Anyone transition from Enterprise AE to a Consult Partner role at a consulting firm? It is full cycle consulting where I’ll still have a quota, but not sure how different the day-to-day will look from being an AE at a large tech company.
I appreciate the response! I have an interview on Tuesday with the VP who is hiring. Would you have any coaching for this interview?
Seems like a big difference would be software / SaaS with ARR and consulting services, which are likely project based. The revenue isn't recurring, so when the project ends you'd potentially sell in something new. Of course if your team does a good job hopefully there are other opportunities eithe rwith that same group or they can refer you to other groups in the same company. Once you're in the door it's a lot easier to sell across groups (and not have to deal with new vendor approvals, etc).
Thanks for the feedback. Would you have any coaching for an interview with the hiring VP. Any specific things you’d make sure to ask or uncover?
Yeah if it's full cycle that assumes you'll be delivering on the projects that you sell (eat what you kill!), which will really mean that a much larger portion of your time (relative to your ent AE role) will be away from selling. So just think about the pros and cons of that, what you like to do / spend your day, etc. You'll still have the stress of a quota, but maybe less so. Sorry I've never been in this specific environment so can't offer more than that, but good luck with your decision! ✌️
Ryan, thanks for the response. It is cool to see you jumping into these conversations as well!
I moved from consulting to tech sales (as a pre-sales, not AE), and recently had a job offer to move back to consulting in a CTO role to land and expand a new market. Long story short, I ended up declining the offer because the comp wasn't really worth it, but mainly because I didn't want to deal with the headaches that come with Account Management and Project Delivery. While there will be some overlaps with your AE role in terms of selling, negotiating, pitching new work, etc, the main question you need to ask yourself is: are you open to deal with all the problems that come with Project Delivery. And they will come, there's no project that is smooth sailing.
I’ve held roles as both an Enterprise AE for a SaaS company and for a consulting firm. In my experience, consulting can be more rewarding, but it comes with greater dependency on factors outside your control. You rely heavily on the strength of the executive relationship with the vendor and the delivery team’s ability to execute effectively. In my case, I wasn’t aware of a strained relationship between our ELT and the primary vendor. Certain actions by leadership led the vendor to steer potential clients toward other partners, which impacted our pipeline. My advice: do your homework. Understand the quality and track record of the delivery team, client satisfaction with past projects, and the current state of the vendor relationship. If those elements are solid, you’ll probably love the role.
I have, much happier on the partner side and find it more interesting as a whole. There are some similarities and depends on the consulting role but your job is to land new work, deliver good work and get the renewals and expansion opportunities.