For fifteen years, I was in sales

For fifteen years, I was in sales.

I was good at it. I hit numbers, built pipeline, coached people to close. I thought that meant I understood how a business worked.

I didn't. I understood one slice of it. The slice that brought money in. I had almost no idea what happened to that money after the deal closed.

The day that changed, I was handed a full P&L. I sat with our finance lead for hours, going down the page line by line, asking questions a salesperson is almost never asked to think about. Cost to serve. Payment terms. Margin by channel. Cash conversion.

It was humbling. I had been celebrating deals that, once you ran the full number, barely built anything.

That was the moment I stopped thinking like a salesperson and started thinking like an operator.

Most people in revenue never get that view. If you have it, what did it change for you?