I Am Not the Job: A Conversation with Joanna Rybus

The most important thing Joanna Rybus ever learned about sales had nothing to do with sales. It was the moment she decided she was not her job.

Joanna has spent over two decades building, scaling, and reinventing businesses across industries, markets, and continents. She migrated to the US at 21, moved through corporate, consulting, and tech, ran a market as a country manager at Western Union, posted a 40% close rate at Netguru, and is now Head of Business Development at Wingle Group, building the commercial engine for a real-time product and marketing intelligence platform. She's a rare blend of hard commercial structure and genuine emotional intelligence, and the through-line of everything she says is that selling well starts with being a whole person first.

The identity shift that set her free

Ask Joanna about her hardest transition and it isn't a country or an industry. It's the day she decided she is not the job, not her results, and not what her bosses see in her. She calls it life-altering, the point where she finally became free. It isn't always comfortable to be like that in a business environment, she admits, because you're not following the expected path and some people don't appreciate it. But everything changed for her from that moment. And it reframes the "I might fail" anxiety most people carry up the ladder: once your identity isn't riding on the outcome, feedback stays useful and nothing lands as a personal wound.

She's clear the shift is both conscious and gradual. You need the awareness to observe and reflect, and then you have to take actions on it. Things don't just happen to you; you make deliberate decisions about yourself, and the transition is the accumulated result.

Wired for it, and what that actually means

Joanna knew she was good at business development, but the deeper realization was that something in her system made her good at it. Two moments stuck. A friend, a tech person with no stake in her business, told her they'd buy anything from her after she called about a new project. And a boss once said that in the company's entire history, they'd never seen anyone onboard and get up to speed as fast as she did, which made her realize it had been that way at every company she'd joined. Her own summary of the craft is disarmingly simple: understand the goal, learn the subject well enough to talk to people, because business development is essentially about talking to people. And underneath the talking, empathy, understanding someone's pain and showing how you can help.

Building go-to-market from first principles

At Wingle Group she's building GTM from scratch, and her sequence is deliberate. The first thing she builds is an understanding of what they're doing and who can benefit, which is really discovering product-market fit while testing ICP and positioning. Only then comes the sales process, the right channels, and the messaging, which has to be genuinely personalized, the right message for the right person. Her ordering rule is "what, for whom, why, and how," and she's honest that in a startup it sometimes all happens at once anyway.

On the eternal messaging-versus-channel debate, she comes down firmly on messaging. Right channel with bad messaging and you lose the chance to speak to the client at all, the door closes. Right message delivered to the right person through a less-than-perfect channel and the door stays open, you can fix the channel later. Her favorite channel is LinkedIn, done with respect for people's time rather than trash in their inbox, because the moment you invade people's privacy and waste their time, they stop trusting the tool entirely.

"We need more leads" is usually the wrong diagnosis

When founders say they need more leads, Joanna's read is that the real problem is usually product-market fit and lead qualification. Companies waste leads on miscommunication, the wrong message to the wrong people, then conclude it's a quantity problem when it isn't. Asking for more leads without changing anything in the process is expecting different results from the same actions. Better to stop, analyze the historical data, draw conclusions, and fix what's broken, then the question of enough leads becomes secondary.

Where a 40% close rate comes from

Pushed on her 40% close rate at Netguru, Joanna insists she didn't do anything different, which is exactly the honest answer. Sales, she says, is a combination of things that when synchronized deliver results: the right timing, the right client, the right solution to their problem, the right execution, and a team behind it. No magic. Give people proper attention, listen, make them feel important, and show the value you bring to their problem. That's it, and that's all it takes.

She and I agreed on the honest caveat too: a great close rate often rides on genuine product-market fit and a product flying off the shelf, which makes the salesmanship easier to see than it is to isolate. And without the empathy layer, even a closed deal is usually a one-time transaction rather than a repeatable relationship.

The belief she threw out

A decade ago Joanna believed sales was all about methodology and tricks, that learning three frameworks would be the whole game. Today she completely disagrees. People don't want to be tricked, and she wouldn't do to another person what she wouldn't want done to her. Selling, she says, can be authentic and transparent, no hooks, no manipulation, just giving people value. It maps onto the old know-like-trust-buy sequence, provided they actually need what you offer. Talk to clients the way you talk to people. Be direct, be empathetic, be human.

