Inside Sales Experts Blog

State of Sales: 2026 AE Models, Motions, & Metrics Research

mattbertuzzi@gmail.com (Matt Bertuzzi) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 11:02:24 GMT

Every two years, we ask a simple question: how is the AE role changing?

For 2026, the answer is: in many ways. The market hasn't snapped back to the 2021/early-2022 peak. AEs are carrying more responsibility, selling into harder-to-move buying committees, and increasingly relying on self-sourcing, role consolidation, and AI-assisted workflows to make the number.

Kyle Smith and I preview the key findings in the video below. The full report draws on responses from 158 B2B companies and marks the 10th biennial edition of our AE research.

Here are a few standouts.

Quota attainment is under significant pressure

48% of reps achieved annual quota in 2026, down from 51% in 2024 and well below the long-term trend. The distribution has also shifted with fewer companies sitting in the 50–90% range, while more are in the 0–30% danger zone. That combination points to something more than a mild productivity dip: a fundamental mismatch between market conditions and the operating model.

OTEs and quotas continue to rise

Median AE OTE reached $200K, up from $190K in 2024 and $167K in 2022. Median quota is now $960K, with a quota-to-OTE ratio of 4.6x (up from 4.2x in 2024). Quotas have increased ~2.4% CAGR, but "on-target" earnings have increased ~4.9%.

Selling conditions have tightened

Compared with Q1 2025, near-majorities of respondents reported increases in stakeholder count, sales cycle length, discounting pressure, deal slippage, and required pipeline coverage. The current environment isn't simply harder in one dimension.

Companies are hiring more experienced AEs

Average experience required at hire is now 3.7 years, up from 2.7 years in 2022. Yet ramp time reached 6.2 months. That's the highest in this research's history. At higher ASPs, the era of the junior AE appears largely over.

AI is everywhere, but not equally impactful

Most companies are using AI in at least some AE workflows (e.g., post-call summaries, account research, email personalization, etc.). But impact is uneven. When leaders rated specific workflows, 10 of 11 remained split between "game changer" and "hit or miss."

The strongest signal we found was in attainment. Organizations in the highest AI Engagement Score tercile reported 57% of reps at quota, compared to 39% in the lowest. This is observational data — we're not claiming bulletproof causation. But the relationship is meaningful, and the two groups showed no significant differences across several control variables.

The bottom line

The 2026 AE story isn't about a rebound to the post-COVID boom. It's about adaptation. AEs are operating in a harder market with higher expectations, longer ramps, and more responsibility. Companies are responding by hiring more experienced talent, consolidating roles, and experimenting aggressively with AI.

A massive thank you to the executives who participated and you can get a copy of the full 2026 Account Executive Report here.

2026 AE Models & Metrics Study Is Now Open

mattbertuzzi@gmail.com (Matt Bertuzzi) — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 13:56:42 GMT

Newer research available

The 2026 AE Models, Motions & Metrics report is now published.

Read the 2026 report →

The Account Executive role is changing.

AI tools have entered the workflow. Sales cycles are under pressure. And leadership teams are watching pipeline efficiency more closely than ever. That raises a practical question: What does a high-performing AE model actually look like today?

Our AE Models & Metrics research is designed to answer exactly that.

For nearly two decades, we’ve surveyed revenue leaders to understand how sales teams structure the AE role and what performance actually looks like in the field. We’ve now launched the 11th edition of the study, and we’re inviting sales leaders to participate.

Three Questions Driving Our 2026 Study

1. How is AI Affecting the AE Role?

AI tools are showing up everywhere in the sales workflow— research, prospecting, meeting prep, and opportunity management. But the real question isn’t whether teams are experimenting with AI. It’s whether AI is actually changing AE productivity, performance, and expectations.

2. Pipeline Coverage vs. Sales Efficiency?

For years the advice has been simple: Increase pipeline coverage. But many teams are discovering that more pipeline doesn’t automatically translate to more revenue. We’re examining coverage ratios, pipeline productivity, and what the most efficient teams are doing differently.

3. How are Teams Adapting Their Sales Models?

The current selling environment has pushed many organizations to rethink the AE role. We’re seeing changes in:

Quotas
Deal ownership models
Pipeline generation expectations
Alignment with SDR and marketing teams

This year’s research will capture how those adjustments are playing out across the market.

A Six-Minute Survey

If you lead or operate a sales team, we’d value your input. The survey takes about six minutes, responses are anonymous, and results are reported only in aggregate.

As with all of our research, the goal is straightforward: Provide practical benchmarks revenue leaders can actually use. Please take the survey here.

Participate in 2025 SDR Research

mattbertuzzi@gmail.com (Matt Bertuzzi) — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 11:10:54 GMT

Newer research available

The 2025 SDR Models, Motions & Metrics report is now published.

