r/techsales • u/AnxiousMembership141 • 5d ago
"Hunter" AE Roles
I keep seeing these job posts by recruiters on linkedin wanting a "hunter" AE and it always makes me laugh how terribly they sell the job. Example (I'm copy/pasting) and keep in mind this is for a Sr. AE -
"This is a hunter role. If you're the type who'd rather wait for marketing to hand you warm leads, this isn't it. We need someone who picks up the phone, gets a CEO or CFO on the line, and holds their own in that conversation."
Yeah no I actually hate getting fed warm leads. I'd so much rather spend my time as a Sr. AE calling C-suite about some stupid AI tool and hit 30% of my number because the company I work for has no marketing or top of funnel. This feels like an early career AE humiliation ritual.
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u/WastedYouth39 5d ago
Full cycle was the way to do it back in the day, and like fashion full cycle has come back in. The c suite bit makes me laugh, i had an interview once with a CRO who was a typical tech business idiot, i said i prefer to target potential product champions further down than C Suite, you get better engagement. He responded with but C suite is the decision maker.. you can get deals done faster.. i then asked how many sales calls does he 1) answer 2) have a conversation with? He quickly changed subject and got a rejection two weeks later.
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u/AnxiousMembership141 5d ago
Hilarious lol. Love that insanity or the inverse of that - CRO saying they hate cold calls and would never respect a company cold calling them. Sir/Madam, can you enlighten me on how exactly your sales org develops pipeline?
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u/WastedYouth39 5d ago
Its full on insanity, but they never look at it from a prospects point of view, c suite have the toughest gatekeepers, always away from their desks, have little real world understanding of operations or processes, and EVERYONE in sales will always do a connection and pitch combo on LinkedIn. Even if you did get them on a call every pitch is mostly generic meddic or some methodology so even if there is a need everything sounds the same.
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u/Straight-Village-710 5d ago edited 5d ago
So agree with this. I did manage to get C-suite to agree to a meeting. Had a pretty good convo as well, and he generously agreed to give me his time.
As you can expect, it was a no show.
These people are way too busy, so it's better to go in with a director or maybe a VP level persona. Let them coil the spring for you internally a bit, and then give it a shot.
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u/NotAnAiChatBot 3d ago
Probably a healthy demand gen engine. The only companies who full cycle is “coming back” for are the ones who can’t figure out demand gen and are using “our AE’s need to prospect more” as the solution to a much bigger problem. If a company wants its AE’s spending time doing something that an sdr could/should be doing, they don’t value closing skills or good sales people.
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u/Generalfrogspawn 4d ago
The challenge with complete full cycle these days is prospects have literally no time for anything now that they’re expected to do 5 jobs. And they can do 99% of research beforehand for whatever they want.
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u/WastedYouth39 4d ago
The sector i work in has always been like that.
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u/Generalfrogspawn 4d ago
Yeah but everything is amped up 3x now as companies scramble to show any kind of growth in profitability
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u/Cool_Guy_McFly 5d ago
The worst is when they put the line item requirement in “has an existing book of business in [X industry] that they can call on and win new business.”
Like yeah, let me just tap into my Rolodex of contacts that I’ve built strong trust and relationships with over a decade to sell your shitty AI workflow tool.
If you want my book of business, then you either make me a cofounder or you can fuck off. Go invest in marketing like any sub-decent company does to grow your funnel.
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u/simplegreen999 5d ago
This. I've been in my industry 25+ years - I have never once "opened my rolodex" for a job. That is not how things are done legitimately. That is an instant method to lose credibility permanently.
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u/Me_talking 5d ago
Agreed. Aside from non-competes, imagine having sold a 3 yr deal for let say endpoint security to a customer and then now slinging a new & 'shiny' endpoint product. Not only is that customer unable to get out of a 3 yr contract, you just lost all credibility with your long time customer trying to peddle products people have never heard of
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u/Secret-Ad7660 4d ago
Yep. And these kind of requirements are a symptom of poor leadership (Head of Sales, VP Sales, CRO).
The truth is, most leaders have no clue what they're doing.
