Giovanni Proietta: How LinkedIn, Fractional Leadership and Pure Curiosity Can Transform Your Sales Game
A career built through rooms he was not supposed to enter
When you listen to Giovanni Proietta you realise he has lived several careers inside one life. He grew up in Italy, studied in France, moved to Lithuania, worked in HR, and eventually fell into tech sales almost by accident. Every jump looks random on paper, yet each move sharpened the instincts he uses today.
His early sales experience was brutally simple. A list of phone numbers, a corner desk, a market he barely understood and zero expectations. That isolation turned into an advantage. With no mentor correcting him and no one watching his mistakes, he had space to fail until competence slowly formed. He says that period taught him a truth many reps avoid. Sales is lonely. You build your confidence inside that loneliness, not from praise or training sessions.
The Interactio years and a hypergrowth education
When Giovanni joined Interactio everything accelerated. Remote events exploded, the company scaled at lightning speed and every rep found themselves in a pressure cooker of complexity. Giovanni jokes that he spoke with a thousand clients in a single year and everyone who has lived hypergrowth knows he might not be exaggerating.
What struck him most was the team culture. It was not just colleagues doing tasks. It was a unit. A group of people who trusted each other enough to experiment, fail, recover and keep going even when every week felt impossible. He still speaks about that team as if they were family. When he says he feels part of them even years later you can hear that he means it.
Spotting the shift in the market before others did
Over the past few years Giovanni noticed something many founders still miss. Early stage companies were burning budget hiring full time sales leaders too early or avoiding senior help until they were already in trouble. The gap in the market was obvious to him. These companies did not need a full time VP of Sales. They needed senior thinking in short concentrated bursts. They needed someone who could come in, diagnose the truth instantly, fix what actually matters and step out again.
Fractional leadership became his answer. Not coaching. Not consulting. Actual hands on building without the overhead. His early work with founders kept repeating the same pattern. They would explain a sales issue in the only language they knew. Giovanni would reframe it in one sentence and the real problem finally became visible. He calls it the screwdriver effect. Ten years of knowledge applied to a five second fix.
The practical shifts that unlock revenue
Sometimes the fix is technical. A founder drowning in low quality inbound suddenly makes progress after Giovanni introduces one simple qualification workflow they never considered. Other times it is positioning. One client had a homepage message so generic it could have belonged to twenty industries. Giovanni rewrote their opening line into a simple structure based on problem, audience and solution. Their demos changed overnight because the buyer finally understood why they were in the room.
This is the part most founders underestimate. They think they need a hundred new tactics. In reality they often need three very obvious ones. They just need someone experienced enough to see them.
Why LinkedIn is not optional anymore
If Giovanni is known for anything publicly it is the way he uses LinkedIn. Not as a brochure. Not as a bragging stage. As a place to be a person. He writes about work, life, beer by a Lithuanian lake, small observations, frustrations and lessons. And somehow that builds trust in ways cold outreach never will.
One of his lake posts turned into a conversation with an old French contact who later became a major opportunity. This is the quiet advantage most sellers ignore. Buyers need to know your personality before they ever care about your pitch.
Giovanni repeats this principle often. You do not need to impress people who are not your audience. If someone dislikes your posts they can unfollow you. If someone rolls their eyes they were never going to buy from you anyway. Visibility is not about being liked. It is about being recognised by the right people.
A new way to think about work
Underneath all of this sits a deeper idea. Work is becoming a commodity. It is not a negative statement. It is simply true. The world of work has changed. The labour market has changed. The expectations have changed. You can stay inside the traditional employee frame or you can step outside it and redefine your value completely.
Fractional sales leadership is how Giovanni responded to this shift. It is not a trend. It is a preview of how work will function over the next decade. More fluid roles. More project based expertise. More partnerships between founders and specialists rather than rigid reporting lines.
The part most people miss
Giovanni says he still sees himself at day zero. It is the same curiosity that made him film movies as a kid and build blogs as a teenager. That instinct is what created every opportunity in his career. He never tried to force a perfect plan. He followed what energised him and moved quickly when a door cracked open.
His message for founders and salespeople is refreshingly direct. Speak like a human. Keep learning faster than your environment changes. Share your ideas even when you think nobody cares. And remember that most breakthroughs in sales do not come from sophistication. They come from clarity, curiosity and the courage to say the thing everyone else avoids.
