The Sales Archaeologist

As you might imagine I hear quite a bit about relationship selling. Everyone lists it as being the key to the success of their business, everyone says “it’s all about the relationships” and all the CEO’s we speak with would say that their sales people need to be good at developing relationships.

That said what else do we see? What are the cautions and where are the hazards?

• Good relationships might compliment good selling skills but they don’t erase bad ones
• Idle chatter about sports with a prospect is not developing a relationship
• Relationship building is often used to excuse why a prospect isn’t moving through the pipeline when in reality it should speed things up
• Many companies that have said “it’s all about relationships” have seen an exodus of clients for other reasons (wait a minute I thought it was all about relationships) which indicates how difficult it is to measure relationships
• Most of the sales people we evaluate take too long to develop real relationships with prospects
• Real relationships are based on business discussions that cause the prospect to view the sales person as an equal and most sales people struggle to have those types of conversations.
• The market, the prospect, the client and the consumer in general is wary about establishing a real relationship with a sales person

So although it might be easy to talk about the importance of relationships it is clearly not easy to actually develop those relationships. Those who truly succeed at developing really strong relationships are going to have plenty of referrals and introductions from their customers – that is single handedly going to be the proof that you have not only developed relationships but you have developed them with the right people.

So before you just say “it’s all about relationships” make sure that it really is. If it isn’t then start looking at your process with more cynicism and look for ways to fix it.