How to find a salesperson.

Sales titles inflate faster and less evenly than any others. An Account Executive at a fifty-person company may carry a larger book than a Director at an enterprise, and both will describe themselves as exceeding quota. The title and the percentage are the two least informative things on a sales CV.

What does predict fit is the shape of the selling: the segment, whether pipeline is self-sourced or inbound, and the size and complexity of typical deals. Those three establish whether someone can do the specific job, and none of them appears reliably in a job title.

Job titles worth searching

Grouped by what the person actually does, because searching all49 at once produces a result set you cannot triage. Decide which group you need first — that decision does more for the search than any string below.

Where salespeople actually are

Sales is the most publicly visible profession a recruiter sources, which cuts both ways. Sellers post about wins, awards, and departures, so signals of both performance and availability are unusually easy to find — and every other recruiter can see them too. The advantage goes to speed rather than to cleverness.

Professional communities are the strongest discovery source. Pavilion, SaaStr, and Sales Hacker publish speaker lists, and participation correlates well with both performance and network quality. In industrial and manufacturing sales an entirely separate world exists: rep agency and trade association directories that technology-focused recruiters never look at.

The most underused pool is post-sale. Customer Success Managers and Renewals Managers carrying revenue numbers are doing quota-bearing work, and many are excellent expansion sellers. Their titles keep them invisible to standard AE searches, which means they are approached far less often than their capability warrants.

Boolean search strings

Written to be pasted as-is. Each one is built around an intent rather than a platform, since the useful question is what you are trying to find, not which site you happen to be on.

("account executive" OR "sales executive") ("president's club" OR "quota attainment" OR "% of quota" OR "top performer") "{city}" -jobs -hiring

("enterprise account executive" OR "strategic accounts") ("six-figure" OR "seven-figure" OR "$1M" OR "ACV") -jobs -recruiter

site:linkedin.com/in/ ("account executive" OR "enterprise sales") ("president's club" OR "quota") "{city}"

site:linkedin.com/advice/ intext:"Account Executive" intext:"{competitor}"

("medical device sales" OR "pharmaceutical sales") ("credentialed" OR "RepTrax" OR "Vendormate" OR "IQVIA") -jobs

("speaker" OR "panelist" OR "podcast") ("sales" OR "revenue") ("SaaStr" OR "Pavilion" OR "Sales Hacker") 2024..2026 -jobs

("account executive" OR "sales") ("open to" OR "exploring" OR "next chapter" OR "recently departed") "{city}" -jobs -recruiter

("manufacturer's representative" OR "sales agency") "{industry}" (directory OR members OR "find a rep") -jobs

("SDR" OR "BDR" OR "sales development") ("promoted" OR "top ranked" OR "president's club" OR "quota") -jobs -hiring

Mistakes that cost the most time

1. Hiring up-market sellers into down-market roles and vice versa

   This is the most common cause of failed sales hires. Enterprise selling means long cycles, procurement, and consensus among many stakeholders; SMB means volume, speed, and single decision-makers. Enterprise sellers moved into high-velocity roles are often too slow, and SMB sellers moved up-market frequently stall at procurement. Segment is a harder filter than years of experience.

2. Taking quota attainment at face value

   Everyone in sales claims to be at or above quota, and the claim is close to meaningless without context. What matters is the quota number itself, what percentage of the team hit it, whether the territory was established or new, and how much came from inbound. A 90 percent attainment against a difficult quota is a stronger signal than 130 percent against an easy one.

3. Ignoring inbound versus outbound

   A seller who has only ever worked inbound leads has not built pipeline, and a role requiring genuine prospecting will expose that immediately. This rarely appears on a CV, because both look like closing. Ask what proportion of pipeline the person sourced themselves — the answer is usually decisive.

4. Overlooking post-sale candidates

   Customer Success Managers carrying renewal or expansion numbers are doing quota-bearing revenue work, and many are strong expansion sellers. Because their titles do not say Account Executive, standard searches miss them entirely, and they are dramatically less contested than new-business closers.

5. Assuming industry sales experience transfers

   Medical device, pharmaceutical, and industrial sales have their own access requirements, credentialing systems, and relationship structures. A technology AE cannot walk into hospital accounts without credentialing, and a medical rep entering software faces an equally steep learning curve. Where the industry gates access, the industry experience is the requirement.

6. Approaching without the compensation structure

   Sales candidates evaluate base-to-variable split, on-target earnings, accelerators, and territory before anything else, because those numbers are the job. A message quoting only OTE without the split or the territory reads as evasive, and experienced sellers assume the worst when the structure is withheld.

Common questions

What job titles should I search for when hiring a salesperson?

Search the segment rather than the title, because Account Executive alone carries almost no seniority information. SMB, Mid-Market, Commercial, and Enterprise Account Executive describe genuinely different jobs with different cycle lengths and stakeholder complexity. Pipeline generation uses separate titles — SDR, BDR, and Business Development Representative — and post-sale revenue roles such as Customer Success Manager and Renewals Manager often carry quota too. In non-technology industries the vocabulary changes entirely, with Medical Sales Representative, Manufacturer's Representative, and Outside Sales Representative doing the same work.

How do I verify a salesperson's quota attainment claims?

Ask for context rather than a percentage. The useful questions are what the quota number actually was, what proportion of the team achieved it, whether the territory was established or newly created, and how much of the pipeline the person sourced themselves versus received from marketing. Ninety percent attainment against a demanding quota in a new territory is a considerably stronger signal than a hundred and thirty percent against an easy one with inbound leads. President's Club is the most verifiable claim available, since it is an award tied to a specific year and company.

What is the difference between an SDR, BDR, and Account Executive?

SDRs and BDRs generate pipeline; Account Executives close it. The distinction matters because the skills only partly overlap — prospecting rewards volume, resilience, and message testing, while closing rewards discovery, stakeholder management, and negotiation. Promoting a strong SDR to AE is a normal career step but not a guaranteed one, and hiring an SDR into a closing role because they were top of the leaderboard is a frequent and costly miscast. Some organisations use BDR for outbound and SDR for inbound qualification, but the usage is not consistent enough to rely on.

Can enterprise salespeople sell to small businesses?

Usually less well than expected, and the failure is about pace rather than ability. Enterprise selling involves long cycles, procurement processes, and building consensus among many stakeholders, which makes deliberate, relationship-heavy behaviour correct. High-velocity SMB selling requires speed and volume, and enterprise sellers frequently over-invest in deals that do not warrant it. The reverse move is harder still: SMB sellers moving up-market often stall when they first encounter procurement and legal review. Treat segment as a harder filter than years of experience.

Where can I find salespeople outside LinkedIn?

Sales is an unusually public profession. Communities such as Pavilion, SaaStr, and Sales Hacker publish speaker lists and member activity, and participants tend to be both high-performing and well-networked. Layoff and departure announcements are highly visible, and reaching someone in the first days after a change matters more than any search refinement. In industrial and manufacturing sales, rep agency and trade association directories list an entirely separate market. For medical sales, hospital credentialing through systems such as RepTrax indicates a rep who can access accounts immediately.