Strategy
Sales Management
Innovation
September 01, 2025
Connection: how to build strategic relationships in business meetings
The ability to generate empathy is what creates opportunities for growth
The way we do business has changed. What used to happen face-to-face, with a handshake and a shared coffee, now happens through screens, in an agile and impactful way. To further increase the level of challenge, these timed video conferences compete for our attention with other tabs open on the screen, often flashing with messages from parallel agendas and urgent tasks.
The scenario is dynamic, full of distractions and demands from the sales professional not only skill with what they seek to present to the client, but also a refined ability to capture and maintain the interlocutor’s attention, even at a distance. According to a study by Microsoft Canada published in 2015, the average human attention span dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to just 8 seconds in 2013. Attention has become a scarce asset nowadays, and professionals who know how to win it gain a tremendous competitive edge.
Amidst this extremely dynamic and challenging scenario, the growing choice of commercial agents for more direct approaches, focused on the objective of closing a contract, is understandable, given the interlocutor’s limited time. However, this choice often places immediacy above an essential marketing factor: the construction of strategic, true, and lasting connections.
The ability to generate empathy, build trust, and establish a strategic relationship with the potential client or partner is what transforms day-to-day meetings into opportunities for mutual growth.
Even if the business objectives of the meeting are not immediately achieved, the client may remember the well-established connection in future opportunities, which can become a differentiator in decisive moments, representing a gain in a scenario that might otherwise have seemed like wasted time and energy by the sales agent.
The pitch is important, but it is the bond that delivers value
For a long time, commercial activities focused on an incisive approach, direct, using persuasion, numbers, and promises to achieve the closing of sales and contracts. However, these actions alone, in isolation, can sound cold and shallow.
The digitalization of markets has led to the availability of access to information and a wide variety of offers, facilitating comparison between suppliers with just a few clicks. Thus, trust and good relationships have become the new decision-making protagonists in business meetings.
Today, customers no longer just want to buy; they want to feel that they have been understood and that they are making an intelligent decision, based on a trusting relationship, that will take their business to a new level in the market.
It is no longer just about having the best solution, but about having the most reliable partner by your side, something we cannot find in comparative tables and which is built through interaction, care, and the way the salesperson behaves in the face of the client’s pains and insecurities.
According to the “State of Sales” report, published in 2024 by Salesforce, 86% of business buyers (purchasing professionals in companies) state they are more likely to buy when their goals are understood. Therefore, to make an impact in the bid, it is not enough to talk; it requires active listening, discourse adapted to the client’s context, and clarity that the focus is not on selling solutions A, B, and C, but on understanding what the client needs, even if they themselves do not know.
In this sense, the market itself in general has been increasingly affected by trends such as the use of robust CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools and artificial intelligence for customer behavior analysis and prediction of future needs.
In the context of commercial activities, this toolkit already supports agents by refining assertiveness in their interactions. Market giants like IBM, for example, organize their businesses based on their clients’ needs, using CRM and data analysis to offer integrated and personalized solutions, which allows for cultivating long-term focused relationships.
Another similar case is that of the equally giant Procter & Gamble (P&G), which structures its B2B account managers to be concerned not only with the quantity of products sold, but also with the value they deliver to customers, taking into account the ideal mix calculated internally for profit maximization and delivery of results to the buyer, strengthening the relationship of trust and positioning the seller as a strategic partner.
Facilitator
In many cases, the client themselves is not clear about the challenge they are facing or about the gaps they can eliminate from their operation. It is up to the sales agent to act as a facilitator in this scenario, provoking thought, generating reflection, and empathetically guiding the conversation towards possible solutions and improvements for the client’s activities.
It is precisely in this role of facilitator that the salesperson gains prominence and differentiates themselves from other commercial agents, assuming an almost business consultant role. In this way, the professional can simultaneously deliver the solutions they offer and support the lead in identifying other alternatives that can help them.
