Derek Aryiku

The leading data and delivery excellence platform.

I walked into my first job interview expecting to write copy. I walked out with a sales job I didn't want.Best career mistake I ever made. Twenty years old, new father, journalism degree in hand. I bounced into that interview with more energy than sense, talking a mile a minute about stories and campaigns.

 Turns out, that infectious energy is exactly what got me the offer. Just not for copywriting. Sales clicked immediately. It became my obsession.Since then, I've been the first sales hire on the ground for multiple companies, building teams and figuring out what actually works when there's no playbook. 


The story's not finished, but I'm enjoying every minute of this ride.Let's connect if you're building something worth talking about.

Sales Director

Parcel Perform is the leading delivery experience platform. We enable modern e-commerce enterprises to create unique end-to-end customer journeys and optimize logistics operations with powerful data integrations, parcel tracking, delivery notifications and logistics performance reports in real-time. 

Our scalable SaaS platform executes more than 100M parcel updates daily and integrates with 900+ carriers. Furthermore, we are pioneering innovative ML / AI use cases in e-commerce logistics including its 'Date of Arrival' prediction engine. Parcel Perform is the provider of choice for top brands like Nespresso, marketplaces like Zalando, idealo and Wayfair as well as carriers across all major verticals globally.

I went quiet for 6 months. 
Here's the honest reason why, and what I'm bringing back with me. 

I owe you an honest conversation before I owe you anything else.

Six months ago I stopped posting.

Not because life got busy. 
Not because I ran out of things to say. 
I stopped because I looked at what I was putting out into the world and realised something uncomfortable:

I was performing expertise instead of sharing it.

I was writing posts that sounded good rather than posts that actually meant something. And at some point that started to feel hollow. So I stopped. 

I went back to the work. 

I closed deals the old-fashioned way: face to face, phone in hand, real conversations with real human beings.

And I paid attention. 
To what was actually working. 
To what the best enterprise salespeople around me were doing differently. 
To where the industry was drifting, and where it was quietly going wrong.

What I noticed was this 👇

The world got louder. 

AI started writing everyone's emails. 
Automation replaced conversations. Inboxes became impossible. And in the middle of all of it, the salespeople who were genuinely thriving were doing the opposite of everyone else.

They were turning up. 
Picking up the phone. Sending handwritten notes. Building actual relationships instead of engineering artificial ones.

That's what I want to talk about. 
No recycled frameworks. No content that exists just to fill a calendar.

Just the honest, specific, sometimes uncomfortable truth about what it actually takes to sell at enterprise level in 2025.

I'm glad to be back. 🤝

Del Aryiku

Enterprise AE at Sociolocal | Daily Sales Content from Someone Still in It

9 things I wish someone had told me before my first enterprise discovery call. 

Save this. You'll thank yourself later.

I've been on hundreds of discovery calls.

l've closed some brilliantly. 
I've lost others so badly I still think about them in the shower.

Here's the unfiltered list of things I had to learn the hard way:

1️⃣ The first five minutes set everything. If you spend them on small talk with no direction, you've lost the frame.

2️⃣ Your agenda is a gift, not a formality. Share it at the start and invite them to add to it.

3️⃣ Never ask 'what keeps you up at night?'
Instead ask: 'What's the problem you've stopped trying to solve because nothing has worked?'

4️⃣ You are not there to pitch. You are there to diagnose. Think: the world's best GP, not a sales rep.

5️⃣ Ask about the past before the future. 'What have you already tried?' tells you everything.

6️⃣ The real decision-maker is almost never in the first call. Ask: 'Who else needs to be involved?'

7️⃣ Silence is a tool, not an accident. After a big question, count to five before speaking.

8️⃣ Always confirm the next step before you leave the call. Specific date. Specific person. Specific action.

9️⃣ Send your recap within two hours. Three sentences. What we discussed. What we agreed. What happens next.


None of this is complicated. Almost nobody does all of it.

That gap is your advantage. 

Which of these do you consistently nail and which one are you guilty of skipping? Be honest. The comment section is a safe space.

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