The Case For Relationship Selling in Our Frenzied World

By Maria Geokezas, VP of Client Services for Heinz Marketing
In the past, for most B2B companies, relationship selling was selling.  There was no social selling, there was no selling automation.  Selling was about the relationship between a salesperson and their buyer.  That’s it.  The focus was on building trust for the long-term: understanding the buyer’s world, their pains, their motivations, and helping them achieve their goals, hopefully through the use of your product or service.  Salespeople invested a lot of time getting to know their prospects on a personal and social basis that then extended into business.  That’s how the golf course became a legitimate business expense – decisions were influenced and made riding around in a golf cart.
Does relationship selling work in today’s ultra-distracted, highly chaotic business environment?  Seems to me there are a number of factors that impede the traditional notion of relationship selling.  But with a change