How to hire your first account executive

• You've closed repeat deals with a similar buyer, and you can explain why they bought.
• You're spending most of your week in sales calls instead of building the company.
• Deals are slipping because you can't follow up fast enough.
• You have, or can build, pipeline the AE can work in their first month.

If only the second is true, start with the system, not the hire.

1. ICP lanes. Two or three specific buyer segments, each with a trigger, a role and a pain.
2. An offer and packaging you can explain in one sentence per lane.
3. A CRM with stages and exit criteria (see our pipeline stages guide ).
4. A playbook: discovery questions, demo flow, common objections with answers taken from your calls, pricing rules, and a sample mutual close plan.
5. Pipeline: an outbound motion already running so the AE has conversations from week one.
6. A manager: someone who will review calls and pipeline every week. If that's you, block the time.

A scorecard lists the outcomes the role must deliver and the competencies that predict them. For a first AE: experience closing deals at a similar ACV and sales cycle; comfort selling without a big brand; ability to run full-cycle deals from discovery to close; coachability; written communication (they'll write their own follow-ups). Rate every candidate against the same scorecard.

• Screen: career walk-through focused on deals they personally closed.
• Deal deep-dive: pick one deal and go five levels deep: who was involved, what stalled, how it closed.
• Role-play on your actual deal: give them your materials 48 hours ahead and run a discovery call with you as the buyer.
• References: ask former managers how they handled a lost quarter.

Week 1: product, ICP lanes, listen to recorded calls. Week 2: shadow and co-run calls. Week 3: run calls with founder backup. Week 4: own a set of deals with a weekly review.

Review the pipeline weekly against exit criteria, score two recorded calls per week, and pick one skill to work on at a time. Leading indicators (conversations, stage progression, quality of next steps) matter more than closed revenue early on.

If you don't have time to build the system or manage the AE, a managed closer gives you a full-time AE employed and managed by GrowthGeek, selling into a system we build, with the option to hire them later. → Compare managed closer vs in-house hire .