Episode 114: Why Relationship-Building in Sales is More Powerful Than Any Pitch

Watch the episode here

  In sales, at the end of the day, the competition often isn't the competitive product, but the relationship that the competitor salesperson has with our ideal clients. 

You're listening to Prospecting on Purpose, where we discuss all things prospecting, sales, business, and mindset. I'm your host, Sara Murray, a sales champion, who's here to show you that you can be a shark in business and still lead with intentionality and authenticity. Tune in each week as we dive into methods to connect with clients, communicate with confidence, and close the deal.

Welcome to Prospecting on Purpose. Today's episode is going to cover the art of building relationships specific to our careers and our work efforts. There are two reasons that this is my favorite topic. The first is pretty simple. I enjoy the relationships that I have with people. I feel so fortunate and blessed to be able to maintain long lasting connections with friends and clients, and also build new ones.

I personally feel that it's been my superpower and the success of my career, but most importantly, it adds tremendous joy and richness to my life. And the second reason, in a sales function, the ability to quickly build and maintain relationships is the ultimate skill, and it's a soft skill, so it's hard to metric and measure the ability to create these impactful relationships. And since we can't always see the dollars behind these different relationships that we've formed in our careers, sometimes leaders struggle to see the value in that skill set. In sales, at the end of the day, the competition often isn't the competitive product, but the relationship that the competitor salesperson has with our ideal clients.

This is a neglected area, and the reason it's neglected is that it often shows up as a problem at the end of the sales cycle when we're about to lose it, or we do lose the sale. And then we start trying to beat on price, we're nickel and diming, we're trying to convince the client to buy and it's coming from a place of desperation, or we're complaining about marketing, or we're blaming the competition's ability to do X when our product only does Y.

And, sure. Sure, sure, sure. It can be all of those things. But often it's not a sales problem, it's not a marketing problem, it's not a pricing problem, it's not a product problem, it's a prospecting and relationship problem which is why we're talking about it today. If we can master the art of authentic relationship building and establish that as a foundation for our business efforts, then the business exchange becomes more organic and way more seamless.

Obviously, we have many different types of relationships in our lives. Romantic, familial, friendships, and the relationship that we have with ourselves. When it comes to work, we have relationships with our colleagues and our peers, our managers and our senior leadership, the people that we manage, our business partners, our vendors, and of course our clients.

Relationships are the most important part of driving business forward, and I don't think it's talked enough about that much, so we're going to talk about it today. We're going to go through a couple of different examples from the lens of a salesperson, really in any role. If we want to get things done, sometimes it's having a relationship with the right people.

We're spearheading a project, we need buy-in from various departments, we need that relationship with the other departments to greenlight and expedite the project. If we want a promotion, obviously we have to have that foundational relationship with our direct boss, but often their boss has to be on board. They may survey our peers in our direct reports for feedback on our performance. We better hope those relationships are solid. 

Quick example here, I've had some very technical roles with complex product, complex installations, and things could go wrong because it was complicated. And I am not an engineer, I would probably score myself like a 6 out of 10 on the technical savvy scale. But, because I know how to build relationships, I almost always knew the right parties to bring together to talk to each other to find the solution. Sometimes it would feel like I wasn't doing anything besides holding the phone up on speakerphone of the folks in the room. But there's tremendous value in knowing who to call and in knowing that they'll answer to help you to drive that problem to a resolution. And ideally, I'm expressing gratitude so that the mutually beneficial part of this relationship skill set is covered and that they'll answer the phone for me next time I call for help. It's hard to measure that when we're in the moment, or it's difficult to see that solving that problem that day led to six other projects or an exclusive contract with that client.

Sometimes how we handle problems is a great opportunity to build relationships and put a deposit in a client's emotional bank account. We'll talk about that more in a minute.

So how do we do this? How do we build relationships? Well, from our sales lens, I call it bridging the gap, GAP between us, the sellers, and the customer, our price client. One of the most common things I see is that we put our high profile clients or prospects up on this pedestal, right? Maybe they're a client we really wanna work with because of their market share or their position in the industry. Maybe it's the owner or an executive of a company we're already doing business with, but not at the senior leadership level. Maybe it's someone who's in a high visibility position or they're the lead on a major project that we want our product or service to be sold into.

Whoever that client is, we've put them up on this pedestal. And that is okay. It is important to respect and admire our client. But when I say bridge the gap, the gap is between us on the ground. And our client up on this pedestal. And this is really important to bridge that gap. We are not taking our client off of the pedestal, but we're putting ourselves up on it with them.

