What Being an Account Executive in Telecom Taught Me About Partnerships

The biggest deals I’ve closed started with conversations, not contracts.

In telecom, nothing moves fast, not regulations, not implementations, and definitely not enterprise deals. When I first started as an Account Executive, I thought success meant signing big contracts and moving on to the next. What I’ve learned instead is that the real work, and the real reward, comes from something slower: building partnerships that last.

Because in telecom, partnership isn’t a one-time event. It’s a process, one that lives in the follow-ups, the late-night calls, and the quiet trust that builds between people who keep their word.

Patience is part of the process

Every enterprise deal has its own rhythm. There are months of conversations, multiple departments involved, legal reviews, compliance checks, procurement cycles, and at least a dozen unexpected detours along the way.

Early on, that pace felt like friction. I wanted progress, signatures, and momentum. But the more I listened and observed, the more I realized that patience isn’t the opposite of progress, it’s the foundation of it.

When you slow down enough to understand a client’s internal process, their regulatory environment, and even their cultural expectations, you stop selling to them and start working with them. That’s where real trust begins.

Consistency beats charisma

It’s easy to get caught up in the performance of sales, the energy, the storytelling, the pitch. But the truth is, what clients remember most isn’t how impressive the first call sounded. It’s how reliable you were after it.

In telecom, reliability isn’t just a service metric; it’s a sales one. Deals move across time zones, technical teams, and contract renewals. When clients see that you follow through, that you remember the details, the pain points, the timelines, they start to see you as a partner, not a vendor.

And that’s when conversations turn into long-term relationships.

Understanding over urgency

There’s a lot of pressure in sales to close fast, to move the pipeline forward and hit the quota. But when you’re working in a space as intricate as telecom, speed without understanding can do more harm than good.

Each customer’s business is different. A fintech startup in Singapore has different routing priorities than a carrier in Canada or a compliance-heavy enterprise in Germany. If you approach them all with the same urgency, you miss the nuances that matter.

Sometimes the best way to accelerate a deal is to slow it down, to ask one more question, to confirm one more technical requirement, to make sure the solution truly fits.

The real currency is trust

Telecom is an industry of infrastructure, but it’s built on relationships. Every route, every service, every connection is backed by people who trust each other to deliver.

Partnerships in this space don’t survive on pricing alone; they survive on dependability. When a customer knows you’ll pick up the phone, answer the email, or proactively flag an issue before it becomes a problem, that’s when loyalty is built.

And when you’ve earned that kind of trust, renewals don’t need persuasion. They happen naturally, because partnership has replaced negotiation.

Partnerships aren’t closed, they’re built

After years in this business, I’ve learned that the best sales outcomes don’t end with a signature. They begin there.

Every contract marks the start of something that grows through collaboration, communication, and respect. The role of an Account Executive isn’t just to secure a deal, it’s to safeguard a relationship.

At DIDlogic, that’s exactly how we approach our work. Every interaction, whether it’s a call, a quote, or a connection, is a step toward partnership. Because the strongest deals aren’t won on price or speed, they’re built on trust, and they stand the test of time.