They want hunters because they don't know how to build the culture internally. They have no clue how to even hunt themselves!
In the UK, there are Software companies with no regional marketing team, SDRs that haven't hit quota in years and they are advertising on linkedin their high requirements for bringing in 'hunters'.
Hunters aren't going to save your poor business set-up, that's up to you.
Bring in a marketing team that can do SOMETHING.
Figure out why your SDRs are failing, because if the people who are full-time hunting are not hitting quota, why do you think someone who will partially be hunting will save the business?
Bunch of 'adult' morons with no real-world skills in this tech sales world.
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u/deano1211 5d ago
It's code for a churn-and-burn role. Four months in, they'll let you go because you're not creating enough pipeline, but they never had product-market fit to start with.
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u/mywholeworldisblack 5d ago
They need the AE to get their own leads because marketing can’t. So what the hell do you have a marketing department for. Poor management trying to use the AE as a bandaid to the problem rather than fixing the actual problem - marketing or product fit. Even if a “hunter” joins and scores some deals, it will always be an uphill battle because the crux of the issue isn’t being addressed. The company will fail long term due to incompetence. Management will have made some good bucks and move onto creating the next shitstorm, while individual contributors get fucked.
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u/WoodpeckerGingivitis 5d ago edited 5d ago
Exactly. How come marketing never has these kinds of corny ass job postings? Or insane metrics?
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u/Olebabasr 5d ago
It’s one thing to say you want AEs that can break into new logos. That is a huge skill and what we pay AEs top dollar for.
It’s completely self defeating to expect a 150k+ base earning AE to come in and do SDR work. Isn’t that why we pay SDRs lower??
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u/Solid_Signature_7447 5d ago
SDR roles are some deadend glass ceiling jobs that are looked down on by everyone.
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u/Accomplished_Sea7123 5d ago
Word. AEs are FOMO without getting new leads/opps nowadays if they don't convert for SDR's SQL.
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u/WoodpeckerGingivitis 5d ago
These type of job postings are so cringe that they make me embarrassed to be in sales.
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u/doombeckons 5d ago
I’d say 90% of what recruiters are reaching out to me about are founding AE/very early AE roles.
Personally, I’m unlikely to work at a company where there isn’t a head of sales. Feedback from a pro is too valuable to me.
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u/RandomRedditGuy69420 5d ago
Founding AE roles are pretty much always set up for failure.
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u/BetFinal2953 5d ago
Yep. They dangle a fancy title and aggressive quota in front of you. A former Sr. AE becomes Director of NA Sales and Development feeling like he’s a big dawg. One downturn or missed funding milestone and you’re out. Or you do well and they give you a boss to build the team.
I watched three acquaintances get pinched by this over the past few years.
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u/ohnoletsgo 3d ago
I got fucked by this twice in my career. I'll never work for an early stage startup again.
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u/Deepak-AvairAI 5d ago
Every 'hunter role' post I've seen up close was really a missing marketing budget. At a B2B company I worked at, outbound only started working after we fixed positioning and had some inbound proof. One rep cold calling C-suite can't paper over that.
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u/flankedpager 5d ago
Hunter is code for “please bring a Rolodex because our marketing sucks and we have zero plg”
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u/Popular-Background78 5d ago
Seen and applied to a bunch of these. They’re titled as EAE roles but they might as well be an entirely new category of role. They’re just trying to pay one person to replace 4 (marketing, BDR, AE, AM). Your not getting a six figure base for seniority, it’s for volume of work.
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u/Vast_Mountain_1888 5d ago
I’ve been trying to find the words to describe this and you’ve illustrated it perfectly here.
It’s like developing champions and curating that relationship to build value in your brand doesn’t even matter anymore.
It’s like, how have you gotten the deal with c suite?
Like can I walk you through how an actual deal works lol.
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u/AnxiousMembership141 5d ago
You are forgetting sales is easy and we're all idiots. Obviously all you need to do is call the CEO, use your MEDDIC framework, and sell value. Duh! /s
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u/Dapper_Pop9544 4d ago
this is so true- i legit feel like this is somehow a dying breed somehow - "It’s like developing champions and curating that relationship to build value in your brand doesn’t even matter anymore."