So GAP is an acronym. Before we get into it, I want to talk about a quick baseline here. We need a foundation of values, who we are, what we stand for, how we show up in the world, and then confidence. Because if we have that confidence that we are going to add value to our client, then getting up on that pedestal is going to be way easier.

So values, confidence, check, check, we're solid with ourselves. Let's get into this acronym. G stands for genuine interest. We have to be curious and interested in others. If we're working to form a new relationship, it requires us to be more interested in the other person as opposed to talking about ourselves or pushing our own agenda forward.

In a sales role, that can be present. Of course, that's the goal. But for this first step, let's remove our agendas, remove our product from our minds, and just get genuinely curious about other people. I like to use easy icebreakers for this one. If you haven't listened to episode 4, why icebreakers work for prospecting, there are a lot of good examples there.

And these can be really easy questions. Where did you grow up? Do you have any vacations coming up? How do you like living in Las Vegas? Do you have any kids? It doesn't have to be hard. And the feedback that I've heard is that it's helpful in all areas of life. One of my friends told me that she's been using it in her dating app outreach.

Another person told me that they've incorporated some of those into their hiring questions as a way to create quick connection before the interview day. Easy, simple ways to establish connection, and we're doing it by expressing genuine interest. And it's important to note here that the genuine piece must be present.

It's so easy to tell when it's not, so make sure that you're connecting on something that you're truly interested in learning about, the other person, because then that genuineness is going to shine through in the interaction. And if this thought is intimidating, then I would encourage you to practice. Practice at the grocery store. Practice with your family and friends. Practice in low-stakes environments and see how easy it is to quickly connect with others. 

So genuine interest is getting us to that pedestal. Next up, A stands for “Authentic Relationship  Building”. There are two parts to this. The first part is to just be cool. And when I say be cool, I'm not talking about having a verified Instagram account or you're wearing the latest fashion. Be cool means being your authentic self, and be someone who leaves people feeling energized versus drained. If we go up to someone and we just start talking about our product, we're not expressing any interest, we're not making any effort in building the relationship, we are leaving the other person drained.

So that's not what we want to do. Please be cool. Leave people feeling energized and do it by being yourself, right? Authenticity is important. The second part of authentic relationship building is understanding and making deposits in the other person's emotional bank account. 

The emotional bank account is essentially a system of emotional deposits and withdrawals in relationship building. And if we're approaching a new client and we can get some quick social equity in, that's going to give you a quick elevator right up to that pedestal. 

So how do we do this? There are a lot of different ways. I'll give you a couple personal examples. My grandpa in the suburbs of Los Angeles had an avocado tree at his house. And during avocado season, I would bring avocados to everyone. I'd give them to the parking attendant at my office, I'd walk around the office and drop one off at people's desks, I'd pack them in a carry-on bag and take them through TSA on business trips. California avocados. I'd package them in a branded gift bag, and I'd bring them to high profile meetings and give them to my clients.

It cost me no money. It took the tiniest amount of effort, but that small amount of effort would pay off tenfold, hundredfold in my work efforts. If I'm running late to a meeting, that LA guy's going to grab my car first because I took the time to learn his name, share an avocado. When I thought about it in my earlier example of making calls and connecting the right people to solve a client's problem, I probably dropped an avocado off at their desk in the past.

I have a deposit in my colleague's emotional bank account, and when I need to make a withdrawal, like calling and asking for help and solving a problem. It makes it a lot easier for me to ask for help. And the reason it's easier is that it's coming from a point of an emotional relationship connection, as opposed to, my role is a salesperson and your role is to help me solve this client's problem.

No, we have to have a mutually beneficial relationship, and that person helping me now has a deposit in my emotional bank account. This is how we build relationships. And I know it feels odd and transactional to break it down this way, but the art of building relationships can be a complex topic, and it's difficult to give tactical examples, so I'm trying to give some real and tactical examples here.

The emotional bank account is how you add value to your client before you start asking for things. We jump on that pedestal, and we try to make withdrawals from our client's bank account. We're withdrawing from an empty bank account. There has to be equity in the bank before we can take things out of it.

Obviously this has to come from a place of authenticity though. I'm not dropping off an avocado at someone's desk because I think one day I might need to call them for a favor, but it's a lot easier to make the ask if that foundation's there. And there are a lot of ways to do this that don't involve an avocado tree.

We see our client won an award or wrote an article. How easy, free, and thoughtful is it to just send them a quick email? Hey, I read this article. I thought it was great. Here's my two takeaways I got from it. Boom. Easy. I recently had a listener send me a really nice note on LinkedIn with some of her takeaways from the podcast, and it was so sweet.

And there wasn't a hidden agenda, it was just a genuine little thank you note. But her product is absolutely something I could use in the future or that my clients might need. But she's on my radar because she put a deposit in my emotional bank account without asking for anything in return. How many of us get LinkedIn messages trying to sell us stuff?

