SMB Account Executive

Overview

You're selling wholesale marketplace expansion services to established consumer brands (think DTC brands doing $1M-10M+ who want to scale into Amazon, Walmart, international marketplaces). You own the full cycle: finding brands that fit the ICP, cold outreach, running audit-style discovery to identify expansion opportunities, structuring partnership terms, and closing. The company takes over downstream execution (inventory, logistics, marketplace management) so you're selling a service + rev-share model, not software.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Early growth (VC-backed, 65+ active brands, multi-million euro revenue)

Size: Small team (you're one of 2 AEs being hired)

Growth: Expanding from UK into Europe and US markets

Market Position: Niche player in wholesale marketplace enablement - competing against brands doing it in-house or other marketplace aggregators/service providers

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 90%+ Outbound - You're building lists of DTC/consumer brands from scratch, researching Shopify stores, Amazon sellers, LinkedIn, industry databases
• 10% Referrals/Word of mouth from existing 65 brands

SDR/AE Structure: No SDRs. You build your own pipeline entirely. You're prospecting, qualifying, and closing.

SE Support: None - you're doing product demos/audits yourself

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors:

• Brands building internal marketplace teams
• Other marketplace aggregators/roll-ups (Thrasio model competitors)
• Traditional 3PL + agency combinations
• Direct marketplace seller tools

How They Differentiate: Full-service model (they own inventory, logistics, marketplace management) vs just software/consulting. Data-led approach to identify best marketplace opportunities.

Common Objections:

• "We can do this in-house"
• "What's your rev share/commercial terms?" (deal structure negotiation)
• "How do we know you'll prioritize our brand vs your other 65 brands?"
• "We're not ready to expand yet"

Win Themes: Proven track record with 65 brands, brands scale faster without operational headache, improved unit economics vs self-managing

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting/Outreach (40%) | Active Deal Management (35%) | Internal/Admin (25%)

Key Activities

• List building and research: Spend 1-2 hours daily identifying consumer brands that fit ICP (proven PMF, $1M+ revenue, selling on limited channels). You're scraping Shopify stores, researching Amazon sellers, tracking Kickstarter successes, monitoring DTC brand databases.
• Cold outbound: 30-50 outreach touches per day across email, LinkedIn, and occasional cold calls to founders/brand owners. Response rates are low (2-5%) because you're interrupting people who aren't actively looking.
• Audit-style discovery calls: When you get interest, you run 30-45 min calls digging into their current sales channels, marketplace presence, unit economics, SKU catalog, margins. You're essentially auditing their business to identify expansion opportunity.
• Commercial structuring: Each deal is semi-custom. You're negotiating rev-share terms, minimum commitments, which marketplaces to prioritize. Lots of back-and-forth on deal structure before contracts are signed.
• Internal coordination: Weekly pipeline reviews, deal clinics with founders/sales leadership. You're in a 2-person AE team at a small company so expect to be in the room for strategic discussions.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Rejection volume is high: Most consumer brands either aren't ready, want to stay DTC-only, or don't trust a third party with their brand. You hear "no" or get ghosted constantly.
• Long discovery process: You can't demo a product in 15 minutes. You need to deeply understand their business, run analysis on marketplace opportunities, build business cases. Deals that seem promising die in diligence.
• Commercial negotiation complexity: No two deals are exactly the same. Every brand wants different terms, different marketplaces, different minimums. You're not just closing, you're structuring partnerships.
• Building in a lean environment: No SDR support, limited sales tools, you're figuring out ICP and playbook as you go. If you need a polished sales stack and clear runbooks, this isn't that.

What Success Looks Like

• Signing 6-10 new brand partnerships per quarter (roughly 2-3 per month)
• Maintaining pipeline of 20-30 active conversations at various stages
• Consistently booking 8-12 qualified discovery calls per week from outbound efforts

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• Founders/Co-founders of consumer brands (£1M-£20M revenue range)
• Heads of Sales/Growth at slightly larger DTC brands

What They Care About:

• Expanding revenue without building internal marketplace teams (hiring, training, operations)
• Protecting brand equity while scaling into new channels
• Unit economics and profitability (they want proof you'll drive profitable growth, not just revenue)
• Speed to market (can you get them live on new marketplaces faster than doing it themselves)
• Track record (they want to see case studies from similar brands in your portfolio)

Requirements

• 18+ months closing new business as an AE (not BDR/SDR promoted last quarter)
• Sold in predominantly outbound environment (you know how to build pipeline from scratch, not just work inbound leads)
• Owned full sales cycle (discovery through close, not just demos or parts of the deal)
• Strong outbound across multiple channels (email, LinkedIn, phone - not just one trick)
• Comfortable with consultative/audit-style selling (digging into business metrics, asking hard questions about margins and operations)
• Self-directed and comfortable in lean/early-stage environment (no one's handing you a script or managing you hour-by-hour)
• Pipeline discipline and accurate forecasting (you track your funnel properly and call your deals honestly)
• Coachable and resilient (you take feedback, iterate quickly, and don't get demoralized by rejection)