Building relationships is the cornerstone of sales. Ultimately, people buy from people they know, like, and trust, and the sellers who can build the strongest network are usually the most successful.
Although, with the rise of virtual selling and buyers that are inundated with unwanted outreach are just a few of the issues that make it harder than ever for sellers to break through the noise and create genuine relationships.
How do you break through? Leading sellers use a three-step strategy to connect with buyers. They know:
- What buyers really want.
- The mistakes that ruin sales relationships.
- How to use technology to identify prospects that are ready to become buyers.
Here’s what you need to know to become a sales relationship expert – and a quota-crushing seller.
Step #1: Building relationships start with knowing what buyers really want.
The key to moving any relationship forward?
Understanding what the person across from you hopes to gain from the interaction, and a rapidly changing sales environment means that buyer needs and expectations are evolving faster than sellers can respond.
The good news?
We have your back.
LinkedIn recently surveyed more than 15,000 buyers and sellers to better understand the challenges facing sales organizations and buying committees.
This is what we learned.
Buyers want someone who can change their mind.
Our research found buyers don’t want a seller who will just tell them about a product and agree with everything they say. Instead, the research found buyers crave a consultative seller, whose expertise actually changes the buyer’s way of thinking.
This happens more often than you’d think. More than half (54%) of buyers say that sellers change their opinion “often” or “very often.” When the response “somewhat often” is also included, that figure jumps to 83%.
Buyers want sellers to come in from the cold.
Buyers want sellers who’ve done the research required to turn cold outreach into warm outreach. Slightly over two-thirds (68%) of buyers say they’re unlikely to engage with a seller who reaches out with information that’s irrelevant to their job.
Our survey data shows buyers are more likely to consider brands if sellers engage in behaviors that require research. Specifically:
- 51% of buyers are more likely to consider a seller’s solution when the seller understands their business needs.
- 47% of buyers are more likely to consider a seller’s solution when the seller understands the buyer’s role in the decision-making process.
- 47% of buyers are more likely to consider a seller’s solution when the seller uses personalized communication.
Great sellers do twice as much research as their peers. The reason is easy to see: creating buyer/seller relationships is easier when sellers get to know buyers and their businesses before they ever sit down for a discussion.
Buyers want sellers who embrace virtual sales.
The world has changed, and although many buyers have returned to office environments, virtual selling is here to stay. According to LinkedIn’s research, over 75% of buyers prefer working remotely at least 50% of the time.
Part of that preference may result from a virtual purchasing environment that is easier to navigate. In our survey, a majority of buyers (55%) say that remote work has made buying easier. Just 8% of survey respondents said remote environments make buying more difficult.
The data is clear.
Being a top sales performer today means being a strong virtual seller. The two are one and the same.
Buyers want sellers who stay informed about what’s going on in their business, even when their champions leave.
Research shows that 86% of sellers say that they have seen a deal lost or stalled because a buyer changed roles. With that in mind, building relationships with multiple contacts (and champions) within a single company is essential.
That deep sales strategy has a name: multithreading, and it has become an essential part of seller success. Simply put, sellers can’t rely on just one champion, and companies need solutions that aren’t predicated on a single buyer’s relationship with a seller.
Step #2: Avoid these mistakes that can destroy buyer/seller relationships before they can start.
Even if you are ready to give buyers what they want, there are a million ways to mess up your budding connection to a buyer.
We asked our LinkedIn Sales [In]siders to identify some of the biggest mistakes sellers make when building relationships. And, most importantly, how to fix them.
Here’s what they said.
Sales Relationship Mistake: Thinking that your client is in the market for a friend, not a solution.
While it’s easy to focus on the relationship aspect of “sales relationships,” it’s also important to remember that prospects weren’t in the market for a best friend.
They are in the market for the best solution (or at least the best solution they can afford).
“The biggest mistake that sellers make with relationships is going hyper ‘relational’ so early in the process that it feels ‘icky,” said Marcus Murphy, Co-founder and CEO of 5ive.
So yes, being friendly is good. But buyers appreciate nothing more than when sellers make value the centerpiece of their relationship-building efforts.
