Mid-Market Account Executive

Overview

You sell Crossbeam's ecosystem intelligence platform to mid-market B2B companies (likely 100-1000 employees). The product helps companies share and analyze partner ecosystem data to find warm intros, accelerate deals, and retain customers. You're selling into two buyer personas: traditional partnerships/ecosystem leaders, and increasingly, AI/GTM teams who want to use Crossbeam's data network as an intelligence layer for AI agents.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Series C/D (191 employees, established product)

Size: 191 employees

Growth: Just beat all fiscal year targets. Named by Tropic as top-10 fastest growing AI product in enterprise. Named by Forbes as a best startup employer. Strong hiring mode.

Market Position: Category creator in ecosystem-led growth/partner intelligence. Experiencing unexpected second wave of demand from AI teams who need better data for AI agents.

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 40% Inbound - Mix of PLG free/trial users who need paid features, marketing-generated demos, and people who've heard about ecosystem-led growth
• 40% Outbound - You target companies with active partner programs (resellers, tech partnerships, integrations) and AI/ML teams building GTM agents
• 20% Partner/Referral - Ecosystem players referring each other, existing customers expanding

SDR/AE Structure: Likely have SDR support for qualification and initial outreach, but you're expected to source some of your own pipeline, especially in the newer AI persona

SE Support: Probably shared SE pool for technical demos, especially important for the AI agent use case which requires more technical explanation

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Reveal (similar ecosystem intelligence), homegrown solutions (Airtable + manual partner sharing), traditional partner portals that don't do data matching

How They Differentiate: Network effects (more partners on platform = more valuable), specific AI agent use case is new, established brand in ecosystem-led growth movement

Common Objections:

• "We already share partner data in spreadsheets"
• "Our partners won't want to connect their data"
• "Too expensive for the ROI"
• "We're not mature enough in our partner program yet"

Win Themes: Speed to value from data matching, specific co-sell plays that worked for similar companies, the AI intelligence angle is resonating with forward-thinking GTM teams

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting (25%) | Active Deals (45%) | Internal (30%)

Key Activities

• Discovery & Demo Calls: You spend 8-12 hours/week on Zoom walking through the product. Half your demos are to partnerships/ecosystem leaders explaining co-sell workflows. The other half are increasingly to RevOps, sales ops, or AI teams showing how Crossbeam data feeds AI agents. You need to understand both use cases.

• Multi-Threading: Mid-market deals need 3-4 stakeholders. You're coordinating between partnerships (who love it), sales leaders (who are skeptical about ROI), RevOps (who want to see the data quality), and sometimes IT/security (who need to approve the integrations). A lot of your time is scheduling the next meeting and aligning internal champions.

• Partner/Ecosystem Education: Many prospects don't have mature partner programs yet. You spend time explaining ecosystem-led growth concepts, showing case studies, and helping them understand what's possible. This is consultative but also means longer sales cycles when they need to get buy-in internally.

• Outbound to AI Teams: The CEO just announced this AI agent use case is getting traction. You're experimenting with outreach to ML/AI teams, data science leaders, and GTM ops people building AI workflows. This is newer territory and messaging is still being figured out.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Two Different Buyer Journeys: Selling to partnerships teams is one motion (they understand the problem). Selling to AI teams is totally different (you're educating on a new use case). You need to context-switch constantly and the AI angle doesn't have as many proof points yet.

• Partner Chicken-and-Egg: Prospects ask "which of our partners are already on Crossbeam?" If their key partners aren't on the platform yet, you're selling them on potential rather than immediate value. Network effects work when the network is there, but early adopters need more convincing.

• Long Consensus-Building: Mid-market means multiple decision-makers but not enterprise budgets. You'll spend weeks getting partnerships, sales, and finance aligned on a $40K purchase. Deals slip quarters because "we need to see Q3 partner results first" or "budget got reallocated to headcount."

• ROI Proof Burden: You're promising pipeline acceleration and better conversion through partner intros, but it's hard to attribute directly. You need customer stories and case studies, but many prospects want to see their own data prove it before buying.

What Success Looks Like

• Closing 1-2 new mid-market deals per month at $30-60K ACV
• Building pipeline of 3-4x quota (accounts in active demo/eval stage)
• Getting champions to bring in multiple stakeholders within first 2-3 calls
• Expansion motion: Getting initial deals to expand as they add more partners or adopt AI use cases

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• VP/Director of Partnerships or Ecosystem (traditional buyer)
• VP/Director of Business Development (at companies with active channel/partner programs)
• Head of Revenue Operations or GTM Operations (especially for AI use case)
• VP of Sales (economic buyer, cares about pipeline and conversion rates)

What They Care About:

• Partnerships Persona: Finding warm paths to prospects, proving partner program ROI, getting credit for pipeline contribution, expanding partner relationships beyond handshake agreements
• AI/GTM Ops Persona: Data quality for AI agents, integration with existing stack (CRM, data warehouse), competitive advantage from better intelligence, not having to rely on stale 3rd party data
• Sales Leader: Will this actually generate pipeline? What's the CAC payback? How much time will my reps spend on this vs selling?

Requirements

• 3-5 years full-cycle AE experience, preferably selling B2B SaaS to mid-market
• Experience selling into partnerships/ecosystem teams OR sales ops/RevOps (ideally both)
• Comfortable with consultative, multi-stakeholder deals that need education and consensus-building
• Can explain technical concepts (data sharing, integrations, API-driven workflows) without being an engineer
• Comfortable operating in a "figure it out" environment - the AI persona is new and you'll help refine messaging
• Track record hitting quota in a product-led or PLG-assisted sales environment