When you’re struggling to succeed in today’s fast-paced B2B sales landscape, it’s easy to second-guess whether you’re cut out for this line of work or not. But sometimes you need to look at lessons from your personal life to forge your own path to the top. I’ve been called a “dumbass” and a “screw up” on a few dozen occasions, but that never stopped me from achieving Senior VP status at my father’s company.
What is B2B? I’m 70% sure the “B” stands for “business”, and the number 2 in there is to make it look fun. It’s really fun to say in random conversations, like when I overheard two of my coworkers complaining about how I ruined a pitch to a potential client after remarking I finger banged his daughter at my old fraternity. If this has happened to you, just burst through the door, gripping your balls yelling “I’m the B2B king motherfuckers!” and then threaten to have them fired before lunch.
This mindset will work for most B2B products, because I’ve been promoted every six months despite having no idea what the hell we do here. I do know we send out a whole lot of marketing emails, though, at least that’s what I caught during orientation a few years back. I was still coming down from a weekend cocaine binge.
The key to growth is to have open and collaborative relationships with other entities, and the best way to do that is to max out your dad’s company credit card to take clients out to earn their trust. I’ve found getting blackout drunk at the country club and then hitting three consecutive strip clubs to be the most effective. And if the accounting department follows up, slap the receipts out of their hands and call them a nerd.
My econ professor once told me that I was “the poster child of willful ignorance and galling nepotism”, and due to my complete lack of understanding of how successful businesses operate, that I would easily bankrupt anything I touched. But last I checked, it was my dad’s name on the school gym, so I’ll probably be OK. I know from first-hand experience that it’s definitely not what you know, but who you know, if that person is immediate family, and if they pay you six figures a year to sit in an office and not talk to anyone or make any decisions.