What Relationship-Building Proficiency Reveals About Sales Execution
What the Data Suggests About Relationship-Building and Sales Execution
AI Summary
Objective Management Group’s 2025 sales evaluation data shows that relationship building remains a common strength among salespeople, but overall proficiency in the competency remains moderate.
Across 9,516 salespeople evaluated in 2025, the average score for Relationship Building was 51 percent. Fifty six percent of sellers demonstrated strength in the competency, while twenty six percent were weak.
Relationship building is often viewed as a soft skill focused on rapport. However, it may influence several behaviors that shape how opportunities move through the pipeline. Strong relationships can increase buyer openness, improve access to decision makers, and maintain engagement during longer buying processes.
External research reinforces this dynamic. Buyers consistently report that trust, credibility, and meaningful engagement with sellers influence their willingness to move forward in the purchasing process.
While sales organizations frequently focus on pipeline size and process efficiency to improve deal velocity, the ability to build productive business relationships may quietly shape how smoothly opportunities progress.
How Seller Buyer Relationships Influence Sales Conversations
Sales organizations often look to process improvements, pipeline discipline, and technology to help opportunities move faster through the sales cycle. Yet many deals stall for a different reason. Buyers hesitate when they lack clarity, confidence, or trust in the conversation taking place.
In those moments, the quality of the seller buyer relationship can shape how openly buyers share information, how quickly decision makers engage, and how smoothly opportunities progress.
Objective Management Group’s sales evaluation data offers a useful lens into how consistently salespeople demonstrate the relationship building competency and what that may mean for sales execution.
The Data: Relationship Building Is Common but Not Highly Developed
Objective Management Group evaluated 9,516 salespeople in 2025 across a wide range of industries and selling environments.
Within that population:
- Average Relationship Building score: 51 percent
- 56 percent of salespeople were strong in the competency
- 26 percent were weak
At first glance, this may suggest that relationship building is widely present among sales professionals. More than half of sellers demonstrate strength in the competency.
However, the overall average score of 51 percent indicates proficiency, but just barely. In practical terms, many sellers appear capable of establishing rapport or maintaining friendly interactions with buyers, but fewer consistently leverage relationships to advance opportunities.1
This distinction matters. In complex B2B selling environments, relationships do more than create goodwill. They shape how information flows between buyer and seller.
When buyers feel comfortable sharing concerns, priorities, and internal dynamics, sellers gain the insight required to guide deals forward.
Relationships Influence Buyer Engagement
Sales conversations rarely move forward without trust.
Research consistently shows that buyers engage more openly when they perceive sellers as credible advisors rather than transactional vendors.
According to the LinkedIn State of Sales Report, 88 percent of buyers say they only engage with sales professionals they view as trusted advisors.2
This expectation creates an early filter in the buying process. When sellers fail to establish credibility quickly, buyers may limit the information they share or delay deeper engagement.
In contrast, when sellers build trust early, buyers are often more willing to discuss internal challenges, decision criteria, and stakeholder dynamics. These conversations help opportunities progress with greater clarity and fewer surprises later in the cycle.
Buyer Expectations Have Shifted Toward Consultative Engagement
Modern B2B buyers expect sellers to understand their business and contribute meaningful insights during the buying process.
According to the Salesforce State of the Connected Customer report, 73 percent of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations.3
Meeting this expectation requires more than presenting products or services. Sellers must ask thoughtful questions, listen actively, and tailor conversations to the buyer’s situation.
Relationship-building skills often enable these behaviors. When sellers create an environment where buyers feel understood, discussions tend to move beyond surface-level topics and toward the operational and strategic issues that drive purchase decisions.
These deeper conversations can accelerate alignment between buyers and sellers.
Communication Quality Affects Sales Cycles
Another factor influencing deal progression is the consistency and quality of communication during the sales process.
Research from HubSpot shows that 80 percent of sales require five or more follow-up interactions after the initial conversation.4
Maintaining productive engagement across multiple conversations requires trust and credibility. Without a strong working relationship, follow-up conversations often stall or fail to generate meaningful progress.
Relationship-building competency can help sellers sustain these conversations in ways that continue to move the opportunity forward.
Trust Reduces Perceived Risk in Buying Decisions
Every purchase involves some level of perceived risk.
Buyers must evaluate not only the solution itself, but also the people and organizations delivering it.
The Edelman Trust Barometer consistently shows that trust plays a significant role in business decision-making and organizational credibility.
When buyers trust the individuals they are working with, they often feel more comfortable advancing discussions, involving additional stakeholders, and progressing toward a decision.
Conversely, when trust is limited, buyers may delay decisions while they seek additional validation or explore alternative vendors.5
Why Relationship Building May Influence Deal Velocity
Sales organizations frequently discuss deal velocity in terms of pipeline management, forecasting discipline, or process efficiency.
Those factors matter. However, the human dynamics between buyer and seller can also shape how smoothly opportunities move through the pipeline.
Strong relationships often influence several behaviors that affect deal progression:
- Buyers share more detailed information about their challenges and priorities
- Sellers gain earlier access to decision makers and stakeholders
- Objections surface earlier in the process rather than later
- Conversations remain active across longer buying cycles
Each of these factors can reduce friction during the buying process.
While relationship building alone does not determine how quickly deals close, it may influence the quality of engagement between buyers and sellers throughout the sales cycle.
The Takeaway
Objective Management Group’s 2025 data suggests that relationship building is a relatively common competency among salespeople, yet overall proficiency remains moderate.
That gap may have implications for sales execution.
When relationship building is underdeveloped, sellers may struggle to create the level of trust and engagement required for buyers to openly share information, involve decision makers, and move opportunities forward.
As sales environments grow more complex and buying committees expand, the ability to build productive business relationships may play an increasingly important role in how efficiently opportunities progress from initial conversation to closed business.
Sources
- Objective Management Group. Finding Statistics Tool. Review of Relationship-Building Competency Scores across 9,516 salesperson evaluations, January 1 2025 – December 31, 2025. Internal Dataset.
- LinkedIn – State of Sales Report. https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/state-of-sales
- Salesforce – State of the Connected Customer Report. https://www.salesforce.com/resources/research-reports/state-of-the-connected-customer/
- HubSpot – The 2025 Sales Trends Report. https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-statistics
- The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer. https://www.edelman.com/expertise/longevity-lab/100-year-life