I got my first corporate job very young.

The summer before college, I was only 17 when I started my first of four internships in the sales org at Procter & Gamble.

Over those summers, I got a front-row seat to what it really means to move a product, even when you think the product would sell itself.

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Think about it - you think Walmart, Albertsons, or Target are going to not carry Tide, Pringles, or Pampers?

Of course they were going to buy.

So what were we doing exactly?

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Staying top of mind?

Yes, but that’s not the point in itself.

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“Building relationships”?

Yes, but what does that actually look like?

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In practice, we’d visit the buyer (our category manager) and proactively share our analysis of their shelf.

We’d point out objectively what was selling in their full assortment and what wasn’t (even our own SKUs).

We’d provide some aggregate comps from other channels to serve as reference points.

We’d offer a strategic lens on how they might lift their overall category performance.

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Simply put, we were acting as partners, not vendors.

And from that partnership, we built goodwill.

And then, on occasion, when corporate needed us to push a Pixar-themed Pampers SKU or whatever it was that month, we could make the ask.

But even then, we did it within the strategic framing we’d already built.

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And that’s the part that stuck with me.

It was a long game, yes.

But it’s also just a different paradigm.

A focus on a collaborative journey, rather than a series of this-for-that transactions.

No wonder our org wasn’t even called “Sales”.

It was called “Customer Business Development”

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Fast forward to now, our path is no different as solo consultants.

If we’re always in vendor mode, just hunting for the next ‘yes’, it’s hard to build lasting trust.

And even harder to build context for offers or engagements that really land.

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Speaking of, you might have noticed I’ve been pushing my IP Builder sprint pretty hard lately.

And the response has been great!

But truth be told, I don’t love doing that.

Even with years under my belt, I still shiver at the risk of being “that guy” and blowing the sacred learning space I’ve tried to build with this list.

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But just like with my category managers at P&G, I try to earn the right to pitch.

By showing up consistently.

By building a relevant context.

And by focusing on a shared, long-term intellectual journey that supersedes any one ask.

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If I’ve done that right, then fingers crossed that a few days of hawking my wares doesn’t break the mood. :)

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Back to regular programming next week.

💡

-Wes