Account Executive skills

Essential skills

• Prospecting: Employers check how you identify potential customers and start conversations through examples of outreach or pipeline-building.
• Needs discovery: Employers look for evidence that you ask useful questions and understand a customer’s goals before recommending a solution.
• Sales presentation: Employers assess how clearly you explain a product or service and tailor your pitch to the customer.
• Negotiation and closing: Employers ask how you handle objections, agree on terms, and move opportunities toward a decision.
• Pipeline management: Employers check how you track deals, prioritise follow-ups, and keep sales records up to date.
• Account development: Employers look for examples of retaining customers, finding expansion opportunities, or building long-term relationships.

Technical and specialised skills

• CRM software: Employers may ask you to describe how you use a customer relationship management system to record activity and manage opportunities.
• Sales forecasting: Employers check whether you can estimate likely outcomes using deal stages, customer signals, and historical information.
• Product and industry knowledge: Employers assess how quickly you learn a product’s features, benefits, and place in the market.
• Sales metrics: Employers look for familiarity with measures such as quota attainment, conversion rates, deal size, and sales cycle length.
• Sales tools: Employers may ask about your experience with tools for prospect research, communication, presentations, or sales reporting.
• Written communication: Employers may review a sample email, proposal, or follow-up message for clarity and relevance.

Soft skills

• Active listening: Employers check this in interviews and role-plays by seeing whether you respond to what the customer actually says.
• Resilience: Employers ask how you handle rejection, setbacks, or a slow sales period.
• Adaptability: Employers look for examples of adjusting your approach to different customers or changing priorities.
• Organisation: Employers check how you manage competing tasks, follow-ups, and deadlines.
• Confidence: Employers assess whether you communicate recommendations clearly without coming across as pushy.
• Collaboration: Employers ask how you work with colleagues in areas such as marketing, customer success, or product support.

How to show these skills on your resume

• Managed a sales pipeline from prospecting through negotiation, keeping customer records and follow-ups organised in a CRM.
• Led discovery conversations to understand customer needs and presented solutions tailored to their priorities.
• Built and maintained customer relationships by coordinating with internal teams to resolve issues and identify next steps.

How to build them

• Practise discovery conversations by preparing open-ended questions and summarising what you hear.
• Learn your product or service well enough to explain its value in clear, customer-focused language.
• Build a consistent prospecting and follow-up routine, and review which approaches lead to useful conversations.
• Use a CRM or spreadsheet to track contacts, next steps, and deal progress.
• Ask for feedback after sales calls, presentations, and role-plays, then practise one area for improvement at a time.
• Study negotiation, objection-handling, and presentation techniques, and apply them in low-stakes practice.
• Work with colleagues in related teams to understand how the customer experience continues after a sale.