What's up, it's Zayd.

B2B sales has become the equivalent of speed dating, except everyone's swiping left and nobody's getting married.

We talk endlessly about "relationship selling" and "consultative approaches," but buyers treat vendors like interchangeable commodities, and vendors treat buyers like ATMs with decision-making authority.

The average B2B sales cycle has gotten longer, deal sizes have gotten smaller relative to inflation, and customer lifetime value keeps declining. If relationships were really driving our sales success, wouldn't we expect the opposite?

Maybe it's time to admit that most of what we call "relationship building" is just transactional interactions with better small talk.

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Zayd’s Picks

My favorite finds of the week

• Why your cold emails are landing in spam (link)

• Your cold emails should make people feel good (link)

• Don’t sell through users to get buyers (link)

• Valley’s V3 launch Post (link)

• The traditional outbound playbook is dead (link)

• Growth survey insights from 100+ companies (link)

The Efficiency Trap We Built for Ourselves

Our obsession with scalable, measurable, optimizable everything killed B2B relationships.

We turned human interactions into workflows. Lead scoring determines who deserves our attention. Marketing automation decides when to send messages. CRM systems dictate next steps.

The result is that every "relationship-building" touchpoint follows the same script as everyone else's. Buyers can smell the playbook from a mile away.

You know what doesn't scale?

Genuine interest in someone's business problems. Unexpected value that isn't part of your standard pitch. Conversations that go off-script because you actually care about the outcome.

The Commoditization Death Spiral

Here's how relationships become transactions:

Step 1: Scale Over Substance 

Volume becomes the primary metric. More prospects, more touches, more opportunities in the pipeline.

Step 2: Process Over People 

Every interaction gets systematized. Unique situations get forced into standard workflows because "that's what works."

Step 3: Efficiency Over Empathy

Time spent understanding prospects is seen as inefficient. "Qualify fast, pitch fast, close fast."

Step 4: Transaction Over Trust 

Buyers adapt by becoming transactional too. If you're treating them like a number in your pipeline, they'll treat you like a line item in their budget.

We created this cycle, and now we're all trapped in it.

The Modern B2B Buyer's Defense Mechanism

Today's buyers have been conditioned by thousands of generic sales interactions.

They expect vendors to be pushy, agenda-driven, and more interested in closing deals than solving problems.

So they protect themselves by:

• Limiting information sharing

• Avoiding early-stage conversations

• Focusing purely on price and features

• Treating all vendors as interchangeable

Case Study: What Actually Works

One of Valley's customers was stuck in 9-month sales cycles with high churn rates. Standard approach: demo, proposal, negotiation, close.

They tried something different. Instead of immediately pitching their product, they started sharing relevant industry insights with prospects. They made introductions to other experts. They provided value with no obvious connection to their solution.

Results after six months:

• Sales cycles cut by 60%

• Deal values up 40%

• Churn down 90%

• Referral rate up 200%

They built actual trust before trying to extract value.

This thinking heavily influenced how we built Valley. Our research is about understanding business context well enough to have meaningful conversations.

The AI crafts messages that demonstrate understanding of specific challenges and the goal is to automate the preparation so humans can focus on the actual relationship building.

The Relationship-at-Scale Framework

The biggest objection to relationship-focused selling is scale. "We can't spend hours with every prospect."

True. But you also can't build relationships with people you've never had a real conversation with.

The solution comes down to being strategic about which relationships to prioritize:

Tier 1: Relationship Investments (Top 50 prospects)

Deep research, multiple touchpoints, genuine value-first interactions. These get the full consultative treatment.

Tier 2: Consultative Outreach (Next 200 prospects)

Thoughtful, researched messages focused on specific business insights rather than product features.

Tier 3: Professional Outreach (Everyone else)

Well-crafted but scalable messaging that still demonstrates industry knowledge and role understanding.

Measuring Relationships vs. Transactions

Most sales teams measure activity instead of relationship depth.

Better metrics:

• Response Quality: Are prospects engaging thoughtfully or giving one-word answers?

• Unprompted Engagement: Do prospects reach out to you with questions or opportunities?

• Referral Behavior: Are customers introducing you to their network?

• Deal Expansion: Are relationships leading to larger deals or additional use cases?

• Reference Willingness: Will customers speak to prospects on your behalf?

The Attention Economy Reality

In an attention-deficit world, relationships require intentional effort that most sales processes don't support.

Real relationships develop through:

• Unexpected moments of value

• Conversations that go off-script

• Genuine interest in outcomes beyond your quota

• Consistency over time without obvious agenda

Most sales processes optimize for the opposite: predictable interactions, scripted conversations, quota-driven urgency, and short-term thinking.

AI is about to make transactional selling even more commoditized. If your value proposition is "we can pitch your product features efficiently," you're about to get disrupted by tools that do that better and cheaper, but AI can't build genuine relationships, understand complex business problems, or navigate nuanced organizational politics. Those are still distinctly human capabilities.

The companies that invest in real relationship infrastructure now will have a massive advantage as everything else becomes automated.

How I Can Help?

Let me book sales calls for you while you’re speed dating. Seriously.

I built Valley to be your automated SDR and empower AEs. Get started today and watch your calendar fill up with qualified leads.

How can we work together 🏔️

1. See more of Valley’s messaging examples, feel free to roast them: https://withvalley.notion.site/Cool-Message-Bro-1c0b917b0ed481dab014c465c354b4b8 

2. Generate more demos for your company using LinkedIn: https://meetings.hubspot.com/zayd-from-valley/tryvalley
   

3. Become a Valley partner and get 20% recurring commission for every user you bring in: https://withvalley.notion.site/valley-affiliate-partner-program