Business development is not sales

One of her sharpest points is that companies treat business development too tactically, as a revenue function rather than a strategic growth engine. She names the patterns: short-term revenue obsession that piles pressure on salespeople and kills strategic thinking; confusing sales with BD, when BD is about creating the market, not converting existing demand; the endless glorified job titles that dress up a lead-generation role as "Business Development Director"; and a lack of strategic customer understanding, where companies build strategy around internal targets instead of market reality. At Western Union, she says, growth accelerated only when they stopped chasing every opportunity and got deliberate about which segments to pursue.

Outbound, patience, and the product-team red flag

Outbound works when you have a clear ICP, a sharp value proposition, and the right timing and triggers, so you know exactly what to say to whom. It becomes noise the moment it's random, mass, generic, one-size-fits-all. And none of it happens fast. Patience is something she actively teaches, because certain things simply have to occur in sequence, especially for a company just entering a market. The red flag she watches for in early product teams is being product-driven instead of problem-driven, getting so excited about what they built that they skip validation. Vision is essential, but validation is what turns vision into a scalable business.

AI exposes average salespeople

On the "AI will replace sales" panic, Joanna is measured. In transactional, subscription, spec-comparison buying, it already does, and she prefers shopping that way herself. But consultative B2B, customizing a solution to a complex need, stays human to human, because it's about cost, risk mitigation, and strategic judgment. AI will take the repetitive admin. Her favorite line on it, borrowed from somewhere she can't place: AI won't replace great salespeople, it will expose average ones.

Success, redefined

Her definition of success has changed drastically. Money was the original motivator, the reason she chose sales at all. Today success is often internal, not getting too emotional about something, reacting calmly under stress, standing up for herself, drawing a line, speaking freely. And in business, it's increasingly about other people's success, the satisfaction of watching people she leads and mentors grow and flourish. The go-to-market strategies she'd once have celebrated as a career high are now just small projects she marks done.

Key takeaways

You are not the job. Separating your identity from your results and your boss's opinion is what makes feedback useful and failure survivable.

Business development creates the market. It isn't sales converting demand. Treating it tactically, as pure pipeline, kills the strategic thinking that actually compounds.

Messaging beats channel. The wrong message on the right channel closes the door. The right message on a weak channel leaves it open.

"We need more leads" is usually a PMF and qualification problem. More volume through a broken process just wastes more leads.

AI exposes average salespeople. Transactional buying goes to machines. Consultative B2B stays human to human, and the empathy layer is the moat.

Frameworks worth stealing

What, for whom, why, how

Build go-to-market in order. Start with what you're doing and who benefits, which is really finding product-market fit while testing ICP and positioning. Then the why (personalized messaging for the right person), then the how (the channels). In a startup it'll blur together, but keeping the sequence in mind stops you building outreach before you know who it's for.

Diagnose before you scale outbound

Before asking for more leads, look at the historical data. Is the message right, is the audience qualified, is there real product-market fit? Outbound only works with a clear ICP, sharp value proposition, and the right timing. Random, generic, mass outreach isn't a volume strategy, it's noise that erodes trust.

Quotes worth keeping

The lines I wrote down.

I decided I am not the job, I am not my results, I am not what my bosses see in me. That's when I became free.

Business development is about creating the market, not converting demand. People confuse it with sales all the time.

AI won't replace great salespeople. It will expose average ones.

Rapid fire round

Same questions every guest. Quick questions, quick answers.

Best advice you've ever received? Don't give up.

Advice you ignored and wish you'd listened to? The opposite, actually, from someone close to her heart: something to the effect of "don't try, you'll be taken advantage of anyway." She understands the underlying hurt behind it, but she rejects it.

What would you tell your younger self? Be more courageous and follow your dreams.

Ongoing challenge that keeps you up at night? The sheer intensity and complexity of the topics on her plate right now. Her fix: spend more time outside.

Favorite spot? The Baltic Sea, which she's moving toward soon.

Tool you can't live without? Her phone, an answer that scares her even as she says it.

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Joanna Rybus is the Head of Business Development at Wingle Group, building the commercial engine for a real-time product and marketing intelligence platform. Over two decades she has led business development across industries and continents, including a country-manager role at Western Union and a 40% close rate at Netguru. She now also mentors women over 40 rediscovering what brings them joy professionally. Find her on LinkedIn.