What I Learned Building a Support Network Instead of Waiting for One

The following is an illustrative composite account, reflecting experiences commonly shared by women in B2B sales who've built peer communities within their own companies.

"I was the only woman on a nine-person enterprise sales team for almost two years. There wasn't a formal mentorship program, and the informal one — the after-work drinks and side conversations where a lot of real coaching seemed to happen — wasn't really built for me to be part of it comfortably.

Instead of waiting for that to change, I started a monthly virtual call with four other women in similar roles at other companies I'd met through a LinkedIn sales community. No agenda beyond one honest question each: what's actually hard right now. It started as a venting session, if I'm honest, but within a few months it turned into real tactical advice — how to push back on an unrealistic quota conversation, how to word a promotion ask, how to handle a client who kept directing questions to my male SE instead of me in meetings.

I didn't set out to build anything formal. But eighteen months in, that small group has directly led to two of us getting promoted, using language and framing we workshopped together beforehand. I've since seen how many of the women running larger, more visible communities in this space — the kind that end up on 'top women in sales' lists — started exactly this way: informally, out of necessity, before it became something bigger.

If you're the only one in the room, the fix isn't always waiting for your company to build the room you need. Sometimes it's finding four other people building the same thing quietly, somewhere else."

— Enterprise Account Executive, B2B technology company (illustrative account)