📞Sales AE 90 Day Plan
First quarter for new account executives. Shadow before pitching, write the objection list, close one small deal before quarter end.
What this track gets right
- ✓5 customer calls shadowed by week 2
- ✓Personal objection-handling cheatsheet by week 6
- ✓First closed deal or qualified pipeline by week 12
Watch-outs the maker wishes someone said
- !Do not pitch in week 1. The product story you read is not the one customers buy.
- !Do not skip CRM hygiene. Bad notes lose deals 3 quarters from now.
- !Do not eat the discount before you understand the price ladder.
Week-by-week for this role
56 role-relevant tasks across 12 weeks. Open the interactive checklist on the home page to track progress.
Meet people, set up tools, do not break anything yet.
- ▢Confirm laptop, IDE, VPN, SSO, and password manager all work.
- ▢Read your offer letter and role description in full once more.
- ▢Get added to Slack/Teams channels for your team and adjacent teams.
- ▢Schedule a 30-min 1:1 with your manager for week 2.
- ▢Write down 3 questions you do not want to ask twice. Ask them this week.
- ▢Find your team's source of truth: wiki, Notion, Confluence, or Drive.
- ▢Shadow 2 customer calls with senior reps before pitching anything.
Understand the org chart, the product, and the politics, in that order.
- ▢Draw the team org chart on paper, including who actually decides things.
- ▢List the top 5 metrics your team is measured on. Ask if you are unsure.
- ▢Schedule a 1:1 with one peer outside your direct team.
- ▢Map the customer journey end-to-end with one Loom or whiteboard sketch.
- ▢Write a working assumptions doc: what you think the role looks like at day 30, 60, 90.
20 minutes each with as many key people as your week holds.
- ▢Run 5 listening 1:1s. Same 4 questions every time.
- ▢Take notes on patterns, not anecdotes. What gets repeated?
- ▢Find the team's recurring frustration. The one nobody fixes because nobody owns it.
- ▢Listen to 5 sales calls (recorded). Note every objection you hear twice.
Write what you learned. Show your manager. Adjust expectations.
- ▢Write a 1-page 30-day note: what you learned, what surprised you, what you will focus on next 30 days.
- ▢Share the note in your next 1:1. Ask one direct question: 'Am I focused on the right things?'
- ▢Ship one small visible win: a doc, a fix, a customer email, a design polish.
- ▢Update your LinkedIn and internal profile to reflect the new role.
- ▢Sanity-check: are you sleeping, eating, exercising? First month is exhausting.
One concrete project with a finishable outcome in 4-6 weeks.
- ▢Propose 2 candidate projects to your manager. Let them pick one.
- ▢Write a short spec: problem, success metric, scope cuts you would make.
- ▢Identify the top risk to delivery. Address it in week 1, not week 5.
- ▢Run your first solo customer call. Bring a peer for backup.
Default to writing it down. Wins are not seen until they are written.
- ▢Write a weekly status update. 3 lines: shipped, learned, blocked.
- ▢Demo your in-progress work in the team meeting. Even ugly, even partial.
- ▢Have one meaningful disagreement, in public, with curiosity not heat.
Take a position you might be wrong about. Notice who responds.
- ▢Make one decision your gut says is right but you cannot fully prove yet.
- ▢Push back on one piece of work that you think is misallocated.
- ▢Ask for feedback in writing. 'What would you change about how I worked this week?'
- ▢Run a postmortem (or retro) on a small mistake out loud.
- ▢Send your first cold email or first close-attempt of the cycle.
Check in on the original 90-day plan. Drop, swap, double down.
- ▢Update the 30-day note into a 60-day note. Same 1 page, same 3 sections.
- ▢Ask your manager: 'If you had to score me right now out of 10, what is it?'
- ▢Identify the one thing you would do differently if you started this role today.
- ▢Take one full unplugged day. Energy debt compounds.
Move from 'making progress' to 'shipping the thing'.
- ▢Cut scope hard. What is the smallest version that proves the bet?
- ▢Set an explicit ship-by date. Tell at least one person.
- ▢Run one dry-run demo to a friendly audience before the real one.
- ▢Triage your inbox. Reply to 5 things that have been waiting on you.
- ▢Find your first deal in late-stage. Pre-mortem the closing call.
Hit the ship date. Write the launch note the same week.
- ▢Ship the project. Even if it is rough.
- ▢Write a launch note: what shipped, why, what is next, what you learned.
- ▢Tag everyone who helped. By name. With specifics.
- ▢Capture metrics before/after. Even rough numbers beat no numbers.
- ▢Close one deal or hand off one warm pipeline.
From reactive to proactive. What will you own next?
- ▢Propose 2 areas you want to own in the next quarter to your manager.
- ▢Identify one thing that you and only you can do at this company.
- ▢Identify one habit from this 90 days you want to keep forever.
- ▢Identify one team norm you want to gently change.
Make it official. Get on record. Negotiate from data, not vibes.
- ▢Write the 90-day review: shipped, scope, scale of impact, gaps, next bets.
- ▢Have the formal 90-day check-in with your manager. Ask for written confirmation of expectations met.
- ▢Update your brag doc. Keep it as a private file, forever.
- ▢Send three thank-you messages to people who made the first 90 easier.
- ▢Plan a real break before quarter two. Even a long weekend.