Sales

Enterprise Account Executive recruitment

Search for sellers who can run multi-stakeholder deals with executive buyers, long cycles, security review and technical validation — and still create their own pipeline.

Hire GTM talent

100+

GTM placements over five years

35–50%

Candidate response rates from targeted outreach

25%

Of placements at executive-search level

10 days

Average to identify the ideal candidate after intake

Enterprise selling is a different job to mid-market selling, not a larger version of it. Fewer deals, more people in the room, procurement and security as formal gates, and a cycle long enough that a mis-hire costs two quarters before anyone can be sure.

This page covers enterprise-specific search. If the requirement spans commercial, mid-market and founding seller profiles, the general Account Executive practice is the better starting point.

When the enterprise hire is the right hire

Usually when a company has closed one or two large accounts opportunistically and wants to make that repeatable, or when the product has matured enough to survive a security and procurement review.

It is the wrong hire when the ACV does not yet support a long cycle, when there is no pre-sales support and no reference customer of comparable size, or when the board needs revenue inside two quarters. Enterprise sellers hired into that situation tend to leave before their first deal lands.

What separates a genuine enterprise seller

Stakeholder mapping
Can name every person in their last deal, their motivation, and who actually released the budget.
Executive access
Creates conversations above their natural level rather than waiting to be introduced.
Technical aptitude
Runs a credible discovery on architecture, data and integration before pre-sales is involved.
Process control
Mutual action plans, procurement and legal navigated deliberately, not hopefully.
New-logo prospecting
Self-sourced pipeline into named accounts, distinct from farming an installed base.

Reading the track record honestly

Large quota attainment at a well-known vendor can reflect brand, an inherited territory or an installed base. We qualify each number: ACV, cycle length, self-sourced proportion, size of buying committee, and whether they had pre-sales, marketing and a reference base behind them.

A seller who closed $2m of expansion inside existing Fortune 500 accounts is not evidence of ability to win a first logo for an unknown Series A company, and the shortlist says so explicitly.

Territory and stage

At Series A the enterprise AE is usually one of two or three sellers, carries a wide geography and does their own prospecting. At Series C there is segmentation, a named account list and support functions, and the profile shifts toward depth in a defined patch.

Cross-Atlantic first hires — a US company's first enterprise seller in London, or a European company's first in New York — carry the additional problem of buying norms and time zones, and are a recurring part of our work in both directions.

The hiring offer

The offer

A free 30-minute enterprise AE hiring diagnosis with the founder — then your ideal Enterprise Account Executives within 10 days. You only pay if you hire.

I built and scaled these teams myself. I made the hiring mistakes — that’s why I started Tipped.

Ash Takher, founder of Tipped Recruitment

Ash Takher

Founder (former SaaS Sales Leader) · runs enterprise sales searches personally

  • Optimizely — European Sales Leader
  • Sensor Tower — VP EMEA
  • ByteDance · AI Lab — Led Western EMEA

Not a recruiter who found sales. An operator who built and scaled the teams you are hiring for.

What you get in the 30-minute enterprise AE hiring diagnosis

Free · no brief needed

  1. 01Enterprise readiness

    Whether your ACV, product and support structure justify a genuinely enterprise-specific seller.

  2. 02Deal evidence

    Buying committees, procurement, security and technical validation personally navigated by the candidate.

  3. 03Territory creation

    The level of self-sourced pipeline required and whether an established-vendor record transfers to your stage.

  4. 04Compensation benchmark

    Base, OTE, quota and territory design against live US and EMEA comparators.

Then, if it makes sense

You get your ideal candidates within 10 days

  • Full CVs and candidate profiles you can share with your team
  • A written assessment of each candidate against the agreed scorecard

How you pay

Only if you hire

No retainer on the consultation, and nothing owed unless you hire the person we introduce.

Book with me here

Meet Ash within 48 hours.

Prefer email? hello@tippedrecruitment.com

Case study

Cursor's first EMEA sales hire, introduced within seven days

Tipped helped Cursor make its first EMEA sales hire, with the successful candidate introduced within seven days of the search beginning.

Read the case study
7 days
From search start to introducing the successful candidate
First
EMEA sales hire for the business

Selected clients

Common questions

What ACV justifies an enterprise-specific hire?
There is no universal threshold, but the deciding factor is whether the deal genuinely requires a buying committee, procurement and security review. Where a single budget holder can sign, a mid-market profile is usually a better and less expensive fit.
Can a strong mid-market AE move up to enterprise?
Sometimes, and it is often the cheaper option. The evidence to look for is deals with more than one decision-maker, exposure to procurement, and comfort operating at director level or above rather than raw quota size.
How long should we expect an enterprise search to take?
Across our searches the ideal candidate is identified within an average of ten working days following intake. The overall timeline is then driven by your interview process, which for enterprise appointments usually includes a presentation or deal-review stage.

Related expertise

Ready to talk about the hire?

Tell us the roles, the markets and the stage. You will get a straight answer on whether we are the right partner, and a market view either way.

Book a call

Prefer email? hello@tippedrecruitment.com