"Sales is all about relationships."

Except it isn't.

This is the biggest lie in the industry. It is a comfortable lie that salespeople tell themselves to avoid the hard work of actual selling.

Your prospect does not need to like you to buy from you.

You don't need to like them.

They don't care what school you went to. They don't care what sports team you support. They don't care how many kids you have.

In a B2B setting they care about one thing.

Do I trust this person to fix my problem?

Redefining Rapport

Rapport does not come from knowing you personally. It comes from understanding your prospect's problems better than they do.

It comes from challenging their thoughts and perspective not from making small talk about the weather.

In our Account Executive Training, we teach that you must be an expert not a friend. If you can show a Director of Finance how they are losing money they will respect you. That respect is worth ten times more than their "friendship."

If you try to be their friend you fall into the trap of being "nice." And "nice" salespeople get walked all over. They get ghosted. They get "I need to think about it."

The Order Taker Trap

Anyone that says "sales is all about relationships" is likely one of two things.

First they might be a customer service rep with a list of existing accounts that have the occasional upsell. That is account management not sales.

Second they might be an order taker whose prospects were already going to buy. They just facilitated the paperwork.

They are relying on a passive approach that we debunked in The Warm Call Delusion. They want the sale to feel easy and warm.

But real sales is about friction. It is about disrupting the status quo.

The Steak Dinner Fallacy

You don't need a relationship to sell anything.

The last time you bought a car the salesman didn't buy you a steak beforehand. He didn't ask about your childhood. He showed you the car. He explained the features. He negotiated the price. You bought it.

If you have a salesperson in your team saying that selling is about relationships you should panic.

If you are hiring someone and they say it do not hire them.

They will spend their first three months taking people out for coffee and bringing in zero revenue. This is the ultimate vanity metric which we discussed in Stop Chasing Vanity Metrics.

Revenue First

Selling isn't social work. It is getting money in the bank.

Focus on competence. Focus on problem solving. Focus on closing.

Relationships happen after the value is delivered.

Once you have fixed their problem and made them money then you can go for a beer. But not before.