Everyone. How can we use the emotional bank account and our prospecting efforts to add value to a prospect without asking for anything in return? Other quick, easy examples to start this emotional bank account deposit. I like to share books that I've read, podcasts, recipes, hiking trails, whatever, whatever we're interested in. If we express genuine interest in others to find those shared connection points, then creating emotional bank account deposits becomes really easy and it's fun.

And then the P in our bridging the gap stands for Prized Clients, or essentially prized relationships. Once you do the first two steps, this part becomes very, very easy. If we skip the first two steps, we'll never get ourselves on that pedestal because there's no relationship. There's always going to be a disconnect, and we're going to lose to the people who do make it up on that pedestal. 

So, a short example in bridging the gap and getting all three of those steps. I've shared that I used to sell fire pits and one day I'm at a trade show in North Carolina and a man walks by and his badge had the name of a brewery in Los Angeles that was by my house. So I stopped him and I asked him if it was his brewery and he told me that he sold it last year to Anheuser Busch. So obviously I gave him a high five, told him congratulations, and then the first thing I said was, Well, I'm so happy for you, but I really hope that they keep the Hearts of Palm Ceviche dish because I'm a vegetarian and that's one of my favorite things.

And he starts getting excited and says, that's my recipe! I'm a vegetarian too! So we're nerding out at this point and I ask him, Well, what are you gonna do with all that Anheuser Busch money? And he told me he was gonna open five new restaurants in LA. And I replied with, Ah! Have you considered fire elements for your restaurants?

And now we're in the booth and now we're talking business. That whole exchange took about three minutes. And he wasn't going to stop by my booth, he was power walking down the aisle. But I grabbed him from the aisle by expressing genuine interest in him and then his business. And then the authentic relationship building coming in next, I'm not fast forwarding into product features. Instead, we're high fiving, we're bonding over our vegetarianism, and complimenting his recipe. You know, those are all deposits in his emotional bank account. And then with that genuine interest, I asked him what was next for him. And lo and behold, here comes the business opportunity. Five new restaurants.

At that point, it would be weird to not start talking about my business and offer him fire features. But because I put myself up there on this pedestal with him by just being genuine and being myself. Now the business part becomes so natural. That's what I mean when I say organic and seamless, it becomes really easy to get to the quote unquote ask when that foundational relationship is there, and it doesn't have to take long, and we get to do it by being ourselves.

It's a small silly example but it's a good one because at most trade shows we just jump right in and regurgitate product facts without any relationship established or understanding of the person's needs. So to recap, the art of relationship building starts with that solid foundation with ourselves, understanding our values and what we stand for, and then confidence that we have something to offer the other person. Those two things need to be in place and it's a constant work in progress. But if we have that working relationship with ourselves, it's going to make it a lot easier to bridge the gap and align ourselves with our clients. So, bridging that gap requires genuine interest, authentic relationship building, which leads to prized clients.

There are so many different areas that we can expand on, on the importance of relationships throughout this show. There are some real skills here, and it's not always obvious when they're absent, but it's really obvious when it's present. Leaders and sellers are able to communicate more effectively and influence the outcome if they have the ability to build relationships.

Our competition is not our competing product or service. Our competition is the relationship that the competitor salesperson has with our client. It's at the heart of everything we do, and if we can intentionally master this, it's going to serve us in every area of life, and especially how we navigate through our careers.

I love this topic. I think the relationship is such a crucial piece. I love building new relationships. If you've been listening to this show, you know the guests that we've been talking to. It's been fantastic to build relationships with that caliber of people, and the way I've been able to build those relationships is by following this process, bridging the gap, and getting myself on the pedestal with them.

So that wraps up today's episode. We're going to get into this topic in more detail. If you'd like to stay up to date on that with the podcast and other fun things launching this year, please sign up to be notified via email at connect.saramurray.com. I'll include it in the show notes, but it's connect.saramurray.com.

 If you enjoyed the episode, please drop a little emotional bank account deposit my way by subscribing, liking, sharing, leave a review, all the things. I appreciate it so much. Next week's episode, we have an amazing guest, so please be sure to tune in. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next week.

Thank you so much for listening to the Prospecting on Purpose podcast. If you loved what you heard today, subscribe to the podcast and please rate and leave a review. For more info on me or if you'd like to work together, feel free to go to my website, saramurray.com, on social media, I'm usually hanging out at SaramurraySales.

Thanks again for joining me and I'll see you next time.

Connect with Sara

https://www.saramurray.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@saramurraysales  
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saramurraysales/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saramurraysales/