The first 30, 60, and 90 days as a new AE in UK SaaS

The first 30, 60, and 90 days of a new AE in a UK SaaS company set the trajectory for the next 18 months. Done well, the AE is generating qualified pipeline by month two and closing by month four. Done poorly, the AE is still in onboarding training in month four and the manager has spent five weeks of unbillable time without a deal to show for it.

A standard 30-60-90 plan structure that works for IC AE roles at 50-300 person UK SaaS:

Days 1-30: foundation

The objective is fluency. By end of day 30, the AE should be able to:

• Run a credible discovery call against your standard ICP without supervision
• Deliver the standard demo end-to-end with no SE support
• Articulate the company's positioning vs the top three competitors
• Navigate Salesforce / HubSpot for their territory, including reporting and the comp plan reading
• Pass MEDDPICC fluency check (or equivalent qualification framework)

The week-by-week:

• Week 1: company onboarding (HR, IT, security, all-hands intro). Product training. Sit in on three discovery calls and two demos.
• Week 2: deeper product training. Run the demo unrehearsed against the manager and one peer. Get feedback. Run it again. Read the top 5 case studies. Read the top 3 lost-deal post-mortems.
• Week 3: shadow active deals at multiple stages with peer AEs. Run two recorded mock discovery calls with the manager playing buyer. Get feedback. Run two more.
• Week 4: take ownership of one or two existing-pipeline opportunities (mid-stage, lower-stakes) under manager supervision. Begin writing the territory plan.

What the AE should NOT do in days 1-30: cold outbound at scale, unsupervised first calls with new prospects, anything competitive against an existing AE's accounts.

Days 31-60: motion

The objective is independent execution. By end of day 60, the AE should be:

• Running 5-8 first meetings per week against their territory
• Generating their own outbound pipeline (typically 30-50 percent of meeting volume; the rest paired with SDR)
• Holding their own end-to-end calls without SE support on standard discovery and demo
• Two to three opportunities qualified at MEDDPICC stage 2+ and being worked actively
• Forecast-call participation, with their own pipeline and their own commitments

The week-by-week:

• Week 5-6: SDR pairing, prospect-list build, first independent outreach. The AE should have a documented territory plan: 30-50 named target accounts, segmented by tier, with a defined approach for each.
• Week 7-8: independent first meetings. The manager joins one per week to coach in real time. After-call debrief is the highest-leverage coaching moment in onboarding; do not skip it.

What the AE should be doing by end of day 60: their own forecast call participation, their own discovery, their own demos, their own outreach. Manager involvement should be coaching, not driving.

Days 61-90: ramp to attainment

The objective is the start of meaningful attainment. By end of day 90, the AE should:

• Have at least one closed-won deal (caveat: depends on your cycle length; in UK enterprise this is unrealistic at 90 days)
• Have a pipeline at minimum 1x quota-coverage for the upcoming quarter, with at least 25 percent of it at MEDDPICC stage 3 or beyond
• Be running every account in their territory with a documented next-step in CRM
• Have completed at least one deal review presentation to peers in deal-walkthrough format

The week-by-week:

• Week 9-10: deal closure focus. AE works the existing pipeline aggressively to close any deals that can close in the ramp window.
• Week 11-12: quarter-2 pipeline build. Outbound volume increases. Forecast credibility starts to be tested against actual outcomes.

What you assess at day 90: pipeline coverage, MEDDPICC quality of the top 5 deals, win rate from first meeting to qualified opportunity, documented territory plan.

What managers most often get wrong

Three patterns:

1. Onboarding is too long and too passive. Six weeks of training without practice means the AE is not actually running deals until week 7. This is too slow. Practice should start week 2; ownership should start week 4.
2. No deal walkthrough requirement during onboarding. The deal-walkthrough format (here's a deal, this is what I did, this is what I'd do differently) is the single highest-signal performance review. Build it into onboarding from week 4.
3. Forecast credibility is not assessed until quarter 1 ends. By the time you discover the AE's forecasts are unreliable, the quarter is gone. Assess forecast credibility weekly from week 8 onwards, not at the quarter-end.

What AEs most often get wrong

Two patterns:

1. Spend too long in product training and not enough in role-play. Knowing the product cold doesn't help you run a discovery call. Get on the phone, get feedback, repeat.
2. Take the company's positioning as gospel. Read the case studies, then talk to a customer or two and ask 'what did we actually solve for you'. The honest answer is rarely the marketing positioning.

The 30-60-90 document itself

Should be a one-page document, written by the manager, signed by the AE on day 1. Specific outcomes by day for each milestone. Quarterly review against the document. The document is the contract.

This is editorial coverage of public sales-onboarding methodology. For specific advice on onboarding at your company, talk to your sales leadership.