Why Account Executives Should Not Make Cold Calls There are three problems with expecting your Account Executives (quota carrying salespeople) -- whether they are inside or field based -- to be the ones to do all the work developing new accounts: They don’t like to do it. They usually aren’t any good at it (or are even terrible at it). It’s a poor use of company resources by using the most expensive sales role to do lower-value work. Where And When Account Executives Should Prospect Here are the rules of thumb about where Account Executives should spend their precious time prospecting: A short, targeted “Top 5” or “Top 10” list of strategic accounts to penetrate. Their current customer base. Developing referral or channel partners. The point is to focus your highest value people on the low-volume but high- value activities (building relationships at key accounts), and specialize other roles and sales reps to take over low-value yet high-volume activities (prospecting into untargeted cold accounts).