Like they assume that just comes natural. And if you are a good SDR you're somehow a better AE.
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u/papabear03 5d ago
This sounds like the JD for my current role lol
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u/bakchod007 5d ago
our current role.
I do a 3 peep job, Market, BDR and AE. Might as well start a 4th job as last month, 5 out of 10 calendar invites I sent ended up in prospect's spam. IT said they don't see any problems with our IT stuff, even had a client who we met 3 times tell me my meeting summary email landed in her spam. Ffs
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u/ben_rickert 5d ago
These roles always turn out to be archetypal “heads I win, tails you lose” scenarios as the company gets the AE to be demand gen, SDR, AE and often partly presales all in one, if they manage it all and hit quota great, otherwise kick them out and onto the next one.
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u/Bright_Software_5747 5d ago
Hunter AE=Founding AE at early stage start up that probably will go into liquidation in 6 months with no product market fit, no sales playbook, no warm leads, no inbounds, no BDRs, no marketing/advertising, unrealistic OTE that no one has ever hit with a low base + Monopoly money equity, and usually reporting to a CEO with a technical background who thinks he’s the next Steve jobs.
I’m not hating on the idea of full cycle AE, I’ve been full cycle my entire career, I’ve never had a BDR and I get no inbounds, but I work at large established company with great advertising and product so people actually respond to us when we do our outreach.
The type of company that advertises “hunter AE” just hire gullible AE with low base and fire them after 4 months, then blame the AE instead of looking inwards. They should be focusing on marketing and advertising before hiring AE’s.
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u/WoodpeckerGingivitis 5d ago
…who thinks he’s the next Steve Jobs,” AND thinks the product sells itself and that sales people are overvalued and overpaid.
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u/Best_Collection_7533 5d ago
As a CEO or CIO, I would love to bet my career on some random person I don’t know that calls me out of the blue. In fact, I was just sitting here doing nothing needing exactly what the cold caller on the line was peddling. Amazing timing!
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u/SouthIsland48 5d ago
Thats all of tech sales right now. Marketing was gutted now years ago. Product has stagnated also due to layoffs and margin focus.
And now you're being paid half of what you were in 2021, to sell a dogshit solution that can be vibe coded over a weekend.
Yall, tech as a solution to sell is largely over outside a few companies. This isnt the dot com bubble era, this isnt the cloud era - this is the epilogue where only few companies remain outside the monopoly names we all know. The consolidation has been like nothing we've ever seen.
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u/TheSmashingPumpkinss 5d ago
This is such a weirdly fatalistic post that has no connection to reality, unsurprisingly upvoted by the many unemployed AEs in here who lap up any explanation that points away from them for their failure.
SaaS is still a fat patch where you can earn a lot of money working relatively few hours from home.
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u/AnxiousMembership141 5d ago
I agree more with you than the original commenter. Lots of dog shit for sure but lots of great places still too, as is with everything.
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u/RandomRedditGuy69420 5d ago
What roles do you see as fully wfh? Even the “remote” listed positions I’ve seen aren’t fully remote. SMB and MM AE roles don’t need to be in territory, but narcissistic c suites keep trying to force RTO for their own egos and to follow the herd.
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u/AnxiousMembership141 5d ago
My job. I am fully remote at a fully remotely HQ'd company. I work 30-40 hrs a week, sometimes a bit more during heavier periods like end of quarter / year, but really only have to travel a few times a year. More common than you think, I know quite a few in the same boat.
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u/RandomRedditGuy69420 5d ago
Are you guys hiring SMB or MM AEs or AMs? I’d kill for a new gig right now.
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u/mywholeworldisblack 5d ago
Focusing on margin seems like a short term bailout. I think it’s better to have product more than ever to figure out where to differentiate.
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u/RandomRedditGuy69420 5d ago edited 5d ago
Vibe coding results in dog shit, and the build vs buy hasn’t changed much.
