Do sales reps get promoted faster by changing companies?

Account executives who reached sales manager by changing company got there later, not sooner. Among AEs promoted to manager or higher, those who changed company on the way took a median of 46 months from their first AE job. AEs promoted inside the company where they started took 31. That is a gap of 15 months (95% interval 15 to 16).

And yet switching is how most of them got there: 72.5% of AE-to-manager promotions involved a change of company. We followed 1,108,867 AEs and 256,008 SDRs who started between 2008 and 2023, using the work histories in Ken internal data.

What we measured

Sales has a short ladder: SDR, then AE, then manager, director and VP. For each person we found their first SDR job and, separately, their first AE job, then looked for the first later job one rung up. A path is internal if the person stayed at the company where they entered the role. It is a switch if they changed company before the promotion, either by taking the higher title at a new company or by moving sideways first and being promoted there.

We also counted the people who never climbed: they left sales for another kind of job, or their profile still shows the same rung.

Switching is the bigger door, not the faster one

Most AEs never reach the next rung. Ten years after a first AE job, 6.1% had been promoted to manager or higher at the company where they started, and 17.0% had been promoted after changing company. Another 46.9% had left sales roles.

One rung lower, the race is closer. After 12 months, 8.3% of SDRs had been promoted to AE in-house and 3.6% after a switch. Switchers nearly catch up by five years (19.0% against 19.7%) and lead at ten (23.5% against 20.7%). Half of SDR-to-AE promotions (49.7%) involve a switch, and those switchers took a median 26 months against 14 in-house.

A model that follows everyone month by month, not just the people who were promoted, adds a detail. Once an AE has moved to a new company, their monthly chance of reaching manager is 1.456 times that of an AE still at the first employer (95% interval 1.430 to 1.482), after accounting for start year, company size, industry and country. Staying is fast when it works. Leaving is slow, but the door is open more often.

Why jumping looks slow

Timing explains most of it. A rep who changes company usually spends a full stint at the first employer before moving, while in-house promotions tend to happen early. For in-house AE-to-manager promotions, the 25th, 50th and 75th percentiles are 18, 31 and 50 months. For switch paths they are 25, 46 and 73.

The slowest path is the sideways move. AEs who first moved to another company as an AE and were promoted there took a median 61 months. AEs who took the manager title in the move itself took 41, still 10 months more than in-house.

It is not title inflation

A VP at a 10-person startup is not a VP at a 2,000-person company, so a natural worry is that switchers win big titles at tiny companies. Switch promotions do land at smaller companies far more often: 48.1% of AE-to-manager switch promotions went to a company in a smaller size band than the starting one, against 2.5% of internal promotions.

But title inflation would make switchers look faster, and they are slower. Two checks make this firmer. Keeping only promotions to a company in the same size band or larger, the gap grows to 18 months (31 against 49). Not counting manager-or-higher titles at companies with 10 or fewer employees, it is 16 months (31 against 47).

The gap holds everywhere we looked

• Start year. AEs who started in 2008 to 2011 waited 18 months longer on switch paths, and 2020 to 2023 starters 5 months longer. Recent starters have had less time, so only their fast promotions show up so far.
• Company size. From 1-10 employees to 5,001 or more, the gap is 14 to 17 months for AEs and 11 to 14 for SDRs.
• Country. 13 to 16 months for AEs in each of the six countries covered.
• Controls. After accounting for start year, size, industry and country, switch paths take 1.34 times as long for AEs and 1.675 times as long for SDRs. Adding highest degree on a 200,000-person sample leaves both about the same (1.351 and 1.676).

What we expected

Before pulling any data, we wrote down five predictions. The main one was wrong. Labor economics research on white-collar careers (Bidwell and Mollick, 2015) finds that moving up often runs through a change of employer, so we expected switch paths to reach manager 4 to 12 months faster. They were 15 months slower. We also expected SDR switchers to be at most 6 months slower than in-house promotions; the gap was 12. The route prediction held: a switch is part of more than half of AE-to-manager promotions and just under half of SDR-to-AE promotions.

What this data cannot show

• Cause. People choose whether to stay or leave. Strong reps get poached, which would make switchers look faster. Reps passed over for promotion leave, which would make them look slower. We cannot separate the two, so a switch is linked with a slower but more common route to manager. It is not shown to cause either.
• Only the promoted. The medians compare people who were promoted. The incidence curves use everyone, which is why we show both.
• Self-reported profiles. People leave short jobs off, titles are free text, and only people living today in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland or New Zealand are included.
• Rebuilt company size. Size at the time of a role comes from today's headcount and each company's hiring trend, not from records at the time.
• Side roles. An overlapping role at another company can mark a stay as a switch. The group promoted in the move itself, where the promotion is the new job, still shows a 10-month gap.

What it means for sales teams

• For reps, a real internal ladder is the faster way up. Half of in-house AE-to-manager promotions came within 31 months. If yours has not come by then, the odds of it happening in-house keep falling.
• For sales leaders, most future managers leave to get there. Nearly three in four AEs who became managers (72.5%) did it somewhere other than where they started as an AE. A visible path in the first two to three years is the window that matters.
• For outbound teams, new sales managers are often new to their company. 56.4% of AE-to-manager promotions came with the move to a new company itself, so a job change is a good moment to check the new title.