We’ve just released the 2020 SaaS AE Metrics Report. This marks the 7th round of this research project. Leaders from 287 SaaS companies shared their key metrics--growth rate, ACV, model, quota, comp, tech stack, and more.

You can get a full copy of the report here, but I wanted to share one finding that really stuck out.

AE comp soars to new highs

Last year, I wrote about SaaS AE compensation continuing to outpace the broader US economy.

That’s a 52% increase since 2010 (~5% compounded annually). Compare that to SDR compensation, which has been flat since 2010 when adjusting for inflation. 

In this report, we find median SaaS AE on-target earnings of $158K. More than 70% of respondents report OTEs in excess of $120K. Wow.

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Turn on economic news these days and it’s nearly impossible to miss stories about the tight labor market and (depending on how you measure it) moderate wage growth. 

The chart below compares the Unemployment Rate  and Average Hourly Earnings indexed to June 2009--the official end of the last recession.

Net-net, the unemployment rate has fallen by ~60% while earnings have increased ~30%. 

We’ve been diligently working our way through our latest round of AE research and I wanted to share a preview of what I'm seeing. If the AE role were following the larger economy, we would expect to be seeing 2.5% compound annual growth in On-Target Earnings. In other words, a $100K OTE in 2009 should be roughly $124K today.

In reality what we're seeing is much, much bigger. 

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Gartner's 2019 Current and Emerging Technologies in Sales is making the rounds on LinkedIn.

I’ll be honest, I spent quite some time trying to grok what it was saying. I’m more of a numbers person than a visual learner, so I made a bit of a remix. I thought I’d share it here to get the community’s feedback.

First, I spreadsheet'd their data out by adoption, current ROI, and future importance. I used distance to center to measure Deployment Level  (1-9 scale) and followed their size and color key for Current ROI and Future Importance (1-3 scale).
  

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Today, we launch our Account Executive research focused on B2B closing teams.

This is our seventh round of research since 2007. We asked a group of VCs, CROs, and Sales VPs to weigh in on the key questions for building and leading teams today. They came back with items like:

• Pipeline source: What's the mix between inbound, outbound SDR, and self-sourced pipeline? How do high-growth companies differ from the pack?
• Compensation: What's the going rate for OTE (by experience, location, and quota)? Outside the mega-hubs, where are companies building teams?
• Quotas: What are average quotas (by company stage, by ACV, etc.)? What % attain the number?
• Technology: What makes up the sales stack? Which tools actually move the needle on performance?
   

This year’s survey is more streamlined than prior and will take roughly 5 minutes to complete. If you lead an AE group, please participate. 

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.

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