Read the report →

Today, we launch our 2025 SDR motions, metrics, and compensation research.

This is our 10th iteration of this project since 2007. This edition will take ~6 minutes to complete. If you lead a Sales Development group, please participate.

We've redesigned this year’s survey based on your feedback to dig into how things are changing. But, equally importantly, we want to focus in on what outperformance looks like in this environment.

We’ll be sharing the results in the coming months. I appreciate that so many of you take the time to share. We couldn’t do it without you.

2024 SaaS AE Metrics & Compensation: Benchmark Report

mattbertuzzi@gmail.com (Matt Bertuzzi) — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 11:40:05 GMT

Newer research available

The 2026 AE Models, Motions & Metrics report is now published.

Read the 2026 report →

The 2024 Benchmark Report is our latest dive into metrics and compensation for the AE role within SaaS companies. It summarizes the findings from leaders at more than 170 B2B SaaS companies regarding the current state of the Account Executive role.

If you'd rather watch the report than read it, Kyle Smith and I recorded a video walkthrough and breakdown.

Here's a peek at what you'll find inside:

SaaS Account Executive Quotas

Median annual ACV quota for a SaaS AE rose to $800K (page 32). This is up from $740K in 2022. Taking a step back, we see that quotas have risen modestly, at just a 2% compound annual growth rate, since 2012.

The largest factor in determining quota is ACV (page 33). The difference in quota for a <$25K ACV seller and a $250K+ seller is nearly 2.5X. Compared to 2022, quotas grew across all ACV bands. But larger—double-digit percent—increases were concentrated at higher ACVs.

AE Compensation: base & OTE

Median annual on-target earnings (OTEs) are $190K with a 53:47 base : variable split (page 39). That is up from $167K in 2022. Continuing a decade-long trend, median OTE rose to record highs in 2024. As discussed above, quotas increased at roughly 2% annually, OTEs have risen at more than 5% compounded annually over that same period. This has resulted in a re-shaping of the Quota:OTE ratio (page 43) and commission rates (page 44).

Check out the 2024 Bridge Group SaaS AE Metrics & Compensation Report to uncover all our findings. We hope these reports help you benchmark against your peers and put trends that you may not have been aware of on your radar.

Attrition Assumptions for the 2024 SDR Plan

ksmith@bridgegroupinc.com (Kyle Smith) — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 12:04:06 GMT

Last month, I just put together a presentation for a handful of VC-backed portfolio companies on building attrition into SDR planning. The broader topic was what happens to your 2024 SDR pipeline number if your quit rate spikes. You can watch a shorter video version of the talk here.

For many companies in the audience, the SDR operating plan was built off of 2023. “We did $20M new logo ARR last year, want to grow by 30%, goal for this year is $26. We need sales development to source 25% of that so we need 2 more SDRs.”

This is a very common aspect of the headcount planning process but what is often overlooked are the underlying assumptions of rep attrition. If 2024 attrition mirrors 2023, no problem. But what if it doesn’t? And is that even a reasonable expectation?

Turning to the BLS Quits Data

We’re coming off of 15 months of the lowest quit rate that we’ve seen in a decade. With layoffs being broadly publicized and stiffer market conditions keeping people in role longer, voluntary attrition (aka quits) dropped significantly during Q4’22-Q4’23.

We have clients who had 25-35% attrition in 2023. That is outstanding. Normally, we’d anticipate that number to be 40-50%. (See our SDR research data below for historical context.)

But what happens if 2024 regresses to the mean of what we’ve seen over the past 10 years?

Let’s run a thought experiment

Let’s assume a fully ramped SDR sources 5 Stage 1 Opptys per month with a $50K ACV (~$3M in pipeline annually).

For each seat that quits, we have to post, interview, offer, start, and ramp to get back to what we lost. While current SDR roles are being flooded with applications, that wasn’t always the case and may not be going forward. Even with all of those applicants, the time to fill still often sits around 25-30 days.

The visual below shows a 10 person team and models 2024 attrition returning to the long-term trend of ~50%. Each white box is the month a rep turns over and the seat is filled while the green gradient shows their performance during the ramp period. In this model, the team misses the 2024 number by 11%.

Calculating the impact of attrition for your team

Here’s what you need:

Your time to fill in months (think: from prior rep’s last day to new hire’s first)
Average ramp time (since 2007 this has been 3 months +/- 2 weeks)
Your 2024 anticipated attrition rate (quits, fires, and internal promotions)

Using this back-of-napkin math, you can model different scenarios to understand where your team will land against the 2024 number. More importantly, doing this now gives you 10+ months to adjust before it’s too late and 2024 is a miss.

Actions you can take

Now that we’ve detailed the issue and how to calculate it, what can you do about it?

