Should AEs Prospect? Here’s how 4 top 1% outbound teams handle it

And how you should think about it

Feb 02, 2025

Read time: 3 min

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In my newsletter: 14 Lessons I Learned About Outbound in 2024 I said:

11. AEs don’t do cold outreach. AEs shouldn’t waste time on cold outreach. 

They’re much better off focusing on warm leads, like closed-lost opportunities, customer referrals, exec intros, or investor connections

Kyle Norton said it best: having AEs work cold accounts is a waste of time and money.

At Rippling, they know their outbound SDRs are better at it, so AEs stick to what converts.

Saw this debate on LinkedIn:

👉 “If an AE can’t build their own pipeline, are they really an AE?”

👉 “AI SDRs + Full-Cycle AEs are the future.”

So, let’s break it down.

Top outbound teams? It depends.

Company size
Outbound maturity
Team skills

But I’ll tell you what actually works for top outbound teams:

Here’s how 4 top 1% outbound teams handle it

Specialization wins.

Snowflake, Rippling → AEs only close. SDRs & programmatic outbound handle all cold outreach.

Outreach, Owner → AEs close and prospect, but only warm leads (referrals, investor intros, etc.). SDRs handle all cold outbound.

How they scaled outbound

Rippling

In the early days, Rippling’s AEs needed 35 accepted demos (S2s) per month to hit quota.

To support growth, they launched Programmatic Outbound, using automation + data to hit a massive TAM.

They built a team of specialized SDRs (“Mech SDRs”) who:

Handled replies
Engaged interested leads
Booked meetings

Each Mech SDR booked 50–60 demos/month

Mature outbound teams

The best outbound teams don’t make AEs do it all. They specialize: Outbound SDRs. Outbound AEs.

But when AEs do prospect, they do it differently.

Snowflake

Lars Nilsson (Ex-VP of Global Sales Dev at Snowflake) put it best:

“Snowflake SDRs are in the trenches, prospecting, qualifying, cold calling. AEs should be selling, negotiating, closing. One SDR can fill the pipeline for 3 AEs, that’s how you speed up revenue.

By the way, I unpacked Snowflake's outbound strategy, if you missed it read it here.

Rippling

They know SDRs are better at outbound than AEs, so SDRs own prospecting.

Owner

2:1 BDR-to-AE ratio to stay efficient. BDRs only prospect, cold leads (they produce $72K ARR/BDR/month). BDRs don’t build lists. Ops feeds them the best accounts + phone numbers.

When I talked to Kyle (Owner’s CRO) on my podcast, he said: “AEs doing cold outbound is more expensive than SDRs. But they still prospect, referrals + closed-lost opps.”

Outreach

Mark Kosoglow (Former SVP of Global Sales at Outreach) unpacked how they've run this:

Took them 3 tries to get AE prospecting right at Outreach on top of SDRs.

Mark asked AEs to spend 20% of their time prospecting → 80 dials & 25 sequences/week.

Flopped. Twice.

Here’s why: SDRs prospect all day, every day. AEs don’t.

AEs close deals, prep for meetings, hold meetings, manage internal resources, they don’t have the same time or focus as SDRs.

So what they did:

Each AE picked 10 target accounts (all $50K+ potential deals).
They built deep, multi-touch plans, investor intros, podcast guest plays, onsite visits, executive connections, dinners… 25+ plays to choose from.
Goal: Book 3 meetings → Land 2 qualified deals. That alone covered half their quota.

Same here, no cold outreach for AEs.

These teams aren’t debating whether they should do it. They already have a process that works.

Now, if you want to figure out what’s best for you, here’s how to run the numbers:

Growth Model: The Revenue Math

Hiring more reps won’t magically increase revenue. If there aren’t enough demos, they’ll just sit around, wasting time.

Before growing your sales team, make sure there’s enough demand to keep them productive.

How Much Demand Does Each AE Need?

In Rippling’s early days, each AE needed 35 accepted demos (S2s) per month to hit targets. Over time, that number dropped because:

📈 Deal sizes got bigger → Fewer deals needed to hit quota.

🎯 Win rates improved → More demos turned into revenue.

Breaking Down the Sales Stages

S1 (Scheduled Demo): First meeting with a prospect.
S2 (Sales Accepted): Prospect moves to the next stage.

Rippling tracked how many S2s each AE needed, early on, it was 35 per month, but that changed as efficiency improved.

Sales vs. Demand: Keep the Machine Running

Sales and demand work like gears, if one moves faster than the other, the whole system breaks.

Here’s the balance:

⚙️ Sales Capacity → How many deals your team can handle.

⚙️ Demand Gen Capacity → How many qualified demos (S2s) marketing + outbound can generate.

What's your biggest takeaway from today's newsletter?

See you in the next newsletter.

Cheers,

Elric

Chef, Outbound Kitchen

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