But unfortunately, “great relationships” is too often a veil that sales people hide behind to keep from exposing the weakness in their sales skills.

Here’s how it works. An experienced sales person believes that he/she has developed great relationships with customers. Therefore, he spends his time visiting these great customers, and focusing on maintaining the relationship. He can’t really dig deeper into the motivations and needs of the customer because he’s never really had those conversations before, and to do so would interject a new and disparate element into the relationship. Better to not take the risk.