Account executive: the B2B sales cycle

What you will be able to do

• How an account executive, an SDR and an account manager differ
• The stages of a B2B deal, and why no single standard exists
• Discovery and qualification with BANT and MEDDPICC
• Demos, proposals and business cases
• Negotiation, closing and the Monday forecast
• What Finnish ads say about pay, tools, language and methods
• Free certifications you can put on a CV

The situation you work through

Amara, a made-up new account executive at a Helsinki SaaS company called Hallavo, runs her first deal, a manufacturer called Korpela Metalworks, from the discovery call to the signed contract and prepares her Monday forecast.

Your practice task

Run Amara's deal on paper for a real or invented company you could sell to. Submit four things: the MEDDPICC notes from a 30-minute discovery call (what you know and what is still a question mark for each of the eight letters), a one-page business case with the current cost, the expected change, the price and the payback in months, a Monday forecast of four deals sorted into commit, best case and pipeline with one reason for every deal, and a short note on which Nordic buying habits you would plan for and which parts of your notes are your own judgement, not a rule.

Key topics

1. What an account executive does
2. AE, SDR or account manager: read the duties
3. The stages of one deal
4. Discovery: the first 30 minutes
5. Qualification: BANT and MEDDPICC
6. Demo and the buying group

and 5 more pages

What you get when you pass

A certificate with your name, the course and the date. Sharing it is your choice. If you share it, it has a public link that anyone can open to check it, and you can add it to LinkedIn.