Long Term Relationships
- Dan Greenberg
- Jun 17
- 8 min read
It is not always clear that long term relationships trump transactional quick wins. But, as a business community, we had a really good macro example recently that can help us understand the value of good long term relationships. In tumultuous and uncertain times, it becomes very clear that deep and solid long term relationships are very helpful for your business.
Often these tumultuous times are idiosyncratic and affect only one or a few relationships at a time, but for many businesses, when the COVID pandemic and lockdowns hit, all of their clients and relationships were affected. Uncertainty is a constant, but the more uncertain things become the more a solid relationship and foundation matter. The trust and foundation of the relationship allows you to work through problems with the client together. When times are tumultuous, business leaders look for trusted advisors, and the only way that you will be considered one is if you were working towards that type of relationship long before it became a necessity.
As most of us have been forced to confront in the past two to three years, the baseline reality around us is starting to feel more and more like a consistent crisis. Uncertainty levels are so high that buyers are acting in ways previously only seen during external shocks and crises. The business landscape is changing drastically; as information becomes more ubiquitous, and AI changes the way that software is built and relationships are managed, switching costs for buyers are decreasing over time. Pay as you go models, as well, as modular and specialized solutions are fragmenting formerly cohesive industries and solution sets. This means that new logos are not as valuable as they once were. Why? Because they can much more easily leave you. In the past, the costs associated with switching vendors were much higher than they are today.
This means that the incremental dollar; the lowest hanging fruit, the next easiest place to earn or defend a dollar is becoming more of an indicator of where to spend time, as a business, as opposed to the old answer which was often to get new logos and then service them. This means that the job of client success, account management, relationship management, and sales, is merging.
The functions are becoming more and more similar in what they demand, and that demand is to build solid foundations and grow long term relationships. Unifying these functions gives organizations the ability to focus resources and time on driving the next dollar as opposed to artificially valuing one set of dollars over another. And, when driving that next dollar is the organizational goal, long term relationship building becomes important for every individual in the organization.
This does not mean that everyone in a revenue organization has to be good at closing deals or technical account management. There are still different functions and different people can fulfill them, but the revenue organization, as a whole, has a much more uniform task across client cohorts.
The traditional selling motion, when it comes to building long term relationships, consists of many small sales. This means that a seller has to consistently work towards small commitments, get those commitments, and then fulfill what they said they were going to do before asking for the next commitment. In a similar way, account managers need to work hard to make sure that clients are fulfilled in what they are trying to accomplish before asking for the next commitment, which is often more data, or insight, or additional relationships that can help them expand more within the client business.
The difference between the two is that account managers / client success managers have a more tangible output that they can point to, ie. the product and its results, than do sellers. Account managers are also usually less incentivized to ask difficult questions and reinvest in discovery and problem definition, but oftentimes have more of an ability to do so, and more upside since the client has already committed, and needs them to help get the results they paid for. The bottom line is that long sales cycles and long term relationships both consist of consistent fulfillment, discovery, and micro-commitment asks. They are rinse and repeat cycles.
There is a story that circulated the client relationship world, at least in the west coast tech scene about 10 years ago. It is possibly apocryphal, and I cannot vouch for its origins, but it is almost certainly based in reality, and there is certainly something to be learned from it.
The story goes that Bloomberg, which sells investment focused insights and data, mostly to investors through terminal seat access, had a slight product defect that was causing users to have to take a number of extra steps to download a certain report and most could not figure out how to do it. This particular report was an important report that most clients needed, and so, most clients resorted to calling, emailing, or putting time on the calendar of their account manager every time they needed the report. At one particular all-hands the product team announced that they had finally figured out a fix, and would be rolling it out that quarter, which would allow clients to download the report without taking up the time of their account manager, and more importantly, without the annoyance of the client. The product team expected jubilation from the account management team, but the reaction was the opposite. The account management team implored them not to release the fix because, as they explained, fixing that problem for the clients gives us the opportunity to interact with our clients and ask them questions. Most of these clients are busy and resistant to setting aside time to talk to us, and the expressions of thanks and acknowledgments we get for fixing the problem allow us the license to speak with those clients and have more detailed conversations about their businesses.
