Pre-sales is a lynchpin portion of the new enterprise selling ecosystem in SaaS, and success for your team depends on finding – and hiring – the right unicorn sellers that understand your prospects’ challenges and needs. As outlined in our new Betts Enterprise Compensation Guide, this sales stage is usually overseen by experienced Enterprise Account Executives (EAEs) and Sales Engineers (SEs) working in tandem to cover all bases and map out requirements before handing off the project to the Solutions Architects for implementation.
This partnership just scratches the surface of the level of collaboration, coordination and technical validation that is typically required to successfully close enterprise-sized deals in tech. In this article, we will dive deeper into everything you need to know about qualifying and hiring candidates for these pre-sales roles to ensure you find your right-fit unicorns:
What is Enterprise Pre-Sales?
SaaS pre-sales typically encompasses most of the activities that occur before a formal sales agreement is reached, focusing on technical validation, solution design and building credibility with multiple stakeholders. For enterprise-sized deals, this also generally involves a team of go-to-market (GTM) and customer success resources working together to better understand, map out and pitch a tailored solution that meets the unique needs of a larger organization.
The enterprise pre-sales phase usually involves:
- Technical Discovery: Understanding the prospect’s existing technology stack, integration requirements, and technical constraints
- Solution Validation: Demonstrating how your product addresses specific use cases and meets performance requirements
- Stakeholder Alignment: Building consensus across IT, procurement, end users and executive sponsors
- Risk Mitigation: Addressing security, compliance and implementation concerns before they become deal blockers
- Business Case Development: Quantifying ROI and building compelling value propositions for executive approval
Technical Sales and Support for Enterprise Accounts
The rise of the technical support team represents one of the most significant trends reshaping enterprise sales recruitment. Sales, product/technical sales and customer success teams work closely together to ensure solutions align with the client’s existing technology infrastructure as well as their business goals. This collaborative model addresses the increasing sophistication of enterprise buyers who expect vendors to demonstrate not just business value, but technical feasibility and implementation expertise before making purchasing decisions.
This evolution has created distinct role specializations within the pre-sales function – for example, Enterprise Account Executives focus on executive relationship building and commercial orchestration, while Sales Engineers provide the technical understanding necessary to engage with decision-makers in the IT department or other technology-focused teams. The success of enterprise deals increasingly depends on how effectively these roles collaborate to address the full spectrum of buyer requirements throughout extended sales cycles that often span six to eighteen months.
Enterprise Pre-Sales: Role Breakdowns
Here is a breakdown of the roles and responsibilities of EAEs and SEs, the strengths each contributes to enterprise-level sales and how they work in tandem to successfully close deals:
Enterprise Account Executives
Enterprise Account Executives are on a different level than traditional AEs (Account Executives), with requirements that go beyond simply having experience with larger accounts. Enterprise-sized deals are a much more complex landscape that requires more than accumulating tenure, including higher knowledge benchmarks for business and technical conversations with C-level decision-makers, many of whom will share equal say on purchasing in organizations that impose a buying committee for technology investments.
We have seen these requirements also slowly become stricter over time as tech companies iron out what their unicorn seller persona looks like, as well as adapt to new market changes. Most organizations require a candidate that has a background that aligns with their sales motion, with at least 5 years of experience working with their target industry or titles. Check out our EAE job description sample here to learn more.
Technical depth also has become increasingly important for Enterprise Account Executives, particularly in sectors like AI, cloud security and infrastructure where prospects will have more pressing technology needs and questions. While EAEs do not need the same coding depth as a Sales Engineer or Solution Architect, they still require sufficient product understanding to be credible with enterprise-level buyers and to effectively collaborate with their SE partners throughout the sales process, translating complex technical concepts for executive audiences while ensuring business requirements are accurately reflected in proposed solutions.
Sales Engineers
Sales Engineers serve as the technical bridge between customer business challenges and product capabilities, bringing granular technological expertise that has become essential for modern SaaS sales success. In enterprise pre-sales, SEs provide technical validation that demonstrates solution feasibility and addresses the sophisticated technology requirements of large-scale implementations. They conduct thorough discovery for project needs with customer teams, develop documentation that outlines and demonstrates integration approaches, and configure solutions for specific software environments and use cases.
Collaboration with the sales team during pre-sales is only growing in importance as enterprise-sized SaaS deals become more complex. SEs must be prepared and present for negotiations navigating competing priorities on the business and technical sides, relationship-building conversations with stakeholders involved in the implementation project as well as on the C-suite, and coordination efforts between support personnel on both ends of the equation.
This technical validation stage has also become crucial as enterprise buyers are increasingly risk-averse about technology investments and require comprehensive due diligence before making purchasing decisions. The role of the Sales Engineer can also extend beyond initial sales discussions when needed to help ensure implementation success and identify opportunities for expanding account engagement from the client’s ongoing technology needs.
Compensation for Enterprise Pre-Sales Jobs
Average salaries for enterprise pre-sales jobs reflects the specialized nature of these roles and the competitive market for qualified candidates. As seen in our Enterprise Compensation Guide, there can be significant variation based on experience with larger deal sizes, industry focus and technical specialization in addition to typical tenure adjustments. Here is how earnings vary for EAEs and SEs in 2025:
Enterprise Account Executives
- $250K-$500K deals: $150K base / $150K variable
- $500K-$1M deals: $165K-$175K base / $165K-$175K variable
- $1M-$2.5M deals: $200K-$225K base / $200K-$225K variable
- $2.5M+ deals: $250K-$275K base / $250K-$275K variable
Sales Engineers
- 1-3 years experience: $120K-$130K base / $30K-$40K variable
- 3-5 years experience: $135K-$150K base / $40K-$50K variable
- 5-8 years experience: $150K-$165K base / $50K-$60K variable
- 8+ years experience: $170K-$180K base / $60K-$70K variable
Hiring for Your Right-Fit Enterprise Pre-Sales Talent
Recruiting for your unicorn seller in enterprise pre-sales can be a challenge in the current talent landscape, with a limited pool of qualified candidates that match all of your criteria and that are all being actively sourced by your competitors. That is why Betts has developed our own unique talent acquisition model for finding and hiring as many candidates as your need at scale, with Recruitment as a Service (RaaS).
Contact Betts here to learn how our specialized approach to enterprise sales role recruiting can help you build the team you need to scale your revenue and achieve the next level of growth.