Overview
You sell Worth's onboarding and underwriting platform to financial institutions - banks, credit unions, fintechs, and payment processors. You're replacing manual processes and legacy vendors with workflow automation, KYC/KYB checks, and fraud detection tools. Most of your time is spent educating buyers who aren't actively shopping, building business cases, and navigating compliance and IT stakeholder groups.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Full-cycle AE (prospecting through close) |
| Sales Motion | Outbound-heavy with some partner referrals |
| Deal Complexity | Enterprise - multi-stakeholder, compliance-heavy |
| Sales Cycle | 6-12 months |
| Deal Size | $100K-500K+ ACV |
| Quota (est.) | $800K-1.2M/year |
Company Context
Stage: Early-growth (61 employees, backed by Stax Payments unicorn founders)
Size: 61 employees
Growth: Actively hiring across GTM - signals strong pipeline demand or recent funding
Market Position: Challenger in the banking tech space - competing against legacy vendors and point solutions
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources:
- 70% Outbound - cold outreach to compliance, risk, and ops leaders at target institutions
- 20% Partner/Referrals - core banking systems, payment processors who integrate with Worth
- 10% Inbound - website inquiries, mostly tire-kickers or SMB leads outside ICP
SDR/AE Structure: Dedicated SDRs setting meetings, but you'll self-source into strategic accounts
SE Support: Solutions Engineers available for demos and technical validation, but you lead the discovery and business case
Competitive Landscape
Main Competitors: Legacy onboarding vendors, point solutions for KYC/fraud/underwriting, internal builds at larger banks
How They Differentiate: Consolidated platform vs stitching together 5 vendors, speed to onboard customers, proprietary small business database
Common Objections: "We built this internally", "Too expensive vs current vendor", "We're locked into X-year contract", "Compliance won't approve new vendors"
Win Themes: ROI on faster approvals, reduced fraud losses, compliance automation, better customer experience
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Prospecting (30%) | Active Deals (40%) | Internal (30%)
Key Activities
- Outbound prospecting: You're cold calling and emailing VPs of Risk, Compliance Officers, COOs at banks and fintechs. Most don't respond. You're trying to book 8-10 discovery calls per month.
- Multi-threading complex deals: You'll have 15-20 active opportunities at various stages. Most weeks you're chasing stakeholders for next meetings, waiting on IT security reviews, or stuck in procurement.
- Building business cases: You spend time in spreadsheets modeling ROI - fraud reduction, time saved on manual reviews, faster customer approvals. Buyers need this to justify budget.
- Managing long sales cycles: Deals slip quarters constantly. You're re-engaging contacts who went dark, adjusting timelines, and explaining to leadership why the Q3 deal is now Q1.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- Banks and credit unions move slowly. You'll spend months in "evaluating" stage while they form committees and get compliance sign-off. Deals you think are 90% done will stall for 6 months.
- You're often selling against the status quo. Many prospects aren't actively looking to replace their current process - you're convincing them there's a problem worth solving.
- Financial institutions are risk-averse. Expect extensive security reviews, legal redlines, and compliance questionnaires. IT will want proof the system integrates with their core banking platform.
- Your champion can leave mid-deal and you start over. Or budget gets frozen. Or they decide to build internally instead.
What Success Looks Like
- You close 8-12 deals per year at $100K-500K ACV each
- You maintain 3-4X pipeline coverage because so many deals slip or die
- You get good at identifying which prospects have actual budget and urgency vs those just exploring
Who You're Selling To
Primary Buyers:
- VP/Director of Risk Management or Compliance at banks, credit unions, fintechs
- COO or Head of Operations (owns customer onboarding process)
- CTO/VP Engineering (evaluates technical fit and integration)
What They Care About:
- Fraud losses and KYC compliance risk - regulators are tightening requirements
- Time to onboard new customers - competitive pressure to approve faster
- Operational efficiency - reducing manual review work, headcount leverage
- Integration complexity - won't buy if it doesn't work with their core systems
Requirements
- 3-5+ years selling SaaS to financial services (banks, credit unions, fintechs, payment processors)
- Experience with enterprise sales - navigating multiple stakeholders, long cycles, compliance/legal hurdles
- Outbound hunter mentality - comfortable prospecting into cold accounts and building pipeline from scratch
- Understanding of banking operations, KYC/AML compliance, or lending workflows (you need to speak their language)
- Track record hitting $800K+ quotas in complex B2B sales