Salary Data Fun: Account Executive Edition

Yay numbers

No matter the field, market awareness matters. If you’re in trading, real estate, whatever widget your company sells, or for today’s purposes – hiring.

Key thing to note:

👉Data without context is meaningless.

If you don’t understand the subject matter and limitations of the data sets, you’ll draw the wrong conclusions. And make bad decisions.

Case in point: salary data. We pull salary data from multiple sources and provide it to our clients, free of charge. It’s important in making a hiring plan. But it’s equally important to know where it can be off base. (Or where is “hallucinates” as the ChatGPT nerds call it.)

If I had a dollar for every time someone went to a free online salary calculator and said “the internet says I’m worth $XX a year” and it was nowhere near accurate, I’d wouldn’t still be posting on LinkedIn like a dork.

Real data on Account Executive (4-7 year) and Sr. Account Executive (7+ year) salaries, 2023 vs 2024, US market, technology/software sector.

👉AEs: Jan 1 2023 vs Jan 1 2024

•25th-75th percentile base range: $85.5k-$114.7k vs $89.3-122.4k

•50th percentile base midpoint: $98.8k vs $104.7k

•25th-75th percentile total comp range: $97.9k-139.9k vs 101k-148k

•50th percentile total comp midpoint: $116.2k vs 121.4k

👉Sr. AEs: Jan 1 2023 vs Jan 1 2024

•25th-75th percentile base range: $106.3k-$141.1k vs $111.6-150.8k

•50th percentile base midpoint: $123.1k vs $130.3k

•25th-75th percentile total comp range: $124.6k-176.6k vs 129.6k-188kk

•50th percentile total comp midpoint: $147.5k vs 155.2k

All true facts. Wage inflation in the 5-6% range, which tracks any Google-able source.

But…things were a little different this year, no? Some industries got crushed while others thrived. Not to mention in sales, the size of the companies you sell to directly impacts your comp.

👉Salary ranges our GTM recruiting team is seeing today, from companies hiring AE’s and senior AE’s, based on the size of companies they sell to:

•SMB: $75-90k base; $120k+ OTE 

•Mid-market: $90-120k base; 50/50 split

•Low enterprise: $125-130k base; double OTE

•True enterprise: $150-170k base; double OTE

A very different story, depending on your company’s sales focus.

Data’s great. But if you aren’t familiar with gaps, you’ll probably draw the wrong conclusions.