Client success managers and sellers should solve their clients’ problems, but they should not solve their problems and then move on as if the job has been well done. Whenever something is accomplished, whether it be a usage problem, a product fix, a conversational agreement, or an advancement in the sales process, that mutual accomplishment should be used as a jumping off point for a new round of discovery, micro commitment asks, and future fulfillment.
Keep in mind however, that you should not fall victim to empty continuances. We all know what empty continuances feel like in social settings. They are the other person appeasing you without really committing to anything in the future. They sound like, “oh ya, sure, we should pick a weekend to get together in a couple of months, let’s figure it out when it gets closer”, in the social world, and they sound like “oh ya, we should set another meeting on the calendar to discuss this further, but I have to run to a meeting so lets email about it”, in the business world. Don’t get fooled by these and assume they mean anything. You either need to push harder and get another micro-commitment, or decide that the client just isn’t that into you, and spend your time elsewhere.
Another common problem in long term relationship building is when sellers or account managers get stuck with a single relationship on the buying clients side. Even if this person is a champion of the product or the deal, and even if they don’t leave the company or team, they may have limited organizational power, and when things stall, having only one relationship is a very bad thing.
This is a problem that good client partners are solving long before it develops into a problem. Every time you have a demo or a meeting set up, you should be sending multiple LinkedIn messages and emails, yes both, to a number of different people within the org that you have contact information for. You should let them know that you will be discussing problems and solutions that have to do with their line of business and that you would love to get their perspective on the situation and goals. Of course, if you don’t know the person yet, you can also just express a desire to put a face to a name and get to know them since you have started to work with others in their organization.
During meetings and demos, call out individual people by name and ask them relevant questions that pertain to their function and business line. Ask select stakeholders if they are onboard with the agenda and objectives personally so that more people feel buy-in with your process. Ask them what is most important to them, and evaluate their reactions. Are they confused? Excited? Bored? This will help you follow up.
After meetings and demos take the time to send individual notes to key participants that you want to continue to have a relationship with. Thank them for their time, and ask them if they got what they had hoped for out of the meeting and if there is anything else they want to discuss. Give them prompts of things you think they may be interested in to make the response easy. Also, if the meeting was recorded, it’s always a good idea to listen or watch so that you can look for and listen for cues that will help you with communication strategies for each individual.
It’s great to have an internal champion at a buying organization, but if you only have one, you can find yourself in a tough situation if the deal stalls, or if something happens to change your relationship, or if that person leaves the company. The more key people you can have relationships with, the better.
Long term relationships are slow to build because trust takes time, you simply cannot rush them, if you try to, the foundation will not be real, and they will crumble when they are needed most. It is important to be methodical, and always think about what the next step in relationship growth is and how to achieve it.
The goal of a cold email is to get a reply.
The goal of a reply is to start a conversation.
The goal of a conversation is to find and understand a problem.
The goal of finding a problem is to book a meeting.
The goal of booking a meeting is to do deeper discovery.
The goal of deeper discovery is to learn about your client’s business.
The goal of learning about your clients business is working on their vision for how to fix it.
The goal of getting to their vision is to build a plan of action.
The goal of building a plan of action is to structure the sales process.
The goal of a sales process is to guide the buyer through their decisions and outcomes.
The goal of guiding the client is signing a deal.
The goal of signing a deal is fulfilling the client’s needs.
The goal of fulfilling the client’s needs is understanding more about their business.
The goal of understanding more about their business becoming a trusted advisor.
The goal of becoming a trusted advisor is making yourself indispensable to their business.
Most sellers make the mistake of selling right away, and many account managers make the mistake of never selling. Building a long term relationship means learning now, and selling later on. Throughout the entire lifecycle of a client there are opportunities to sell, but there are also opportunities to prioritize relationship growth, win micro-commitments, and position your organization as a partner and as an indispensable advisor to their business.
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