Nevzat B.

• 2nd

IF EVERYONE OWNS THE DEAL, NOBODY OWNS THE DEAL. For almost a year, I thought I was doing everything right. I worked in Channel for an infrastructure company. I trained partners. Built relationships. Opened doors. Connected people. Shared information. I was busy. And month after month, the customer bought something else. Then, shortly before Christmas 2014, one meeting changed the way I would think about Sales for the next forty years. A colleague put down his pen and said: “Dann mach’s doch selber, Herr Kanalarbeiter.” Do it yourself, Mr. Channel Worker. In German, Kanal also means sewer. He was calling me the guy down in the pipes, carrying information from one end to the other. I was furious. For three days. Then something worse happened. I realised there was truth inside the insult. I had spent a year helping everybody else sell. But I had never truly owned the outcome myself. So I changed something. I stopped talking about customers and started sitting in front of them again. I learned the economics. I learned to defend every number. I heard no. I failed. I tried again. Six months later, I drove to a completely new customer and collected a $2 million purchase order myself. But that wasn’t the real lesson. The real lesson took another forty-six years to fully understand. It was about ownership. Gravitas. Scars. And why you cannot light a fire in others if there is no fire burning in you. This week’s letter from AMCA: EVERYONE’S JOB.