Confessions of an Appraiser

Friend Me
I can't count the number of times that people have told me that theirs is a relationship sale. For the life of me, I can't figure out what they mean. Don't all sales involve some sort of relationship? Dictionary.com defines relationship as a connection, association or involvement. By that definition I have a relationship with Amazon.com even though I know no people there. I have a relationship with my cat, which isn't even a person. Heck, I've got a relationship with this computer on which I'm typing.

I suspect that when salespeople use the term relationship they mean more than mere association. They're really saying that they have some sort of ongoing dialogue with their prospect. When they say that they are in a relationship sale what they mean is that it takes multiple conversations or visits to close a deal. Implied is that there is something special about their industry such that it has to be this way.

To this I say: stuff and nonsense.

Empirical evidence abounds. We readily and regularly part with large amounts of money, giving it to virtual strangers on one meeting. Or, in the Amazon example above, with no meeting at all.

Well, we buy stuff then from people we like. Give me a break. Every one of us can think of stores that we hate and yet in which we continue to shop. From people we trust? Not on any close reading of the word trust. One has only to read the newspaper to see that, as human beings, we sell our trust cheaply.

What, then, is a relationship sale? I haven't the faintest idea. But I suspect that it's code for "long sales cycle".

People buy things based on personal motivations, which, in turn, derive from some set of values that they hold. These are emotional in nature. You don't have to believe me. Daniel Kahneman got the Nobel Prize for economics in 2002 for demonstrating this. (Google it).

Great salespeople have a skill set that enables them to ferret out these motivating factors when they're present in any given prospect and to move on when they're not. Because few people bother to develop these skills, most salespeople have to fall back on persistence. Selling this way reduces the craft to nothing but a numbers game. Time and stamina become the limiting factors. And there just isn't enough time to achieve optimal results.

The sales forces of many companies are little more than professional visiting services. They tell themselves that they are building relationships. They are. But you didn't hire them for that, did you?

You hired them to make sales.