A few months ago my sales team and I experienced a major set back in an account we were pursuing.  We worked very hard on building the client relationship had met on numerous occasion’s.  We thought the deal was most definitely ours.  We got side swiped and the competition took the work that we thought we had in the bag.  We underestimated the competition and over-estimated the relationship.

We requested feedback from our customer on what went so terribly wrong.  It appears that the competition just became more creative and delivered a presentation that the customer couldn’t resist.  We simply became complacent.

I’ve been taught that a relationship is the most difficult element to sell against.  In this post I’m going to try to counter against that myth.  So here is my crazy thought:  relationships are very important but I would rather put my money into insights and how you can deliver your solution through your capabilities and how you demonstrate that.

The lesson I learned in this pursuit is that overestimating the influence of a client relationship can lead to complacency and can create a lack of the pure hustle you used to start that relationship to begin with. Maybe the client returns your calls immediately and gives you an audience whenever you like. But that level of access should encourage you to work even harder to make an impact. Some service providers check in with their top clients and use the time for informal conversations about the client’s issues. If you’re not ready to give your client two or three items of value for everything they share with you, that relationship will eventually lose.

Whenever I am faced with a brand new prospect or customer I study them up and down. I prepare, I create effective unique value propositions and develop memorable presentations and work at my utmost on that first impression.  Developing the relationship is also important but I’m recognizing that it is not the most important.  What’s more valuable is gathering useful insights and using that knowledge to demonstrate your capabilities to create strategic value.  A great relationship is gravy, but what the client really cares about is the meat and potatoes.

More than relationships your clients want your ideas, they want innovation that only you can provide, they want to sleep at night knowing that all is going to be okay.  They want to be competitive and are looking for an edge.  The critical value that must be recognized is that the relationship to the client lies in your ability to integrate your past experiences and your creativity to generate insightful guidance that create wealth and that supports achieving their strategic business goals.  Enjoying time and building relationships with the client is gravy.  Enjoy it.