The tech industry’s traditional SDR-to-AE career ladder is disappearing fast. AI agents are absorbing the mechanical work that SDRs, BDRs, and junior Account Executives (AEs) have always handled, such as outbound sequencing, prospect research, follow-up, scheduling, data entry. As a result, SaaS companies are increasingly relying on hybrid teams comprised of both more senior-level sales reps and AI agents to generate greater revenue while retaining a lower headcount.
However, this creates a problem that most technology companies have not fully reckoned with yet. If you eliminate the bottom rungs of the career ladder, you do not just lose the roles. You also lose the pipeline that feeds every senior position above them.
Senior-level reps like Enterprise AEs (EAEs) and technical sellers like Sales Engineers (SEs) have to start somewhere. Historically, most of them have gained their selling experience in entry-level positions. If there is no structured path for them to develop, companies will spend the next decade fighting over an increasingly narrow pool of experienced laterals, even as compensation continues to climb.
Drawing on our research, we propose a solution: implementing an existing associate model throughout the tech industry.
What Consulting Firms Figured Out About Recruitment
Consulting firms like Bain have long relied on a different model for career growth for their frontline go-to-market roles. This provides a useful template for any company that needs to grow complex, high-judgment roles from the ground up and wants to avoid sourcing them from an increasingly competitive market.
McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and similar firms do not hire analysts expecting them to generate revenue on day one. They hire people they want to develop into senior contributors. New analysts enter structured programs with dedicated training, senior mentorship, and deliberate exposure to real client work in a supported environment. The expectation is not immediate output; rather, it is long-term development. Business Analysts at McKinsey, for instance, typically spend two to three years working through client engagements before being promoted to Associate.
It is worth noting that this is not a perfect system. It retains significant turnover for some positions, and requires an equal number of experienced and entry-level candidates. What the model does prove, however, is that structured development of junior talent into senior contributors is viable when companies commit to it seriously. The analyst who spends two years working alongside Engagement Managers on real client problems, receiving formal feedback, and taking on increasingly greater responsibility ultimately develops valuable institutional and technical depth.
The success of these programs should encourage tech companies to consider building their own associate programs. The goal is not to replicate consulting firm culture or expect that associates stay forever. Rather, it is to build a structured track that intentionally develops the technical and commercial judgment that senior sales roles require before the talent shortage forces expensive, inefficient lateral hiring at the top of the market.
Why Tech Sales Needs This Model Now
The traditional entry-level path in tech sales existed because the sales motions required people. SDRs made calls, BDRs ran outreach sequences, and junior AEs handled smaller accounts while building toward larger ones. These roles were not just career rungs. They revealed who had the instincts, resilience, and commercial judgment to succeed at senior levels.
Entry-level go-to-market roles are currently being squeezed from both ends: AI is taking on an increasing share of tasks, while companies lack the bandwidth to develop junior talent. For example, a single GTM Engineer (GTME) building automated systems can drive the volume that a team of SDRs once produced. Senior reps managing agent workflows are running processes that used to require three or four junior reps.
If this continues, companies will likely lean further into automation to make up for shrinking junior headcount, further eroding the pipeline of future senior talent and creating even more pressure to automate more. Companies that interrupt this dynamic now will be better positioned when the senior talent market inevitably becomes more expensive.
What an Associate Model Will Look Like in Tech Sales
Adapting the consulting model to tech sales does not mean transplanting it wholesale. The context is different, so the approach must be purpose-built. But the core principle translates directly: hire people you want to develop into senior technical sellers, invest in coaching them, and measure the program’s success over years rather than quarters.
In practice, an associate program in technical sales is a structured development track designed to produce the Sales Engineers and Enterprise AEs that companies need three to five years from now. Here is what that looks like in each of its key dimensions:
- Role design – Associates support senior Sales Engineers and Enterprise AEs rather than carrying independent quota. They join discovery calls, assist with technical demonstrations, help synthesize outputs from AI agent workflows, and contribute to post-POC reviews. The exposure is real, but it happens within a supported structure where they are learning alongside experienced professionals.
- Technical development – Unlike traditional entry-level sales roles, associates in this model need baseline technical fluency from the start. That means understanding product architecture fundamentals, participating in technical conversations about integration requirements, and managing and interpreting AI agent outputs. Companies should build curriculum around these requirements rather than assuming associates will absorb the knowledge passively through proximity.
- Timeline expectations – Meaningful independent contribution takes two to three years. That is a fundamentally different conversation than the ninety-day ramp most tech companies apply to sales hires. Thus, leaders must align internally before building the program. They must sell this timeline to finance, boards, and their own operating instincts before hiring the first associate.
- Career path clarity – The consulting model produces loyalty in part because the path forward is transparent. Analysts know what engagement managers do. Engagement managers know what partners do. Everyone understands the milestones. Technical sales associate programs need the same clarity: explicit progression from associate to Sales Engineer to Principal SE to Director of Sales Engineering, or parallel tracks into Enterprise AE roles with technical depth.
The Business Case for Treating This as Investment
Associate programs carry real upfront costs and often produce no immediate revenue. For technology companies conditioned to measure every new hire against a short-term return, that creates a tension worth addressing directly.
The alternative and increasingly expensive option is competing for experienced technical sales talent in an open market. Despite the competition for Sales Engineers who can carry quota and manage AI agent workflows, the talent pool has not yet expanded to meet demand. Companies that are not building their own pipeline are bidding against each other for the same cohort of laterals. As a result, they drive up compensation, extend time-to-fill, and lose ground to better-resourced competitors who can outspend them.
There is also a quality advantage that the market does not fully price in. A Sales Engineer or Enterprise AE who developed within a company understands the product’s technical architecture, knows the customer base, has seen how deals move through the pipeline, and has built relationships across product, engineering, and customer success. A lateral hire with equivalent title and experience, however, needs significant time to build that context.
Building an associate program requires committing to a longer time horizon than most technology companies are typically comfortable with. Firms that move fast and optimize aggressively for quarterly metrics may find it difficult to maintain investment in programs whose returns arrive years later. That is a real challenge, and it is the reason so few tech companies have built this. But the companies that make this mindset shift before the talent shortage forces their hand will be in a structurally different position than their competitors by the end of the decade.
How to Start Building Your Associate Model for Tech Sales
The program does not need to be fully formed before the first hire. A few starting points matter most:
- Begin by separating what you are currently asking SDRs and junior AEs to do into two categories: tasks that AI agents are absorbing, and tasks that require human judgment, relationship development, and contextual understanding. The second category defines the capabilities associate roles should develop. If that list is sparse, the role is not sufficiently differentiated from what automation handles, and the company needs to refine the program design before hiring into it.
- Map the senior roles you’ll likely need in three to five years. As Betts has observed in our work with early-stage AI companies, strategically timing your GTM hires has an outsized impact on whether you reach funding milestones with momentum or struggle to generate traction. The same logic applies to talent development: the senior Sales Engineers and Enterprise AEs you want in 2029 need to be in development now, not sourced from an open market that will be more competitive.
- Identify the senior Sales Engineers and Enterprise AEs who have the capacity and inclination to mentor junior reps. The development model only works if it is tied to real day-to-day exposure. Associates learn by working alongside experienced practitioners, not by completing a curriculum in isolation. If your senior people cannot or will not make time for that, the program will fail. Building mentorship into performance expectations from the start is what separates programs that scale from those that dissolve.
Build Your New Sales Team with Betts
Betts has spent over fifteen years sourcing GTM candidates for high-growth tech companies, and we’ve observed these market shifts for longer than most. Contact us here and discover how we can help you transform your talent acquisition for the new GTM recruitment model.