Account Executive

Overview

You sell HockeyStack's AI-powered marketing analytics and account intelligence platform to B2B companies. You're talking to VPs of Marketing and Revenue Ops leaders who are drowning in data and want better attribution and insights. You run the full sales cycle from demo through close, typically working 8-15 active opportunities at once.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Series A/B stage (YC S23, ~2 years old)

Size: 98 employees

Growth: Hiring aggressively across 17+ roles, signal of strong traction

Market Position: Challenger brand in competitive martech analytics space - fighting against bigger names and "good enough" internal solutions

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 40-50% Inbound - website demos, content downloads, product-led signups (quality varies - lots of tire-kickers)
• 40-50% Outbound - you're expected to self-source through cold outreach, LinkedIn, events
• 10% Referrals/partners - growing but not reliable yet

SDR/AE Structure: SDR team books meetings, but you'll still need to prospect into target accounts and expand deals

SE Support: Likely shared pool or you're running technical demos yourself - this is a technical sale requiring product fluency

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: 6sense, Dreamdata, Bizible/Adobe Marketo Measure, Segment + custom dashboards, legacy attribution tools

How They Differentiate: AI-powered insights, unified platform vs point solutions, faster time to value

Common Objections:

• "We already have Google Analytics and our CRM reports"
• "Your pricing is higher than [point solution]"
• "We're building this in-house with our data warehouse"
• "Implementation and data integration looks too complex"
• "Can't get buy-in from IT/RevOps on another tool"

Win Themes: Better attribution for complex B2B journeys, unified view of marketing + sales data, AI insights vs manual reporting, ROI visibility

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting/Outbound (25%) | Active Deals (40%) | Demos & Discovery (20%) | Internal/Admin (15%)

Key Activities

• Discovery Calls: You're diagnosing their current analytics setup - what tools they use, what's broken, what reports they manually build. Most prospects have Salesforce + HubSpot/Marketo + Google Analytics but can't connect the dots.
• Product Demos: You run 45-60 minute demos showing how HockeyStack unifies their data and surfaces insights. You're customizing based on their tech stack and use cases. Technical questions come up - you need to know how integrations work.
• Multi-threading: You start with a Marketing Director but need to loop in RevOps, potentially IT, and the VP/CMO to actually close. You're managing multiple stakeholders with different priorities.
• Business Case Building: You're building ROI models showing time saved on reporting, better campaign performance, improved attribution. Requires understanding their current process and headcount costs.
• Deal Management: Chasing stakeholders for next steps, navigating procurement, negotiating on price and contract terms, pushing deals through legal review. Lots of "checking in" and "circling back."
• Outbound Prospecting: You're researching target accounts, sending cold emails, doing LinkedIn outreach, and booking your own meetings when inbound slows down. SDRs help but you own your pipeline.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Competitive market: You're selling against established brands with bigger marketing budgets. Prospects have heard of 6sense. They haven't heard of HockeyStack.
• Technical sale: This isn't a simple "book a demo, show value, close" motion. You need to understand data integration, tracking implementation, API connections. Prospects ask hard technical questions.
• Long sales cycles: Even mid-market deals slip. Stakeholders go dark. Budgets get frozen. Champions leave. You'll have deals in your pipeline for months.
• "Build vs buy" objection: Larger companies with data teams often think they can build this themselves. You're selling against internal engineering resources.
• Implementation concerns: Prospects worry about how long setup takes and whether their data will actually connect properly. You need to de-risk this.
• Early-stage company risks: Product is evolving fast. Some features aren't fully built. You're selling vision alongside current capabilities. Prospects worry about company stability.

What Success Looks Like

• Closing 2-4 deals per quarter in the $25-75K range, or 1-2 larger enterprise deals
• Pipeline coverage of 4-5x quota (lots of deals stall or go dark)
• Converting 20-25% of demos to closed-won over time
• Building a healthy pipeline of self-sourced opportunities, not just waiting for inbound

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• VP/Director of Marketing (budget owner, wants to prove marketing ROI)
• VP/Director of Revenue Operations (technical evaluator, cares about data accuracy and integration)
• Head of Marketing Operations (day-to-day user, cares about reporting efficiency)

What They Care About:

• Proving which marketing channels/campaigns actually drive pipeline and revenue
• Reducing manual reporting work (they're spending hours in spreadsheets)
• Getting accurate attribution across complex B2B buyer journeys
• Integrating with their existing stack without breaking things
• Trustworthy data and AI insights they can actually act on
• Implementation timeline and ongoing maintenance burden

Requirements

• 3-5 years selling B2B SaaS, preferably martech, analytics, or data products
• Track record of hitting quota selling $25K+ ACV deals
• Comfortable running technical demos and discussing data integrations
• Experience with consultative, multi-stakeholder sales
• Ability to self-source pipeline through outbound prospecting
• Understanding of B2B marketing and sales operations (RevOps experience a plus)
• For SF: Onsite required. For NYC: Remote work
• Willingness to work in fast-paced early-stage environment with evolving product