“The role of a salesperson is not to win a popularity contest; the role of an effective seller is to understand customer needs and to identify opportunities to drive transformative value,” said Allex Alleyne, Area Vice President at Braze and Founder and Host of the Elite Level podcast. “This doesn't mean a seller shouldn't be a pleasant person, but it does mean that their number-one priority should be to add tremendous value to their customers.”
That’s not to say you shouldn’t build rapport with your buyer. Heck, you might even become best friends with them. But the grounding force is understanding their needs and solving their challenges.
“It doesn't have to feel like you aren't there to build a relationship,” Murphy said. “In my opinion, the best seller relationships are built on thoughtful, intentional attempts to show that you understand your buyer on a molecular level. That you've taken the time to understand their themes and how your solution can solve their needs in a timely and relevant way.”
Sales Relationship Mistake: Talking all about yourself and what you can do.
Sellers often are all-too-eager to talk about their great solution, without taking the time to understand why the prospect would be interested in it.
“So many sellers jump right into a pitch without doing research in advance, or in a first meeting without doing discovery first,” Robert Knop, CEO of Assist You Today, said. “Nothing is a bigger turnoff for a prospect than hearing a sales rep talk about a bunch of features and services that do not apply to a prospect’s business.”
As [In]sider Cherilynn Castleman said in her How I Sell interview, “A good salesperson knows how to make everything about the customer.”
After you developed that deep understanding, the next best action isn’t overwhelming your buyer with information. Instead, it’s about giving them the relevant information they need to make an informed decision.
“Buyers don’t need more information these days; they have that in spades,” said David “J.P.” Fisher, Global Social Selling Lead at SAS and President of Rock Star Consulting. “They need a trusted advisor to help provide insights that help them decide based on that information. While we don’t have to become best friends, we need to focus on the relationship which acts as a bridge and allows us to share our insights.”
Sales Relationship Mistake: Thinking sales relationships are exclusive.
In sales relationships, generally, the more, the merrier.
"Usually we go all in on the first person we talk with and get stuck working through that person forever,” said Jake Dunlap, CEO of Skaled Consulting. “The first person we speak with is most likely not the principal person we need to establish a relationship with in the long term. We need to make sure we have access to many people in an organization, and not just one person we've deemed the point-of-contact."
Sellers can unlock larger deals and mitigate the risks of depending on one champion by multithreading, i.e. building multiple champions within an account.
Data from LinkedIn’s survey of nearly 7,000 sellers found that top-performing salespeople were 13% more likely to multithread their accounts.
Go ahead and multithread. Like other deep sales strategies, creating multiple champions works.
“It's not a bad thing to make allies throughout a company,” Dunlap said.
Sales Relationship Mistake: Taking, taking, and taking some more.
“One mistake I see is sellers taking before they've given,” said Samantha McKenna, founder of #samsales Consulting. “Sometimes a seller will need a favor or make an ask before they've earned the right to.”
Unfortunately, treating a relationship like a one-way street can become a habit.
“I often see sellers become repeat takers in continuing to ask for favors without giving in return, and often without gratitude,” added McKenna. “It's important to ensure the tables are balanced when asking for introductions, referrals, etc. and especially to offer gratitude when you've been given support.”
It’s the Golden Rule – the better you treat your customers, the better they’ll treat you. And, if you go above and beyond for them, they’ll advocate for you throughout your career.
Sales Relationship Mistake: Sending shallow prospecting, which starts your relationship on the shallowest of terms.
"Prospecting gets no love in the relationship-building conversation,” said Will Allred, co-founder at Lavender. “We send out canned, thoughtless messaging and expect to build a relationship, you're putting yourself at a disadvantage from the start! You should show up with a point of view on their business. Show that you're curious. You'll create a focused conversation and a cleaner path towards closing the deal.”
Good communication requires striking the right tone.
"The biggest mistake I see sellers make in their copy as they go to build a relationship is that they're too informative,” Allred said. “This is especially true in cold emails. Across the millions of emails we see running through Lavender weekly, any informative tone in your writing reduces your replies by 26%. People feel like you're talking at them instead of with them, and they disengage.”
A good communicator treats the receiver of their communication like a partner and not like an audience.
