The Relationship Changed - Have you?

The skills that made sellers successful stopped working. Not gradually. Suddenly.

The seminal Challenger research revealed it first. Relationship builders became the worst performers in complex sales. Only 7% of star performers used that approach.

That finding shocked the industry. Relationships always mattered in sales, right?

They still do. But the nature of those relationships changed completely. The old comfort blanket—the easy rapport—became a lead weight. Buyers weren't looking for a friend; they were looking for a co-pilot to navigate complexity.

🛑 Current State: The 70% Blind Spot

According to 2023 research, buyers now complete 70% of their journey before they contact you. They've researched solutions. They've built requirements. They've compared options.

By the time you get the call, the technical conversation already happened. Without you.

In the past, you were the information source. That access is gone. Not only that, if you inject yourself too early with product data, it might even have a negative effect on your success rate.

When buyers finally engage, they're not looking for product information. They're evaluating business partners. The conversation shifted irrevocably from technical specifications to business outcomes.

And the vast majority of sellers aren't equipped for that conversation.

💣 Underestimated Problem: The Buying Committee Blitz

The buying group multiplied. You used to build relationships with two or three people you knew personally. You adjusted your approach to their style.

Now there are stakeholders you’ll never meet—a buying committee blitz of people you must influence indirectly.

Your talking points need to resonate with analytical thinkers, amiable relationship builders, and executive decision makers. Simultaneously. Through intermediaries.

This requires a different kind of communication skill. You're not just adapting to the person in front of you; you’re equipping and coaching that person to sell your value to others.

Product language doesn't translate upward very well. Strategic business outcome language does.

💰 The Cost of the Status Quo: The Org Chart is Dead

Traditional relationship building focused on hierarchy. "Let's look at the Org Chart and get to the senior executive." "Let them push your agenda down."

That approach died the moment buyer behaviour changed.

What works now is coaching. You must understand organisational goals from the top, then coach your champions at lower levels to sell upward using that strategic context.

You’re not looking for advocates of your product. You're looking for advocates of change.

That’s a fundamentally different skill. You become a buyer's coach. You equip internal champions with the framing and business context they need to drive change within their own organisation.

Most training programmes don't teach this. The cost of this skill gap isn't just lost deals; it's irrelevance. Your deep product knowledge is now just table stakes—a prerequisite for entry, not a differentiator.

✨ New Way Forward: It's a Failure to Think

I've run hundreds of workshops. The pattern is painfully clear.

Sellers aren't naturally equipped for this new reality. Some adapt intuitively. Most don't.

The gap isn't product knowledge. It's not motivation. It's a failure to think strategically.

Specifically: the ability to understand context over content. To ask questions that turn the buyer into the learner, not the other way around. To build what I call radical empathy through genuine curiosity.

Here is the essential formula for the new sales professional:

Curiosity - Different Questions - Diverse Perspectives - Empathy - Rapport - Access and Time.

Access lets you partner collaboratively to build the business case. Research confirms this: 53% of customer loyalty comes from the sales experience itself. Not the product. Not the price. How you guide the decision.

💡 From Vendor to Visionary: The Responsibility Revolution

Everything starts with one belief: I'm responsible for improving my customer's business.

Not selling to them. Improving their business.

That mindset changes everything. Your research focus shifts from content to context. You map information flow. You identify who frames decisions and how. You understand their thinking at each level.

Technical expertise became table stakes. The differentiator is your ability to think strategically about their business and help them think differently about their challenges.

That's the skill gap traditional training programmes miss. They teach what to say. They don't teach how to think.

The relationship didn't die. It evolved into something more complex, more valuable, and more dependent on distinctly human, non-automatable capabilities.

The question isn't whether you can build relationships. It’s whether you can re-engineer your internal operating system to navigate this new reality.

This new world demands a new discipline. A systematic way to build radical empathy, map complex organisational context, and coach for upward change.

Connect with me if you want to learn more about this topic.