Option 1: Hire ahead of attrition

If you have a 10 person team and are anticipating being 10% under production expectations, that is 1 full additional headcount! If you have the ability to, hire more reps now and let attrition naturally right size your team over the course of the year. If you have modeled the attrition expectations into your plan, no need to constantly readjust unless your 2 variables (Ramp + fill, attrition rate) start to move outside calculated expectations.

Not everyone can just go change their SDR team’s headcount and open more reqs. So if the headcount is outside of your control, what can you do?

Option 2: Shape not shorten ramp time

Sounds lovely, but how? Break the impact (shown above) down into its component parts.

Time to fill - Reduce the time your SDR seat is empty to as close to 0 days as possible. Always be interviewing. Create and nurture a pipeline of talent that you can reengage as soon as you have an open req. Network in your area, reach out to past applicants, create relationships with universities (especially those with a sales program), have reps you trust nurture their network.

Ramp - reducing ramp time is extremely difficult if not impossible. Can you have a rep here and there that gets to full productivity within 1-1.5 months? Sure. Can you bring the average across the team down a full month year over year? Unlikely.

What you can do, and what our clients have done successfully is to improve production during that ramp period.

Three additional Opptys might not seem like much. But if you churn 5 reps in the year, that becomes 15. At $50K ACV, that’s $750k in pipeline. That can mean the difference between hitting your number or missing.

Option 3: Reduce the quit rate

There are entire books and mountains of posts written on this topic but excluding company culture, compensation plans, inbound leads, territory splits and 50 factors that could influence your attrition rate, I'll focus on one.

If possible, build micro promotions and career pathing into the SDR model. I mean tiers that the SDR can move through as they achieve certain milestones and complete certain certifications. Below is an example framework.

Each tier has set goals associated with them. Some training and skill development and some performance. Achievements can be reset in tier or be cumulative. I’d recommend only allowing internal promotions from SDR 3. This helps to ensure that your own internal teams do not cannibalize the success of Sales Development and make an attrition issue larger than it needs to be.

If you have any questions about how to build this into your actual plan or want to talk through designing a playbook to maximize productivity in ramp, do not hesitate to reach out to me on LinkedIn.

Participate in 2023 AE Research

mattbertuzzi@gmail.com (Matt Bertuzzi) — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 14:46:03 GMT

Today we launch our 2023 Account Executive motions, metrics, and compensation research.

This is our 10th iteration of this project since 2007. This edition will take ~6 minutes to complete. If you lead an AE group, please participate below.

We've redesigned this year’s survey based on your feedback to dig into how things are changing. But, equally importantly, we want to focus in on what outperformance looks like in this environment.

We’ll be sharing the results in the coming months. I appreciate that so many of you take the time to share. We couldn’t do it without you.>

The 2023 SDR Metrics Report is Here

mattbertuzzi@gmail.com (Matt Bertuzzi) — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 13:03:48 GMT

Newer research available

The 2025 SDR Models, Motions & Metrics report is now published.

Read the report →

COVID-19, the great resignation, inflation, 425 bps in rate hikes from the Fed, 450K jobs added, and 135K laid off. Tech sales has certainly been challenged since 2020.

In some ways, more has changed in the last two years than in the previous ten.

In our just released 2023 SDR Metrics & Compensation Report, we analyze the shifts in sales development over this period. Which trends have accelerated? Which strategies have withered? We dig into areas like motion, model, ramp, tenure, attrition, activity, compensation, tech stack, and front-line leadership.

About the Participants

This is our ninth round of this biennial research project and I can tell you it's our best one yet. This year, 365 Executives from a broad range of B2B companies participated. (69% North America companies, another 21% with global footprints, median respondent revenues of $45M, and median ASP/ACV at $52K).

A few observations

Before we began the number crunching, we collected a list of hunches on what we’d find. In the interest of transparency, we decided to share what we hypothesized and what we found.

The shift from office-first to work-from-anywhere was swift, pervasive, and persistent (pages 14-15)
Average experience, ramp, and tenure are changing the math of the SDR role (pages 17-21)
Layoffs following rate hikes have shifted the power dynamic in the SDR hiring market (pages 24-25)
A changing B2B buyer requires SDRs to change in turn (pages 26-29)
It is time to revisit the assumptions behind your qualification criteria, quotas, and pipeline contribution metrics (pages 32-34)
Some tech are at the vanguard and some table stakes (pages 38-41)
In this high-inflation environment, how have SDR and Leadership compensation reacted (pages 36, 37, 45, 46)

Get the full report

The report provides a comprehensive look at the data, trends, and metrics driving sales development in 2023. We couldn't do these types of research reports without this community. So thank you.

Get your copy of our Sales Development Metrics & Compensation research and let us know if you have any comments, questions, or improvements for the next round.

