Ask anybody and they will tell you that the ability to build relationships with key decision makers is a critical sales skill. Regretably, sellers hide behind this concept more than any other to disguise the fact that they are either wasting time or have no idea how to move a sale forward.

More time is wasted in the alleged pursuit of "building relationships" than any other sales step.

"Why are we making this sales call, Bill?"

"We're going to find out a little about their needs for next year and take the time to build the relationship a little."

"Certainly, there's value in building the relationship. Can you describe for me how we are going to do that on this call?"

"I thought we would spend some time talking about his family and invite him to play some golf with us."

"And this will build a relationship with him?"

"Well, it's a start. I mean, in order to build a relationship we are going to have to spend quite a bit of time with him and get to know him."

"What if we spend all this time building a relationship with him and it turns out he doesn't like either one of us? What if he likes us but doesn't really want to do business with us? In what way can we be assured that building a relationship with this guy is going to make a difference to our company?"

Don't get me wrong. It's true that people do business with people they like. When everything is equal, a buyer is going to buy from someone that has established themselves as a trusted resource.

To me, the relationship that you want to be building is one that indicates that "everything" is not equal and there is no need for a tie breaker. The way to do that? Establish a value for your product that exceeds the value the prospect assigns to your competition. I guarantee that this will trump the occasional golf game or tickets to Seinfeld.

To establish a value for your products you must start doing business with a prospect as soon in the relationship as possible. This has multiple advantages:

1) The relationship that you are building is focused from the beginning on the business that you do together. Relationships built on this foundation are stronger and more long lasting. (This may seem counterintuitive until you consider that companies almost always do business with your customers long after you leave the company)

2) You always have a reason to call or get together and build the relationship because of the business you do together. Who wants to keep getting calls from strangers asking them to get together for drinks or lunch or the ball game?

3) The business you do together automatically gives you permission to build relationships throughout the organization. If you didn't do business, the only relationship you would be working on would be the one with the key decision maker. Sounds okay until the key decision maker is transferred and the junior executive, whom you have never met, becomes the key decision maker.

While it's not always possible to do business right away, it often is. Find something small that you can do together that won't require sixteen proposals and four meetings in the executive boardroom. Still not possible? Maybe you are committed to a charity and you can find a way for your prospect to get involved. They could use the project as a way to put their company in a favorable light while you use it to start the critical relationship building.

Worst case scenario? You become a customer of the prospect in some small way.

By all means, let's build relationships with all of our best prospects and let's keep in mind that the reason we want the relationship in the first place is because we want to do business!