An Account Executive is the core quota-carrying sales role responsible for managing the full sales cycle from qualified opportunity to closed deal. AEs own the relationship with the prospect during the buying process, conduct discovery, run product demonstrations, handle negotiations, and drive deals to signature. In most B2B SaaS companies, AEs are segmented by deal size — SMB AEs handle high-volume, shorter-cycle deals while Enterprise AEs manage fewer, larger, more complex opportunities.