Participate in 2022-23 SDR Research

mattbertuzzi@gmail.com (Matt Bertuzzi) — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 18:20:34 GMT

UPDATE: The 2023 Sales Development Metrics Report is published and available for download.

Today we launch our 2022-23 SDR motions, metrics, and compensation research.

This is our 9th iteration of this project since 2007. This edition is more streamlined than prior years and will take ~5 minutes to complete. If you lead a Sales Development group, please participate.

We've redesigned this year’s survey based on your feedback to dig into how things are changing. But, equally importantly, we want to focus in on what outperformance looks like in this environment.

Two quick points of housekeeping:

This survey covers SDRs, not AE (we've concluded our AE research until 2023)
You likely have multiple teams/segments in your GTM motion (e.g., emerging, commercial, enterprise, etc.). Rather than provide the average for all, feel free to focus on the primary motion for your responses.

As always, all answers will be aggregated anonymously. We’ll be sharing the results with you and the rest of the community in the coming months. I appreciate that so many of you take the time to share. We couldn’t do it without you.

Participate in 2021 AE Research

mattbertuzzi@gmail.com (Matt Bertuzzi) — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 10:59:01 GMT

UPDATE: The 2022 SaaS AE Metrics & Compensation Report is published and available for download.

Today we launch our 2021 Account Executive motions, metrics, and compensation research.

This is our 9th iteration of this project since 2007. This edition is more streamlined than prior years and will take ~5 minutes to complete. If you lead an AE group, please participate.

We've redesigned this year’s survey based on your feedback to dig into how things are changing. But, equally importantly, we want to focus in on what outperformance looks like in this environment.

Two quick points of housekeeping:

This survey covers Account Executive, not SDRs (we've concluded our SDR research until 2022)
You likely have multiple teams/segments in your GTM motion (e.g., emerging, commercial, enterprise, etc.). Rather than provide the average for all, feel free to focus on the primary motion for your responses.

State of the B2B Labor Market: Q1 2021 Edition

mattbertuzzi@gmail.com (Matt Bertuzzi) — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 11:28:07 GMT

We’ve been closely following the B2B tech hiring market over the last twelve months. And with the Bureau Labor Statistics releasing the new Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary (JOLTS) last week, I thought now was a good time to take stock.

Compared to the trough (mid 2020) things are massively improved. But compared to the peak (late 2019) we aren’t yet fully recovered. Here are four things I’m seeing:

1) Layoffs are well behind us

Back in May 2020, I looked at 200 funded B2B SaaS companies and found:

Hiring freezes roared into April and turned to layoffs by May
By the middle of Q2 2020, 40%+ of companies had laid off SDRs, AEs, and AMs
Job losses peaked in late Q3

2) Hiring has surged back

Taking a look at those same 200 companies (excluding those that were M&A’d out of existence), I found hiring restarted in October and the recovery has only accelerated since.

Admittedly this is a binary view as I’m lumping Company A hiring 2 SDRs and Company B hiring 20 into the same camp. Further, I can’t tell if Company C hired 14 SDRs in 2019 and plans to hire just 4 in 2021. Still, interesting data.

Next I turned to broader employment numbers.

3) Sales employment has recovered 75% of the losses

Obviously there isn’t a category for SDR/AE/AM candidates in the unemployment data. But I’ve relied on “Some College and Associate Degree, 25 Yrs. & Over” as a fair enough proxy.

Through most of 2019, the unemployment rate hovered around 2.8%. That’s a level not seen since the boom years of 1998-2000. Then, seemingly overnight, the unemployment rate shot up to 14.8%.

We’ve since recovered nearly 75% of the losses. The unemployment rate for Some College or Associate's Degree, 25yrs+ now stands at 6.2% - bringing us back to the job market of the mid-2010s.

For the final piece of the puzzle I turned to the JOLTS report.

4) Quits are accelerating

The latest JOLTS release covers January 2021. Quits, or voluntary separations, are particularly of interest. The rate of quits is a good indicator of the strength of the labor market as it tends to fall sharply in recessions and rise in expansions.

I use the “Information” category as the best proxy for B2B tech. The chart below shows the monthly change from one year ago in the Information quit rate. Above the line shows an increasing rate of quits year-over-year and below the line the reverse.

Last week's JOLTs data show an increase in quits for three straight months. This is good news for reps looking to make a change and something to keep on eye on for sales leaders.

Net Net

Heading into April 2021, we are in a much better place than we were in April 2020. Layoffs are in the rear-view, companies are hiring, employment is recovering, and quits are accelerating.

That being said, we still have roughly 1.8 unemployed workers for every job opening in our industry. That is nearly double where we were in the middle of 2019.

I don’t have any big meta-conclusion to share. So do with this what you will. : )