Best Sales Positions To Make Money

Top 10 Highest Paying Sales Jobs 2021

Earn well into the six figures with these 10 sales jobs.

Top 10 Sales Jobs Table

It's well known that top salespeople can make a lot of money, but just how much money can top salespeople earn, and at which companies do they earn the big bucks?

CompGauge analyzed over 7,000 sales salary data points and was able to determine how much the top sales reps in the United States earn and the companies writing these sales reps the big checks.

We break it down by the highest average total compensation packages, base salaries, commission at 100% of quota, and stock and signing bonus packages.

What do the highest paid sales reps sell in 2021?

It's clear that the highest paid salespeople all work in the technology industry. Sales reps in this industry are responsible for selling technology products, services, and solutions to new and existing clients, ensuring everything is running smoothly with your clients, and maintaining a steady pipeline in your territory.

Here are the Top 10 Highest Paying Sales Jobs in 2021

These jobs are all based in the United States. The cities these jobs are available in include New York City, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, Austin, and other major cities (some are remote, too).

The figures in this report represent the averages for each respective position.

1. Amazon Web Services – Principal Account Manager L7

Total Compensation: $422,500
Base salary: $175,000
Commission at 100% of Quota: $116,500
Signing + Stock Bonus ($ Value / Year): $131,000

Amazon Web Services, based in Seattle, WA, pays their Principal L7 Account Managers the highest average total compensation as well as the highest average base salary out of all sales jobs.

Amazon Web Services Principal Account Managers are responsible for selling Amazon Web Services, which is the most popular cloud technology platform. You'll have IaaS, AI, ML, managed DB, and several other cloud products in your toolbag to sell to the largest enterprises in the United States.

You'll be competing with other tech giants like Microsoft, Google Cloud, Oracle, and IBM in this space. AWS reported 32% revenue growth in Q1 2021, so there is still room for rapid growth.

2. Google Cloud – Key Account Executive

Total Compensation: $401,056
Base salary: $151,000
Commission at 100% of Quota: $172,056
Signing + Stock Bonus ($ Value / Year): $78,000

The Mountain View, CA headquartered Google Cloud offers one of the highest base salaries and signing and stock packages, putting them at number 2 on our list with an average total compensation of $401,056.

Google Cloud Key Account Executives, typically level L6, partner with the largest Fortune 500 companies to enable their digital transformation. You'll work to get companies on Google Cloud's cloud infrastructure, cloud database, and cloud analytics products.

Google Cloud competes with seasoned tech companies like IBM, AWS, Microsoft, and Oracle. Google Cloud recently shared a 47% YoY growth rate, representing a strong potential for reps to continue to convert customers to GCP.

3. Splunk – Strategic Regional Sales Manager

Total Compensation: $386,583
Base salary: $154,167
Commission at 100% of Quota: $154,167
Signing + Stock Bonus ($ Value / Year): $78,250

Splunk Strategic Regional Sales Managers' third place ranking comes from earning the second highest average base salary and the highest average stock and signing bonus package.

Splunk, headquartered in San Francisco, CA, focuses on driving digital transformation by revolutionizing machine data accessibility. The software platform makes machine data from websites, applications, and more accessible. Account executives at Splunk work with companies to use the Splunk platform to improve their application management, analytics, and security.

Splunk competes with Datadog, Elastic, AppDynamics, and Dynatrace. Splunk has a ton of potential to grow as ARR was up 41% YoY per March 2021.

4. Asana – Strategic Account Executive

Total Compensation: $330,000
Base salary: $150,000
Commission at 100% of Quota: $150,000
Signing + Stock Bonus ($ Value / Year): $30,000

Asana Strategic Account Executives rank fourth, thanks to an even $150k/150k base/commission split, with an average total compensation package at $330,000

Asana, headquartered in San Francisco, CA, offers one of the top solutions in the work management and productivity space. Their work management software enables large enterprises to easily manage and collaborate on small daily tasks to enterprise scale projects.

Airtable, Monday, Trello, and Smartsheet all compete with Asana. Their recent 2021 quarterly revenues were up 59% and the company added 500 new employees in 2020, which indicates the company is still hyper-scaling.

5. Salesforce – Strategic Account Executive

Total Compensation: $329,444
Base salary: $153,056
Commission at 100% of Quota: $153,056
Signing + Stock Bonus ($ Value / Year): $23,333

Salesforce Strategic Account Executives, with an average total compensation package that nearly touches $330,000, rank fifth on our list of the top paid sales reps in the US.

