Dear Should: Should Sales Execs Do Implementation Themselves?
Almost never — outside of the earliest days. Your first 1 or 2 reps may have literally no one else to help here, and they often have to do the onboarding and implementation themselves. But you can’t scale that way.
Their job is to close deals, not to manage post-sale processes. When you ask AEs to handle implementation, you’re pulling them away from their core focus—selling—and that’s a huge drag on productivity and revenue growth.
Here’s why it’s a bad idea:
1. AEs Are Closers, Not Implementers
AEs are compensated and motivated to close deals. They’re not trained or incentivized to handle the complexities of onboarding or implementation. If you ask them to do both, they’ll either neglect implementation (leading to unhappy customers) or spend too much time on it, which kills their ability to hit quota [4].
2. It Slows Down the Sales Cycle
When AEs are bogged down with implementation tasks, they’re not prospecting or closing new deals. This creates a bottleneck in your pipeline and slows down your overall growth. Closers should be closing, period.
3. Specialization Drives Efficiency
The best SaaS companies separate roles early. AEs focus on closing, Customer Success Managers (CSMs) or implementation specialists handle onboarding, and everyone stays in their lane. This specialization ensures each team member is working at maximum efficiency.
4.*It Hurts the Customer Experience
Implementation is a critical moment for your customers. They need someone who’s dedicated to their success and can guide them through the process. AEs aren’t equipped to provide that level of support, and it risks creating a bad first impression with your customers.
If you’re early-stage and don’t have the resources for a dedicated implementation team, it’s okay to have AEs handle some of it temporarily. But as soon as you can, hire a CSM or implementation specialist to take over. It’s one of the first roles you should invest in as you scale.
