(Picture credit to: Neukoln*)
Here’s what I learned. You may have to push long hours to get where you want especially in the beginning. You need to leave your comfort zone everyday. You might face an environment you do not understand directly, might change of employers several times, but in the end this a rewarding roller coaster and your compensation may also become more competitive.
Be industry focused!
Understand the current challenges of your customer industry. So far, I mostly worked on horizontals. I mean by that, not for 1 or 2 specific industries but several. I collaborated with manufacturing, engineering, media or even mining industries. Each one of them have their specific needs and technology is affecting them in different ways. What can you learn from it? How can you be relevant?
Look into processes
Learn how the different mini-organizations within your customer are working and collaborating with one another (or not). This is one of the aspects I like the most. Understanding how the company runs and helping them to build bridges in-between. After a while, you might have been working with the local IT team. Their responsibilities might not go beyond some shared services. Did you investigate on how the company is generating revenue? Is there anything you can do to help out there? Sometime the answer is yes and this is exactly where it get exciting (by no means easier).
Learn, learn & learn again
The last part I enjoy about working in this environment is the learnings you can get out of it. You learn a lot from your own company, people, on the job and books. Now, your investigation has to go deeper. Learning is about your customers, their organization, specific trends and how technology affects them. Learn new skills for beyond just for your day job . Presentation skills, driving business discussion, leadership, etc. Learning is also about evolving and learning new a job. The pace of today’s environment is going so fast that you may need to learn a new function or even an entirely new industry sooner than expected. Who knows when it will happen… Will you be ready?
Conclusion
Moving to this type of business has been a game changer for me. I keep on discovering and learning new stuff every single day. What I love about B2B sales is the collaboration between people to help an organization thrive at what they do best!
Part of this continuous change, I will be moving soon to another company. It will be the occasion to meet new colleagues, customers and to learn plenty of new things very soon. Stay tuned on my upcoming Gartner’s adventures.
*https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RLZ_Superland_-_SLC_689m_Kumba_Roller_Coaster_02.JPG
Recent Comments