“Part of the problem occurs when sellers talk about themselves,” Allred said. “Your buyer doesn't care about you. They're drowning in work and want you to help them. You need to reframe to talk to them on their terms."
Step #3: Use technology that enables deeper relationship-building.
Top-performing sellers take an insights-driven approach to selling and spend a greater proportion of their time researching and identifying the right buyers. They know that building multiple relationships at an account leads to better outcomes and understand the importance of finding hidden allies who can act as champions.
Relationship Explorer, a feature within LinkedIn Sales Navigator, makes doing that easy. With it, sellers can:
Save time and shorten sales cycles.
Relationship Explorer proactively recommends the best path in, based on the chosen target buyer Personas. It ensures your teams spend their time most effectively on the right people at the right time. This ultimately speeds up prospecting, cross-selling, and upselling.
Target the right people.
Instead of targeting everyone at an account, Relationship Explorer surfaces up to eight of the most relevant individuals to focus on — i.e. the best people to reach out to based on their relevancy and connectivity to you. You can also use it to multithread deeper into accounts by finding the next-best person to build a relationship with. This creates a better experience for buyers and sellers alike.
Leverage powerful insights to take immediate action.
Using LinkedIn’s first-party, real-time data, you get timely, relevant insights that empower you to take real-time action. For example, if a new director is brought into an account, you’ll be the first to know through Relationship Explorer. That’s a great time to reach out, as new hires at all levels are 65% more likely to accept your InMail. Relationship Explorer also surfaces the recommended next best action, so you always know what to do next.
Here are a few tips and tricks that will help you get the most out of Relationship Explorer:
- Upload your book of business into Sales Navigator and save all those accounts.
- Make sure that your CRM is synced with Sales Navigator, so that you can see past customers in Relationship Explorer.
- Focus on starting with accounts with a high Buyer Intent, since they are already in the market for your solutions. When searching accounts, add the filter “moderate or high buyer intent” to find them.
- Customize your Sales Navigator Personas, so that Relationship Explorer shows you the right people in the right roles.
- As you go through each account, use Relationship Explorer to find the best people to contact.
- Once you find the right leads in an account, save them and add them to your CRM, if they aren’t there already. You can then add them to an Outreach sequence or Salesloft cadence to book the meeting.
- Reach out to multiple contacts in Relationship Explorer at an account, so that you don’t lose a deal if your champion leaves the company.
Building successful sales relationships requires knowing when and how to connect with other human beings. It also requires finding the right human beings.
Doing that successfully means using the right technology.
“As a Relationship Manager supporting our existing customers, I am constantly looking to form new relationships throughout the organizations I support,” said Emma Johnston, SMB Relationship Manager at LinkedIn.
“Knowing where I can get warm introductions through my teammates and leaders at LinkedIn is a game changer for me,” Johnston said. “I am always mindful of who I am reaching out to, along with the messaging. So having this insight before ever reaching out helps me craft relevant messaging, which increases my response rates.”
Summary and Takeaways
For sellers, growing your book of business and building strong relationships are synonyms: they are two phrases that mean the exact same thing.
Building deep relationships with buyers requires sellers to:
- Know what their buyer wants. Data shows that buyer needs and expectations are changing. Today’s buyer wants someone who is comfortable with virtual sales, knowledgeable about their industry, and capable of changing their minds, and connected throughout the buyer’s company through multi-threading.
- Avoid making mistakes that can harm or destroy buyer/seller relationships. These mistakes include making the interaction all about the seller, taking without giving, engaging in shallow prospecting, and misunderstanding the nature of the buyer/seller relationship.
- Understand that humans build relationships — but technology can make finding the humans you’re looking for a whole lot easier.
More resources on building sales relationships.
Here are other blogs and resources on the topic of sales relationships:
- Blog post: How to Build Trust, According to a Leading Business School Professor
- Blog post: The Specific Words to Say That Help Build Stronger Sales Relationships
- Blog Post: Rejection is Part of Sales. Here Are 4 Steps for Getting Through It.
- LinkedIn Learning Course: Purpose-Driven Sales
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Topics: B2B sales strategies and trends
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