Why Do Sales Teams Win? – Think Relationship (2-10)

As mentioned, I’m going to present reasons why companies win and lose sales deals. These reasons were outlined by Ron Sathoff, a colleague of mine, in a great article for SAMA magazine called “Five Ways to Bolster Your Strategic Account Strategy, and Five Ways to Sabotage it.” (The article is available for download HERE)

This article was written to help answer the ultimate sales question, “How can we win a lot more deals?” In order to find the answer, Ron started by addressing the questions, “Why do we win and why do we lose?” Each of these points were taken from a library of thousands of win loss sales debriefs and compiled into performance rankings.

2. Focus on the relationship, not the sale.

The heart of strategic account management is developing a strong connection between your company and the customer. By definition, a strategic account is designed to be a long-lasting partnership that is mutually beneficial to both parties. The importance of this relationship can be measured in terms of repeat purchases and customer loyalty. The data confirms the importance of a good relationship: prior experience with a supplier was the second most often cited reason for selection and was mentioned significantly more often in cases where the company was selected as the winning supplier.

While some of these cases of repeat sales were due to organizational inertia, or the unwillingness to change suppliers because it was prohibitively difficult or expensive, many of the comments made by respondents indicated that the repeat business was due to the relationship that had developed between the supplier and the customer. The liaison between the two, of course, was the account manager, and those who made it their job to keep in constant communication had the edge over those who only communicated during new opportunities for sales. As one respondent explained, it was important that the SAM cared about all aspects of the relationship:

“[Company 1]’s support is awesome. We have nothing but wonderful comments for the sales representative. I e-mail or call anybody and it always gets back to the sales representative and I get a call from him to make sure it was all done correctly. It gives me peace of mind.”

One aspect of the respondent’s descriptions of their relationships with suppliers that stood out was the importance of the relationship during difficult times. For example, one respondent explained why her company had created lasting relationships with two suppliers:

“We had built up a very good relationship with both agencies over the years. We have been through a couple of years of tough economic times. Both of these agencies have stuck with us. They have been through good times with us, and will stick around for the next round of good times in the near future. It would be very difficult for any other agencies to take our business away from those two.”

By maintaining the relationship, even when the customer was not be able to give as much business to the supplier as it had in the past, the SAMs were able to create a strong bond that makes it difficult for competitors to win future business opportunities with the customer. The main point of these examples is that corporations do not buy from corporations; people buy from people. As the face of the company, all the interactions with account managers, from the first meeting to the last, set the tone for the entire business relationship.