“Relationship” Selling…..

I was listening to a webcast recently and the “new” concept of “Relationship” selling came up. Apparently the speakers were noticing the fact that to develop trust and confidence with our customers, we have to build some sort of relationship. The discussion went further, discussing concepts around FOFU, sensemaking, decision confidence, all requiring some level of relationship in helping the customer understand and move forward. It’s fascinating that after more than a decade of mechanizing our engagement strategies, we are now discovering that, ultimately, selling is all about people working with people. Whether it’s within the buying team itself, our interactions with buying teams, our interactions within the organization. Once we inject two human beings into any process, human to human connections are critical to success.

I’ve had a long, difficult relationship with “Relationship” selling. While it may not seem so, I’m terribly introverted. I’m a mathy-science type guy, more comfortable with data and facts. My early discovery calls looked like interrogations. No connection with the customer, just asking for the facts. I didn’t understand when people shifted the conversation to what it meant to them. Whenever they talked about uncertainty, risks, concerns with change management, I would retort: “Here’s what the analysis shows…. Here are the unequivocal issues demonstrated by the data….. These are the areas you must fix!” Sometime, when I was very confident in my presentation, I’d emphasize that confidence by ending my presentation, saying, “QED!” Mathy-science people will get this.

One day, I was 23 and an account manager for one of the top 5 money center banks, the CIO called me into his office. After pleasantries, he said, “Dave, I have to give you some feedback. Sometimes you intimidate me!” I was blown away. I was a relatively new AM and he was an ancient 47 year old CIO in one of the biggest banks in the world. “How could I possibly intimidate him?”

Only later did I realize, how fortunate I was to have Jim coaching me.

But my reaction to relationship selling wasn’t just driven by my own behavioral style. It was the way I saw so many people conduct their relationship development. Their sole goal was do become “Best Buds” with the customer. Not just to have a good professional relationship or even a nice friendship. They wanted to be their customers “Best Bud.” That meant lots of lunches, baseball games, and similar activities. It was always being ready to tell a joke or a funny story. It was making sure they knew the birthdays for all their customers kids, so they could send birthday cards and gifts. It seemed to me, in selling situations, the strategy these people used was, “When the going gets tough, the tough go to lunch…..” Or better yet, spend the evening downing drinks at Harry’s of Hanover Square.

The idea these sales people had about relationship selling was, “They would never make a decision that would hurt their bud!” And implicit in that was, “If I don’t win this deal, I won’t have the money to send your kids balloons for their next birthday!”

When I saw sales people doing this, it made me sick. Was that the condition of success? Did I have to stoop to that level of hypocrisy? Could my liver tolerate the alcohol intake?

That was back in the age where we delivered our proposals on stone tablets.

Fast forward to today. We are discovering that people are important part in every business, consequently every selling opportunity involves people.

And we are discovering that running these people through our sales assembly lines is about as effective as my “just the facts/data” approach was. Changing and buying is about more than just the facts and data. It’s about what they mean to the people making a decision. And this is where selling gets messy. We have to understand differing values, goals, objectives. We have to recognize that “irrational/illogical” reactions to what we discuss and present are part of being human–we all have differing lenses through which we interpret things. We recognize that we, our colleagues, and our customers, despite the confidence we may display are plagued with uncertainty. And we recognize, as humans, what we want, what we do, how we respond may not be consistent over time, and may be constantly changing. (The hidden mathy-science part of me is thinking, “This makes sense, it’s logical.”)

We are coming back to the idea that empathy, understanding, and caring are critical in everything we do in business. And in periods of disruption and change they are more critical.

We are learning that relationships are critical to our success. Not the kind of relationships that were so repulsive to me when I started selling, but developing genuine trust. Trust is not about being best buds, sometimes our buds are the most untrustworthy. But again it’s about empathy, understanding, and caring–but not just in the moment, but consistency over time. It’s about meeting commitments so people feel confident and can rely on each other. Relationships involve some level of mutual respect. There is integrity in the relationship, with trust flowing both ways.

The nature of the relationship will be differ across people, for a number of reasons. The frequency of interaction. The importance/risk involved in the work performed together. The level of uncertainty we face and the need for support in managing that uncertainty. Some relationships may be fleeting, but in the moment of the interaction, we have to connect with each other. Some will be longer because of the nature of the project and it’s challenges. Or the fact that we see and are somehow involved in working together. Some evolve into long term friendships.

But relationships are critical in business. Within our own companies, within our teams, with our manages, with our people. Relationships are critical in working with customers, partners and others. Unless we are hermits, living on a remote island, we deal with people everyday. And successfully making it through the day is based on our abilities to relate to/with each other.

Somehow, we seem to have lost it. The data on engagement, attrition, happiness remind us of this. The data we see on loneliness, mental health reinforces it.

Fortunately, I see our attitudes changing. We are recognizing the importance of relationships, individually and organizationally. Relationships were never about being “best buds,” they have always been about connecting in some sort of meaningful way with another human being. And those “meaningful connections,” may be a simple as smiling at someone you pass on the street. Or it may be helping customers make very difficult decisions. Or it may be about how we more effectively work and grow within our organizations. Or it may be about being good human beings.

Afterword: My regular readers will recognize I wrote on this topic a few weeks ago. As I’ve thought about that article, I realized I hadn’t captured some of the key ideas I was thinking about. Hope you have found this builds on, rather than repeats the same article.