One of the most common questions I receive from candidates preparing to enter tech sales is a deceptively simple one: should I start as an SDR or go straight for an AE role? I have been asked this question in Lagos boardrooms, on LinkedIn messages from Nairobi, and in every cohort I have run at Imoye Academy. My answer is always the same , it depends on what you can actually do on day one, and being honest with yourself about that is the most important career decision you will make in sales.
Let me be direct. Most people asking this question have never worked a quota-carrying role in their life. They have read a few blog posts, watched some YouTube videos on SPIN Selling, and convinced themselves they are ready to close enterprise deals. They are not. That is not an insult , it is just reality, and reality is where careers are made or broken.
What the SDR Role Actually Teaches You
An SDR role , Sales Development Representative , is fundamentally a prospecting and qualification function. Your job is to fill the pipeline, not to close it. You write cold emails, make cold calls, run outbound sequences, and book qualified meetings for account executives. Done well, it is an extraordinarily rigorous training ground. Done poorly, it is three months of sending generic emails and wondering why nobody replies.
What I valued most about the SDR track, having managed teams at Oracle for close to a decade, is that it forces you to develop what I call "rejection tolerance" , the psychological muscle that allows you to hear no forty times a day and still pick up the phone for the forty-first call with the same energy and precision. That muscle, once built, never leaves you. Some of the best closers I have ever worked with came through the SDR grind precisely because they learned how to stay consistent under pressure.
The SDR role also teaches you something far more valuable than most people expect: it teaches you how buyers think before they are ready to buy. When you are prospecting, you are engaging people at the top of the funnel, people who have not raised their hand yet. Understanding what moves them from "not interested" to "tell me more" is a lesson that will serve you for your entire career. If you want to understand that skill at a deeper level, read my breakdown of the cold emails that actually get replies.
“The SDR role does not exist to humble you. It exists to teach you how buyers think before they are ready to buy , and that lesson is worth more than most MBAs.”
When an AE Role First Makes Sense
There are situations where going straight for an AE role is the right move. If you have spent five or more years in a revenue-adjacent function , consulting, financial advisory, management consulting, professional services , you have already been doing a significant portion of an AE's job. You have built trust with clients, managed stakeholders, scoped solutions, and navigated complex buying committees. The missing piece is usually the commercial structure and the technology-specific knowledge, and that can be learned.
I have seen candidates from banking backgrounds, management consulting, and even medical devices transition directly into mid-market or enterprise AE roles at technology companies , and thrive. What they had in common was genuine domain credibility, an ability to hold a business conversation, and the discipline to learn a sales methodology quickly. If that is you, the transition playbook I wrote for professionals moving from banking to tech sales is worth reading before you decide.
The honest test is this: can you walk into a discovery call with a director-level buyer at a Lagos fintech, understand their business problem, map a solution to it, handle the objections, and advance the deal , today, without training? If the answer is yes, pursue AE roles. If the answer is "not yet," the SDR path will get you there faster than any shortcut.
The Hybrid Reality in African Tech Markets
One thing I want to address specifically for the Lagos and broader West African tech market: the SDR/AE distinction is less rigid here than it is in San Francisco or London. Many technology companies operating in Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya run lean commercial teams where a single salesperson is expected to both prospect and close. That creates an interesting opportunity for candidates.
If you are joining a regional tech startup or an international technology vendor that has a small in-country team, you are very likely going to be doing both functions whether your title says SDR or not. The question then becomes: are you equipped for both? Research from LinkedIn's State of Sales report consistently shows that the top-performing salespeople in emerging markets are those who can own the full cycle , because the market demands it and because the pipeline is theirs to build.
This is precisely why the Imoye Academy 12-Week Tech Sales Pro Programme covers both ends of the funnel. We do not train SDRs or AEs in isolation. We train salespeople who understand the full arc from cold prospecting to closed-won, because that is what the African tech market will actually ask of you on day one.
How to Make the Decision Practically
Here is the framework I give every candidate who asks me this question. First, list every revenue interaction you have had in your career so far , client meetings, negotiations, proposals, upsells, even informal selling you have done. If that list is sparse, start as an SDR. If that list is rich, apply for AE roles but be honest in your interviews about what you know versus what you are learning.
Second, talk to salespeople already in the roles you are considering. Not to get hyped up , to get the unglamorous version. Find out what a Tuesday afternoon looks like for an SDR at a SaaS company in Lagos. Find out what happens when an AE misses quota for two consecutive quarters. The picture you build from those conversations will tell you more than any job description.
Third, invest in your preparation regardless of which path you choose. The candidates who get hired fastest , and get promoted fastest once hired , are the ones who show up already speaking the language of sales. They know what a pipeline review is. They understand the difference between consultative and transactional selling. They can articulate a value proposition without reading from a script. That preparation is what separates the candidates who get offers from the ones who get polite rejections.
“The fastest path to an AE role is not bypassing the SDR grind. It is either owning the SDR grind completely or walking in with ten years of client-facing experience.”
The Bottom Line
There is no universally correct answer to whether you should start as an SDR or go straight for an AE role. There is only the honest assessment of where your skills actually sit today and what the specific companies you are targeting actually hire for. The mistake I see most often is candidates who choose based on ego rather than strategy , who chase the AE title because it sounds more senior, and then struggle for six months because they have never built a pipeline from scratch in their lives.
Whatever you decide, make it a decision based on evidence, not ambition alone. Ambition matters , I would not have built a career across Oracle's enterprise markets for fifteen years without it. But ambition channeled through an accurate understanding of your own starting point is the only kind that compounds into something real. The 12-Week Programme is built for exactly that moment: wherever you are starting, we will meet you there and get you to where you need to be.