Senior Account Executive (New Business)

Overview

You sell Forrester's research and advisory subscriptions to enterprise end-user organizations (not tech vendors). Your job is to prospect into companies that aren't current clients, run discovery with senior leaders to understand their strategic priorities, and build a business case for why a six-figure annual research contract makes sense. You're selling ongoing access to research, analyst inquiries, and events—not one-time projects.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Public company (Nasdaq: FORR)

Size: 1,682 employees

Growth: Mature, established player in B2B research and advisory space

Market Position: Legacy leader competing with Gartner and IDC for enterprise research budgets

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 30% Inbound - hand-raisers from events, content downloads, existing client referrals (quality varies; many are tire-kickers or lower-level employees without budget authority)
• 60% Outbound - cold outreach to target accounts, leveraging account-based marketing campaigns and event attendee lists
• 10% Referrals/Renewals teams passing expansion opportunities to new business

SDR/AE Structure: Self-sourcing model. You own prospecting and closing. Some marketing support with campaigns, but you're building your own pipeline.

SE Support: No traditional SEs. Forrester analysts sometimes join late-stage calls to discuss research coverage, but you're running demos and discovery solo.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Gartner (the 800-lb gorilla), IDC, smaller boutique research firms in specific verticals

How They Differentiate: Forrester positions itself as more customer-obsessed and less IT-focused than Gartner. They emphasize their consumer and B2C expertise alongside tech research. The pitch is "customer insights + tech insights."

Common Objections:

• "We already have Gartner" (you're almost always displacing or supplementing an incumbent)
• "Can we just buy one research report instead of a full subscription?"
• "Your coverage in [niche area] isn't as deep as [specialist firm]"
• Budget freezes, "we'll revisit next fiscal year"

Win Themes: Win when buyers value Forrester's specific research angle (customer experience, B2C digital), when Gartner relationship has gone stale, or when a new executive wants a fresh perspective and has budget to add a second research vendor.

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting (35%) | Active Deals (40%) | Internal Meetings (25%)

Key Activities

• Outbound Prospecting: 20-30 prospecting touches per day (calls, emails, LinkedIn). You're targeting VPs and C-level at F1000 companies—CIOs, CMOs, CDOs, Chief Customer Officers. Most don't respond. You're trying to book 3-5 initial discovery calls per week.

• Discovery Calls: 45-60 minute conversations with senior leaders to understand their business priorities, current research vendors, and pain points. You're diagnosing whether Forrester's coverage areas align with their strategic initiatives. Much of this is qualification—do they have budget, is there a real project this ties to, can you get to economic buyer.

• Multi-Threading: Deals require 3-6 stakeholders (functional leader who'll use research, procurement, sometimes IT if it's a platform deal, budget owner). You spend a lot of time coordinating internal champions, sending follow-up materials, and trying to get everyone in the same room for a business case presentation.

• Proposal and Negotiation: Building ROI justifications, navigating pricing discussions (contracts are annual subscriptions with seat licenses and analyst inquiry hours), redlining MSAs with legal, and managing procurement's requests for discounts. Deals often stall here for 4-8 weeks.

• Internal Coordination: Weekly forecast calls, pipeline reviews, working with marketing on account-based campaigns, coordinating analyst involvement for key deals, CRM hygiene in Salesforce.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Long, complex sales cycles: 4-8 months is typical. Deals slip quarters constantly because of budget freezes, competing priorities, or stakeholder turnover. You'll have 15-20 active opportunities but only close 1-2 per quarter.

• You're often second fiddle: Most enterprise companies already have Gartner. You're selling them on adding a second research vendor or switching. That's a harder sell than being the first/only.

• Access to executives is tough: You're cold-calling C-suite and SVPs who get 50 vendor emails a day. Response rates are low. When you do get meetings, they're often delegated down to directors or managers who don't have budget authority.

• Intangible ROI: You're selling "better insights" and "smarter decisions." There's no hard ROI like with revenue-generating tools. Business case conversations can feel squishy.

What Success Looks Like

• Closing $800K-1.2M in new ACV annually (typically 3-6 new enterprise logos)
• Maintaining a 3-4x pipeline coverage ratio (because win rates are ~25-30%)
• Building a healthy mix of early, mid, and late-stage opportunities so you're not starting from scratch each quarter

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• CIO, CTO, Chief Digital Officer (for tech and digital transformation research)
• CMO, Chief Customer Officer (for customer experience and B2C insights)
• VP of Strategy, VP of Product (for market and competitive intelligence)

What They Care About:

• Research quality and analyst credibility in their specific domain
• Depth of coverage in industries/topics relevant to their current strategic initiatives
• Responsiveness and access to analysts (inquiry hours, turnaround time)
• Pricing relative to Gartner and ROI justification for budget approvals
• Vendor consolidation (can Forrester replace 2-3 smaller point solutions)

Requirements

• 5+ years selling complex B2B solutions to enterprise accounts (Fortune 1000 experience strongly preferred)
• Track record selling six-figure deals with 4-6 month sales cycles
• Comfortable with consultative, discovery-heavy sales (not transactional)
• Experience navigating procurement, legal, and multi-stakeholder approvals
• Ability to self-source pipeline and run full-cycle sales without heavy SDR support
• Understanding of enterprise buying processes and budget cycles