then find the seat that runs it.
The sales motion by deal size, and the seat that owns each lane
Moves: deals closed per month and cycle time
1 seat
Fast, transactional deals with owner-operators and small teams, often closed in one or two calls and measured on volume and velocity.
Brief us when you sell to small businesses and the bottleneck is how many conversations a rep can close in a week.
Moves: win rate and average contract value
2 seats
Running deals from discovery to close against a quota: qualification, demos, proposals, negotiation and the forecast for their own pipeline.
Brief us when meetings are arriving and nobody owns turning them into closed revenue.
Hire an Account ExecutiveHigh-volume, moderately complex deals with a few stakeholders and cycles measured in weeks to a few months.
Brief us when your best customers are growing companies that buy through a small committee, and SMB reps struggle to run a structured process.
Moves: multi-threaded deals and forecast accuracy
2 seats
Larger, longer deals with more stakeholders, plus informal leadership: mentoring newer reps and setting the standard for deal hygiene.
Brief us when deal sizes are growing and your current AEs lose control of committees and procurement.
Named strategic accounts and six- or seven-figure deals: account planning, multi-threading, executive sponsors, security reviews and long procurement cycles.
Brief us when you are moving upmarket and deals now need a plan per account rather than a sequence per lead.
Moves: coverage and growth across a patch
2 seats
A defined geography or account list: building pipeline, closing and growing accounts inside the patch, often with field travel.
Brief us when your market is regional, buyers expect to meet in person, or accounts cluster by geography.
A region's number and the reps who carry it: hiring, coaching, forecasting and the relationships with the largest regional accounts.
Brief us when you are opening or rebuilding a region and need one person accountable for its revenue and its team.
Moves: team attainment and the forecast
4 seats
A team of account executives: coaching, deal reviews, pipeline discipline, hiring and the weekly forecast.
Brief us when you have four or more reps, results depend on who closed what, and nobody is coaching the middle of the team.
Hire a Sales ManagerSeveral teams or a segment: the managers, the process, territory and quota design, and the forecast leadership relies on.
Brief us when your sales managers need a leader, or a segment such as enterprise needs its own owner.
Hire a Sales DirectorThe new-business number for the company: sales strategy, structure, compensation, the hiring plan and the board-level forecast.
Brief us when sales has outgrown founder-led selling, or the current leader cannot scale the team you need next year.
The commercial result across sales, pricing, partnerships and sometimes account management, common in services and industrial businesses.
Brief us when revenue depends on pricing, contracts and partner channels as much as on new-business selling.
Measured on
A good account executive will sell you on themselves, so the interview tells you least about the people who are best at it. We screen for evidence a story cannot fake: attainment we can verify, real deals in detail, and how honestly they call their own forecast.
We ask for quota and attainment by year, stack rank, and what changed between the best and worst year, then confirm it with a former manager. Percentages without a quota are where we dig.
Candidates walk us through one deal they won and one they lost at your deal size: stakeholders, competition, the mutual plan and the moment it turned.
We ask how they called their last two quarters and what slipped. Reps who forecast accurately protect your plan; reps who sandbag or hope cost you a quarter.
A strong SMB closer can fail in a nine-month enterprise cycle, and the reverse. We match deal size, cycle length, buyer and channel to what the candidate has actually run.
Not sure which seat you need? Tell us your average deal size, your sales cycle and where deals stall, and we will tell you which of the eleven owns it.
Public US benchmarks, read October 2026. Sales pay is base plus commission. The ring is Built In’s self-reported average total, a separate dataset from the Salary.com base bar, so read the gap as a sign of the variable rather than an exact figure. Commission plans vary widely, which is why totals spread so far above base.
Each bar runs from the 25th to the 75th percentile, the middle half of reported pay.
Base salaryAverage total pay, base plus variable
Account Executive
Salary.com base, Built In total
$87,513 to $111,393 base$212,849 average total
Sales Manager
Salary.com base, Built In total
$114,937 to $144,893 base$167,231 average total
Sales Director
Salary.com base, Built In total
$174,921 to $214,534 base$264,504 average total
Sales VP
Salary.com base, Built In total
$209,153 to $243,047 base$350,465 average total
Bars: base salary, 25th to 75th percentile, Salary.com benchmarks for the United States as of October 1, 2026. Rings: average total compensation from Built In (base plus additional cash, self-reported), reviewed September 28 to October 1, 2026. For reference, the BLS median for sales managers across all industries is $148,270 (May 2025, wages including commission). Public aggregates, not ZaphyrRecruit placement data.
The clock starts when the brief is signed and stops when three to five calibrated candidates are in front of you. Most of that time is spent talking to people, not searching for them.
Day 1
Forty-five minutes with whoever the hire reports to. We leave with the number the seat owns, the range you can pay and the two or three things that genuinely disqualify.
Days 2 to 7
We build the list from people doing the job now, approach them directly and screen every name against the brief before it reaches you.
Days 8 to 10
Three to five people, each with a page: what they have run, why they fit this seat, pay expectations, notice period and where they are weak.
After the shortlist
Interviews run at your pace. We handle scheduling, references and the counter-offer conversation, and nothing is payable until your hire starts.
Three clients, quoted as they wrote to us about searches we ran for them. We publish no names or logos without permission.
Deal size, cycle length and the number of people involved. An SMB AE closes small deals fast, often with the owner, and wins on volume. A mid-market AE runs a structured process with a small committee over weeks or months. An enterprise AE plans named accounts, multi-threads executives and procurement, and may close a handful of large deals a year. Hiring across segments is the most common mis-hire in sales.
We charge a flat 15% of the hire’s first-year base salary, payable only once they start. On a $100,000 base that is $15,000. Commission is not part of the calculation, there is no retainer, and nothing is payable if the search does not produce a hire.
Base salary for a US account executive runs $87,513 to $111,393 at the 25th to 75th percentile on Salary.com (October 2026), and Built In reports average total compensation of $212,849 once commission is included. Many B2B plans split on-target earnings roughly evenly between base and variable; segment, deal size and location move both.
Usually account executives first, led by the founder or a player-coach. A sales manager earns the seat once there are enough reps to coach and a repeatable process to manage. Hiring a manager to build a team from nothing often means paying a leader to do individual-contributor work.
Sales managers, directors and VPs run on the same ten working days from a signed brief to a shortlist of three to five calibrated candidates. Senior sellers often carry longer notice periods and commission still owed by their current employer, so plan for the start date to land some weeks after the offer. For CRO searches, see our executive leadership page.
Against verified attainment, a walk-through of one won and one lost deal at your deal size, a check on how honestly they forecast, and fit with your motion: buyer, cycle length and channel. Every name comes with the evidence behind it, gaps included, so you can see why each person is on the shortlist.
Yes. Hiring a sales team as one structure is how we run a pod: account executives, the SDRs who feed them and the manager who coaches them, briefed together so later hires do not restart the search. The same 15% applies to each hire, payable as each one starts.
Tell us your deal size, sales cycle and the number the seat carries. We reply within one business day with which of the eleven seats it is and what it pays.
Most of our sales searches are filled from people we already know, the week an employer briefs us, before an advert exists. Set up a job alert for sales roles, or send your CV and we will come to you when a seat opens.
Sales sits in our Sales & Pipeline practice, between the seats that create pipeline and the people who run the technical sale. If the gap sits next door, start there.