Building B2B Relationships

Instinctively, and anecdotally, we know that relationships matter and we value existing relationships differently from new ones. As explained by the global lead for sales effectiveness at one of the Big Four accounting firms, their own analysis shows why they win and it’s because they have good relationships. They also know why they lose and it’s not because of price or timing, but rather because they don’t have good relationships. 

The data also wholeheartedly supports this, with a summary of Nielsen’s 2021 study reporting that 88 per cent of people trust a recommendation from someone they know. To add to that, in the book Shift, Craig Elias states that from his analysis, when you are the first to engage with the key decision maker and with the right solution, you can win 74 per cent of the time. Bringing this all together, Heidi Gardner’s research, as discussed in Gardner and Matviak’s 2022 book Smarter Collaboration, found that those who have more relationships generate four times the revenue compared to their peers with a smaller network.

Just imagine how much more successful you could be if you could

not only leverage your network more effectively but also the network of your coworkers. This book is anchored around helping you in three scenarios – winning key deals, delivering key projects and growing key

accounts – and argues that instead of trying to build new relationships to grow your business, you should follow a ‘relationship first’ strategy.

Ryan O’Sullivan is a senior executive, board member, business adviser, university lecturer and author. He has spent his career perfecting and then evangelizing a ‘relationship first’ approach to growing revenue. 

This has resulted in many awards and accolades over his career, including the most net-new clients in a year on multiple occasions, fastest net-new client in the organization’s history, first strategic deal (total contract value over $50 million) in a new country and largest deal in the organization’s history. He has won deal of the year and salesperson of the year on multiple occasions and has been the number one annual revenue earner many times, often for consecutive years.