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Mastering Relationship Building in Sales

Relationships matter more than ever

Sales professionals need to embrace modern selling and its impact on prospecting to stay relevant because traditional sales strategies and tactics are not working as effectively as before.

Today’s sales professionals must engage and build relationships with a complex buying committee of qualified leads. Surrounding the decision maker are people who are influencing whether or not they make purchases. According to CEB, 6.8 people are involved in a typical B2B buying situation and sales pipeline—making it essential that sellers connect with more than a single decision maker. Yet 90% of decision makers say they never respond to cold outreach.

At the same time, sales reps need to satisfy heightened buyer expectations with relationship building in sales. Buyers are informed because of virtually unlimited access to information. In fact, it’s said that 50% of the buying process is done before prospects engage with a rep.

When they do finally reach out, buyers expect sales professionals to add value to their purchase process. However, with so much competition in the market featuring vendors offering similar products and services, even value differentiation is tough to prove at times without relationship building in sales.

Combined, these challenges have paved the way for virtual selling, a sales strategy based on three key elements: target, understand and engage.

Modern reps need to:

1. Target the full buying committee and qualified leads from start to finish.

2. Understand the buyer’s situation and guide the buyer, qualified leads, or someone on the buying committee to think about their business in a different way.

3. Engage effectively from first contact to final sale.

Before you worry about making this virtual selling shift, remember that relationship building in sales hasn’t changed. What’s changed through modern selling is how we leverage information and engage with people. At the end of the day, your success still hinges on relationship selling—now more than ever. The closer you can get to your sales prospects, the better you can understand their business, challenges, and goals—and guide them down the purchase path.

This eBook shares a modern sales prospecting framework, ways to find an engagement path, best practices for sales strategies and structuring your first call, and the key to standing apart from other sales professionals through virtual selling.