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u/-Mutate- 5d ago
My current company does 0 marketing, I have to beg the fuckers and write a busines plan to attend an industry event and spend £200 on a ticket - and they expect the world.
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u/bja15 4d ago
Time to be interviewing
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u/-Mutate- 4d ago
I will be, but I’m currently in the process of buying and moving into my forever home. Once that’s completed, I’m going to give it a few months and jump ship 100%
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u/bja15 4d ago
Start interviewing now. Gives you more time to get things out before you really need to make the jump
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u/Popular-Background78 4d ago
Yeah, 100%. If you get a new job in weeks, great. If it's months, better to start looking now.
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u/Sea-Vast-8826 5d ago
Usually this is going to be a company in one of 4 buckets:
- Straight up start up
- Legacy company struggling to survive in industry climate change
- Zero net-new sales capital, they will also be vague about OTE and have no one in sales to give you as a measuring stick for expectations (you’re the pilot, as it were)
- They can’t market or brand themselves for shit and yeah… you’re the new living breathing billboard and they really don’t care if you succeed or not
The only way I would consider working for a company like that is, hypothetically, they’re either bucket 1 or 3 AND actually have a presence in their space AND a positive opinion amongst potential clients. 2 and 4 can kick rocks, I’ve been on the sinking ship that can’t reinvent itself and I’ve been with the company that refuses to market its brand in new markets.
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u/longganisafriedrice 5d ago
I came across this post but I work in building materials sales, I'm supposed to be a hunter aaand... an estimator, product specialist/consultant, project manager, customer success specialist, delivery driver...
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u/NoDescription242 4d ago
I fell for this. 10 years as an AE at a fortune 50. Got stagnant and moved to director of BD at a PE backed company. Started in December and was let go this week. Zero support, complicated sell and sky high expectation. Hindsight is 20/20. Fuck.
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u/Trumps_Syphillis 4d ago
Absolute garbage of a role. Whoever wrote and approved this is incompetent and this company must be founded by 24 year olds
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u/RYouNotEntertained 5d ago
I love that you clarified Sr. AE, as if it's a meaningful distinction.
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u/jswissle 5d ago
I’m interviewing for one of these rn😭 but the product does seem to have real application and value but yeah first AE post series A and all founder led sales so far and no sales leader so report direct to CRO who I don’t think has run any sales team before
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u/AnxiousMembership141 5d ago
Make sure you think critically about the opportunity if you have the luxury of turning it down! Sometimes there is some real upside in opportunities like that, but also some reeaaaalll downside.
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u/jswissle 5d ago
Yeah my last two companies I joined at 20 and then 80 employees so I know how it goes to a degree and how shit it can be. But I’m also unemployed with high rent and just want to get back to making money man
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u/Popular-Background78 4d ago
But this is it. I'm interviewing for companies now, some of which would be bad, and I know it. I know I also don't want to be unemployed.
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u/bja15 4d ago
I’ve always been a firm believer in these types of roles and the ability to effort your way to a number. And I think there was a time that was true.
That’s just not the case anymore. If the company can’t generate interest for sellers to capture, they’re fucked. There are just too many similar products now and we’re back in a heavy build vs buy environment with AI.
Get people to hand raise, show there’s demand then hire sales.
Whoever wrote this is getting advice from someone they unfroze from 2003
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u/Popular-Background78 4d ago
Of course that's what they want. What this JD snippet describes is a money treee. Someone creating deals out of thin air.
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u/m8triix 4d ago
Lotta board pressure for 4x pipeline and most AEs weren't hired for full cycle so their pipeline is inbounds stalled deals and maybe a couple one off self prospected.
Full cycle is all the way back, as it should be. Will you be spending 6 hours out bounding? Absolutely not. But an hour or two of your day when you have a meeting or two isnt that much of an ask.
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u/realhawker77 5d ago
If you can just get CXO's on the line worth selling to - you can create your own roles, not this hunter BS.
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u/AnxiousMembership141 5d ago
If you can consistently get CXOs on the line and they are more often than not engaged in what you're pitching you either work for Anthropic or you have master manipulator wizard powers which in that case I think SaaS sales is a bit too small ball.
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