The San Francisco, CA based technology behemoth, best known for their sales CRM, competes in several sectors of the tech industry, including CRM, CX, MarTech, Analytics, and more. They have a very complex corporate structure (read our Salesforce guide to learn more) so you might end up selling their core offerings or a specialty product.

Salesforce competes with several companies depending on the industry, including Oracle, HubSpot, Outreach, Microsoft, and SAP. They recently posted a 24% YoY revenue growth, so aspiring Salesforce sales reps do not need to worry that Salesforce has fully tapped its customer base.

6. Workday – Enterprise Account Executive

Total Compensation: $326,667
Base salary: $123,333
Commission at 100% of Quota: $168,333
Signing + Stock Bonus ($ Value / Year): $35,000

Workday Enterprise Account Executives boast an average total compensation package at $326,667, good for sixth place on our list.

Headquartered in Pleasanton, CA, Workday Enterprise Account Executives will have no problem selling one of the top solutions in the Human Capaital Management (HCM) space. Workday is one of the clear cut leaders in the enterprise human resources, payroll, and financial management industry.

The HCM giant's top competition includes SAP, Oracle, and ADP. Workday's revenues were up 19% for their fiscal year 2021 and are anticipating a 20% increase in headcount as the economy recovers, so there is definitely still money to be made here.

7. MongoDB – Enterprise Account Executive

Total Compensation: $317,500
Base salary: $133,125
Commission at 100% of Quota: $133,125
Signing + Stock Bonus ($ Value / Year): $51,250

MongoDB Enterprise Account Executives, ranked 7th on our list, get a slightly smaller OTE than the other top companies but get hefty stock grants which makes the total comp package still very attractive at $317,500.

The New York City based database company competes in the database market and has one of the leading database solutions for startups to Fortune 500 enterprises.

The database company's competition includes Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, and SAP. MongoDB's posted a 40% YoY revenue gain in fiscal 2021, signaling a large demand for its database and cloud solutions.

8. New Relic – Enterprise Account Executive

Total Compensation: $316,500
Base salary: $136,667
Commission at 100% of Quota: $136,667
Signing + Stock Bonus ($ Value / Year): $43,167

New Relic Enterprise Account Executives $316,500 average total compensation package is good for eigth place on our list, thanks to a generous signing and stock grant bonus.

New Relic, based in San Francisco, CA, offers one of the leading digital intelligence platforms in the market. You'll be positioning a cloud-based SaaS observability platform to enterprise customers.

Competitors in New Relic's industry include Datadog, Dynatrace, and AppDynamics. With recent revenue growth of 7% YoY, you'll be in a good position to exceed quota.

9. Twilio – Enterprise Account Executive

Total Compensation: $310,667
Base salary: $144,667
Commission at 100% of Quota: $116,000
Signing + Stock Bonus ($ Value / Year): $50,000

Twilio's Enterprise Account Executives, despite their ninth place spot on our list of highest paying sales jobs, earn the sixth highest base salary and one of the more generous stock grants at $50,000 on average.

Based in San Francisco, CA, Twilio is modernizing the telecom industry with their cloud communications solutions. Enterprise Account Executives at Twilio sell some of the leading cloud communications tools that enable developers to create customer centric applications.

Twilio's main competitors include Avayo, Cisco, Bandwith, and Nexmo. Their 2021 earnings report showed that revenue was up 55% YoY, meaning sales reps here are closing deals and smashing quota.

10. Box – Large Enterprise Account Executive

Total Compensation: $305,000
Base salary: $142,500
Commission at 100% of Quota: $142,500
Signing + Stock Bonus ($ Value / Year): $20,000

Box Large Enterprise Account Executives, while ranked tenth in our list of highest paying sales jobs, do earn the sixth highest base salary and sixth highest commission at 100% of quota. They earn one of the smaller stock and signing bonuses which keep them low on the list.

Headquartered in Redwood City, CA, Box is one of the leaders for cloud content management, content collaboration, and file sharing. You'll help enterprises modernize their mission critical business information storage, management, and access capabilities.

Box competes with Dropbox, Citrix, Microsoft, and Google. Revenue recently increased by 24% in Q1 2021, leaving sales reps with a lot of potential for more deals.

View all Sales Compensation Data here.

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