It adds value not only through what it offers in terms of product or solution, but also by guiding the client to a stage of identifying and understanding their pain points and existing opportunities. In this way, a strategic relationship is created that is not built through a script, but through the identification of common ground, shared stories and experiences, enriched by the demonstration of genuine interest in the partnership, which delivers value even before a commercial closing.
Relationship is not something to be created after the lead becomes a customer. It must be present from the initial stage of contact, with the power to anchor all subsequent interactions. The more consistent and true the relationship, the more sustainable the partnership will be over time.
The secret is in the details
If the seller already knows the client, a simple gesture of remembering his son’s name, commenting on a trip or event he took can spark the beginning of a genuine connection. Details like these demonstrate attention, care, and humanity. It is in this exchange that we establish rapport, a French term that means “to bring back” or “to relate,” and which has become consolidated as a technique used in various areas to connect with other people, placing all interlocutors in a relationship of authentic reciprocal listening.
The report is more than a commercial artifice, it is the basis for productive conversations and mutual respect. When well established, it allows the client to express themselves more spontaneously and sincerely, potentially opening up details that they would not have had the confidence to do so before.
New methodologies, such as social selling, complement and enrich this approach. By maintaining an active presence on social networks like LinkedIn, sharing relevant content and market trends, and interacting genuinely, the sales agent can pre-establish a relationship of trust even before the first formal meeting. Thus, when that long-awaited first call opportunity with the lead arises, it will tend to flow more naturally, due to the credibility and familiarity previously built.
If, on the other hand, there was no prior opportunity for relationship with the client, a good starting point is to practice active listening, empathy, and genuine curiosity to identify affinities, whether in hobbies, interests, or daily customs, such as not giving up a good coffee to accompany meetings.
If it is possible to conduct prior research on the interlocutor, mentioning common points (having studied at the same school) can be an even more effective way to create closeness. Furthermore, subtle comments about a book on the shelf or the use of language similar to the interlocutor’s can activate mental triggers that favor closeness.
Over time, this type of relationship not only builds closeness but also confers authority on the salesperson. The client begins to see the agent as someone who truly understands their business, their challenges, and their goals. And, more than that, as someone who can anticipate needs and propose solutions. And this changes everything, building a solid foundation for future opportunities, such as referrals, side projects, and partnership expansion over time.
From this, the much-dreamed-of “cross-sell” and “up-sell”, selling other products and increasing the ticket size, will have their paths better paved, in a natural and fluid way, mitigating the need to give more “nudges” to an already converted customer.
One step at a time
On the other hand, it is important to emphasize that a relationship of this type is not built in a 15-minute call: continuous work is necessary for building mutual trust. Therefore, forcing an artificial approach can backfire. Excessive insistence or excessive familiarity can be as negative as apparent disinterest, potentially alienating potential partners who were willing to move forward in the negotiation.
It is necessary to know how to differentiate humanized and consultative sales from invasive sales. There is a fine line between being friendly and interested and being intrusive and inconvenient. Knowing how to balance the dose requires emotional intelligence, contextual reading, and a good dose of interpersonal sensitivity.
It is necessary to have the feeling and timing to understand the client’s profile and the moment they are in. And this applies to both the organization and the person representing it. Thus, the balance between the institution’s objectives and friendliness proves to be a good guide for this construction.
It is possible to balance performance and empathy, strategy and sensitivity. To do this, it is necessary to invest in preparationbefore meetings, studying the client, understanding the moment of their institution and of the sector to, from there, understand how to actually make a difference with repertoire and active listening.
Adopting a consultative stance, asking good questions, demonstrating interest, and offering relevant insights are attitudes that reinforce the image of the sales agent as someone trustworthy and competent. In this way, sales meetings cease to be “pitch stages” and become bridges for connecting people, purposes, and opportunities.
This content was produced by:
Pedro Ribeiro Bagaiolo
He is an executive in the business area at Skylar. Bachelor of Economic Sciences from USP/Esalq, postgraduate student in sales management from MBA USP/Esalq, with a focus on business intelligence, sales, and customer success.
Who wrote this column
Skylar
