Founding Account Executive

Bernard

$100K — $150K *
Business Services
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5-8 years of closing experience in SaaS, technology, or high-consideration B2B sales.
  • Proven track record of hitting sales quotas consistently.
  • Experience in full-cycle deals from outreach to contract negotiation.
  • Ability to sell to business owners unfamiliar with software solutions.
  • Strong pipeline generation skills, including self-sourcing and networking.
  • Preferred experience in blue-collar industries like field service or trades.

Responsibilities

  • Close new business and carry a sales quota with a direct link to signed annual recurring revenue.
  • Own the entire sales cycle from discovery and demo to proposal, negotiation, and closing.
  • Self-source a significant portion of your sales pipeline through prospecting and relationship building.
  • Manage qualified leads from the go-to-market strategy to turn warm opportunities into revenue.
  • Develop account strategies by understanding decision-makers and overcoming objections.
  • Provide market insights and feedback directly to the CEO for product improvement.

Benefits

  • Opportunity to be the founding sales hire and shape the company's direction.
  • Direct interaction with the CEO and streamlined decision-making process.
  • Fast-paced startup environment with minimal bureaucracy.
  • Flexible roles and responsibilities, fostering ownership across all tasks.
  • A collaborative team atmosphere with a commitment to high performance.
Full Job Description
The Role

You are Bernard's Founding Account Executive. You close deals. You own the number. You are the person who turns pipeline into revenue.

Your buyers are appliance repair company owners. They run 15-300 trucks. They've been in business for decades. They've seen vendors come and go and they can smell a pitch from a mile away. You earn their trust by understanding their operation better than the last 10 reps who called them. You close by showing them exactly how Bernard solves a problem they live with every single day.

You will self-source a significant portion of your pipeline and also work qualified leads from our GTM infrastructure. You run the demo, you build the proposal, you negotiate the contract, you close the deal. You don't hand off to a closer because you are the closer.

You work directly with the CEO. No VP of Sales. No layers. No forecast theater. If you have a thesis about a segment, a message, or a pricing structure, you test it this week.
What You'll Own

• Revenue. You carry a quota. You close new business. Your commission is tied directly to signed ARR.

• Full-cycle deals. From first conversation through signed contract. Discovery, demo, proposal, negotiation, close. The whole thing is yours.

• Self-sourced pipeline. You don't sit and wait for leads. You prospect into target accounts, work referral networks, and build relationships at industry events and associations.

• GTME pipeline. Work qualified opportunities from our outbound and inbound engine. Turn warm leads into closed revenue.

• Deal strategy. You know your accounts cold. You know who the decision maker is, what their objections are, what their timeline looks like, and what it takes to get to yes.

• Market feedback. You're in the field every day. You surface what buyers care about, what competitors are saying, and where the product needs to go. You feed this directly to the CEO and product team.
You Should Apply If
• You've carried a quota and hit it. Consistently.
• You've closed deals end-to-end, not just run demos or booked meetings for someone else to close.
• You can sell to a business owner who has never bought software before. You don't need a champion who "gets it." You create the champion.
• You've self-sourced pipeline. You know how to work a territory, build a referral network, and generate your own opportunities.
• You want to be the founding sales hire at a company where your work directly shapes the trajectory of the business.
• 5-8 years of closing experience in SaaS, technology, or a high-consideration B2B sale. Bonus if you've sold into field service, trades, or small business owners.

Preferred
• Experience selling into blue-collar, field service, home services, or trades industries.
• You've sold at a startup or early-stage company where the playbook didn't exist and you had to build it.
• Territory or field sales experience in addition to inside sales. You know how to work a market, not just a CRM.
• Comfortable with AI products and can demo technology to non-technical buyers without drowning them in jargon.

How We Work

We are a small team. Everyone owns their domain end-to-end. There is no middle management, no committees, and no approval chains. If something needs to happen, you make it happen.

We work in person in New York City. We move fast, give direct feedback, and hold each other to a high bar. The pace is startup pace - if that energizes you, you'll love it here.

You should be someone who picks up the phone first and sends the email second. The best deals at Bernard start with a real conversation, not a nurture sequence.

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