just hit the 14-month mark at my company and got promoted to AE last week. here's everything i tracked along the way because i went in pretty blind and had to figure it out.
the criteria at my company (Series C SaaS, ~150 employees)
nobody handed me a document. i had to ask my manager directly what the promotion criteria were, and even then it was vague. through conversations with her and our VP of Sales, here's what i pieced together: 6 qualified meetings per week for at least 3 consecutive months at least 2 closed-won deals sourced from my pipeline (we have an SDR-to-close track for high performers) demonstrating you can run a discovery call independently 'coachability' which in practice meant: taking feedback without getting defensive
the closed-won deals part was the hidden one. nobody mentioned it until month 9. turns out they needed evidence that i could close, not just book meetings.
the timeline question
most SDR-to-AE timelines i've seen in my network: 12-18 months at a mid-sized company, 18-24 months at an enterprise shop, sometimes as fast as 9 months at an early-stage company where AE headcount is blowing up.
2026 update: the market has gotten tighter. some companies that were promoting at 9-12 months are now pushing to 15-18 because they have less AE headcount to fill. worth asking during your SDR onboarding what the historical promotion rate is.
what actually moved the needle for me
volumetrics mattered but what really separated me was asking my manager in month 6 to let me shadow AE calls and take notes. she said yes. i started writing up call recaps with one thing i would have done differently. she started sharing those recaps with the team. suddenly i had visibility with the VP.
by month 10 i was running parts of discovery calls with the AE in the room. by month 12 i had a track record they could point to.
ask for the shadow opportunities early. most managers will say yes. it signals intent without being annoying about the promo, and it actually builds the skill they're evaluating.