Hunter AE

Zendesk · Remote, Minnesota, United States of America · $283,000.00-$425,000.00 · remote Join Zendesk as a Hunter AE, where you'll create and close durable net-new business by turning priority prospects into customers through disciplined prospecting, consultative discovery, and executive selling. What you'll be doing Create and maintain enough qualified net-new pipeline to meet or exceed quota through targeted outbound, inbound conversion, partner routes, and disciplined territory planning. Lead a repeatable prospecting-to-close process: discovery, qualification, value mapping, mutual action planning, business-case development, negotiation, contracting, and close. Translate customer business priorities, service-operation challenges, and transformation goals into a credible Zendesk platform and AI value proposition. Build executive and multi-threaded alignment across business, technology, security, finance, procurement, and the economic buying committee. Own commercial strategy, deal progression, and negotiation within approved guardrails; protect customer value and delivery credibility. Orchestrate Solution Engineers, Product Specialists, Marketing, SDR/BDR partners, ecosystem partners, and leadership to improve win probability. Maintain accurate CRM data, pipeline health, forecast discipline, and early risk visibility; make decisions based on evidence rather than optimism. Document customer goals, stakeholders, use cases, commitments, and success conditions for a clean handoff; return market, competitor, and buyer insight to improve the go-to-market motion. What you bring to the role Day one: a genuine new-business orientation, targeted prospecting discipline, and ability to create qualified demand. Day one: consultative discovery that uncovers business problems, urgency, stakeholders, decision criteria, and measurable outcomes before positioning product. Day one: executive and multi-threaded selling that earns trust with business, technical, financial, security, and procurement stakeholders. Day one: commercial acumen to build ROI narratives, manage deal economics, negotiate thoughtfully, and qualify out when the fit is not credible. Day one: CRM, forecast, and operating discipline; the ability to inspect facts, surface risk early, and maintain mutual accountability. Developable: deeper Zendesk platform, AI, and service-operations fluency; more advanced industry narratives, partner-led selling, and complex deal strategy. Differentiating: the ability to shape the customer's problem, create demand where none exists, and mobilize a buying committee without overselling. Scarce: repeated success closing large, complex net-new deals with executive access, competitive strategy, and strong business-case construction. Experience and qualifications Experience range: Typically 8–12 years of related experience. Relevant background: demonstrated capability in complex B2B SaaS new-business selling, value-based discovery, and commercial deal ownership. Customer impact: demonstrated ownership of outcomes, not only activity; evidence should show decision quality, follow-through, and measurable customer or commercial impact. Commercial proof: evidence of prospecting discipline, quota attainment or equivalent growth results, executive engagement, and complex deal judgment. AI and platform fluency: ability to discuss AI, automation, service operations, and platform value credibly and know when specialist depth is required. AI-era expectations Discuss AI, automation, CX, and platform value credibly at the business level; bring specialists when deeper technical validation is required. Frame AI opportunities in terms of measurable customer outcomes, operating-model change, adoption risk, security, governance, and implementation readiness. Use approved AI tools to improve account research, preparation, follow-through, and signal synthesis while protecting customer confidentiality and data. Distinguish uniquely human work,trust, judgment, negotiatio