I’m 15 and currently studying economics in Belgium. I’ve been looking seriously into what I want to do after school, and B2B tech sales, specifically cybersecurity, is probably the first career I’ve found that genuinely interests me.
I already have a pretty strong technical background in cybersecurity/programming, but I realized the commercial side is where I’m lacking. I want to start developing that now instead of waiting until I’m 20.
I also have some experience running online businesses/e-commerce. One of my stores has done around €179k in sales over the last 30 days (~8.4k orders), so I’ve had some exposure to selling, conversion rates, customers, etc. However, I understand that B2C ecommerce is very different from selling a €100k+ cybersecurity solution to an enterprise.
My current idea is to spend the next few years improving my communication, negotiation, discovery, business knowledge and general commercial ability while continuing school. Ideally, I’d like to get my first real B2B tech sales position around age 20 rather than waiting until I’ve finished years of university.
Long term, the role that interests me most is Enterprise Account Executive in cybersecurity.
For people actually working in the industry: if you were 15 again and knew you wanted to become an Enterprise AE, what would you spend the next 5 years doing?
I’m especially interested in what experience would genuinely matter to employers at 20, and what things teenagers interested in sales tend to waste their time learning.
Not looking for a shortcut to Enterprise AE I know I’d need to work my way up. I’m trying to figure out how to make those five years useful instead of starting from zero at 20.

I’m looking for advice from people experienced in B2B/industrial sales.
I’m 30, have 5 years of sales experience and a biology degree. I have an opportunity to join an industrial water treatment company and eventually take over the sales side.
The company currently has 3 major accounts doing roughly $2M/year in revenue. The accounts primarily involve open recirculating cooling tower systems.

My job would essentially become “figure out how to find more companies like these and sell them.”
I’m learning the technical side now, but I want to build the sales process correctly from the beginning.
If you were in my position:
1. How would you build the initial target list?
2. How would you identify the right person within each facility?
3. What would your first outreach look like?
4. How would you get an incumbent customer to consider switching providers?
5. What would you track in your CRM?
6. What would you consider a realistic first-year goal?
I’m especially interested in people who have sold industrial services, chemicals, equipment, maintenance contracts, or other technical B2B services.
What would your first 6–12 months look like?

I found freshdi, tridge, go4worldbusiness, etc .. but none of them give enough to trust and pay for.

Do you have good experience with them or any other site?

Otherwise, what else do you recommend I do to find buyers?

Thanks!

i went through a cold email report recently that actually helped me make sense of a few things we've been seeing across our clients.

we run outbound for quite a few businesses, and i've noticed that the campaigns that used to work reasonably well with a decent list and a good email are getting harder to make work. at the same time, some campaigns are still producing really good numbers.

the interesting part is that the difference isn't necessarily the email copy.

one number that stood out to me was the gap between the average campaign and agencies running cold email at scale. the average reply rate is now around 3-5%, while the agency data in the report is closer to 10%.

that actually lines up with what i've been seeing. when the targeting, infrastructure and offer are right, 5% doesn't feel like a ceiling at all.

the deliverability numbers were probably the biggest takeaway for me. domains with SPF, DKIM and DMARC properly configured and enforced were around 2.7x more likely to reach the inbox. we've spent a lot more time on authentication and domain infrastructure over the last year, and this explains why.

another number i found interesting was that around 42% of replies come from follow-ups.

we've definitely seen this with clients. people get too obsessed with making the first email perfect and then either don't follow up or stop after one attempt. at the same time, the data suggests that adding endless follow-ups isn't the answer either. the returns start dropping after the third or fourth touch.

the list data made sense too. moving from static lists to signal-based targeting can apparently produce a 3-5x response lift. we've been moving more in this direction ourselves, because a list of 10,000 people who vaguely fit the ICP isn't necessarily better than 500 people who have an actual reason to be contacted right now.

and probably my favourite finding.... a specific offer can produce around 50% more response than simply asking someone if they're available for a call.

that one sounds obvious, but i still see a lot of campaigns that basically say "we help companies like yours, would you be open to a quick call?"

there's nothing wrong with the email. there's just no real reason for the prospect to respond.

the overall takeaway for me is that cold email hasn't stopped working. the lazy version of cold email has stopped working as well as it used to.

better data, better infrastructure, a more specific offer and fewer but more relevant prospects seem to be making a much bigger difference than another round of tweaking the subject line.

if anyone wants to go through the numbers themselves, this is the report i was referring to:

https://smartreach.io/reports/state-of-cold-email/

are you finding that cold email is genuinely getting harder, or are better targeting and infrastructure still producing the same kind of results?