⚡ I never wanted to do sales, but now I love it. Why? Because I don't see it as such.
In my first company, which I started at age 18, I was the designer.
Then I acquired a startup (Coffee Circle) from Berlin as a client by going to some university event and talking to the founder. I wrote it off as a luck.
Next, I got recommended to the guys at Treatwell to build their website and booking platform.
After university I was hired as a project manager at AMERIA AG. Soon, I did account management too (for one of my all time favorite clients LEGO :) and some others). Sucessfully "sold" some bigger projects. Didn't take it seriously, "it's just doing great work and being contracted again, and again".
In 2019 I started my own company again.
Condensing all my previous knowledge into this one service: corporate startup building.
To do that well you have to understand your customer very well.
So I started doing customer research for a few corporate startup projects for STIHL, fahrrad.de and Eberspächer.
And then it dawned on me during the following 2 or 3 years: doing sales is understanding your customer. Listening instead of talking. In fact, 95% of listening, 5% of talking. Loving to get to know new people, new industries, new challenges that everybody is facing. Drawing conclusions. Seeing patterns that others don't see.
And then monetizing this knowledge in an authentic, non-intrusive and -annoying way.
This is what sales means to me now: getting to know people, understanding their challenges by asking questions, offering advice on how to solve them.
Sales for me is not: being awfully annoying, shoving something into your face that you don't need, being the loudest in the room.
Sales is pretty fucking amazing if you do it right.
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