When the Harvard Business Review published data that suggested sales is not about building relationships, a lot of salespeople scratched their heads. For decades, sales was all about relationships, and we’ve all been trying to explain how to bring relationships back into the sales mix in the wake of the massive shift to impersonal automation technology. If Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson are on to something – which we’re sure they are – we’re guilty of putting more emphasis on relationships than we should. Our entire Connections feature in InsideView is designed to enable customers to build better relationships with their prospects.
But new research from Mikael Blaisdell in The Hotline Magazine uncovers that relationships with customers are the single most important factor in keeping customers as customers. So, as it turns out, we’re not wrong in assuming that relationships increase sales, we’re just wrong in emphasizing the importance of relationships on new sales. Blaisdell’s research indicates that 25-30% of all customer churn stems from loss of sponsor – a misfortune that’s easy to ameliorate when you have 2 sponsors. Or better yet, 4 or 5. If you have a strong relationship within an account, you’re less likely to lose their business.
So relationships do matter to sales. Perhaps we’re all just thinking of customer relationships in the wrong way. To learn more about how relationships impact business, check out our new presentation on Customer Relationships, which you can find on Slideshare.
