A salesperson who wants to win a business deal successfully often focuses too much on product knowledge, proposals, or closing techniques. However, one of the most overlooked factors is how well you can build customer relationships.
Being a great salesperson means remembering customer preferences, past conversations, and important details shared about their project or personal life. Yes, personal life. And let me tell you why!
Why remembering clients' details matter in sales?
Casual topics like anniversaries or promotions in conversation with your clients may seem irrelevant. But a simple follow-up message to wish them well leaves a strong impression that you were genuinely paying attention during the conversation.
This creates a sense of trust and familiarity that many clients rarely experience in business conversations today. This is also why most organisations are looking for better ways to manage customer relationships, improve follow-up consistency, and help sales team to keep track of every customer conversation more meaningfully.
Why is managing customer relationships challenging?
As a salesperson, you may remember a customer’s preferences today, but months later, those details can easily get lost between follow-ups, handovers, or busy schedules. And sometimes, the details forgotten are the ones that matter most to customers.
This is why organisations are actively looking for better ways to manage customer relationships, improve follow-up consistency, and help sales team to keep track of every customer conversation more meaningfully.
How does a great salesperson use CRM to build customer relationships?
Recently, our Leaf CRM team had the privilege to discuss with some of the top-performing salespeople across industries on how they use a CRM to build customer relationships with their prospects and clients, regardless of whether they win or lose deals.
Here are some of their favourite ways that they shared with us:
Keeping conversations in one place
Sales conversations today often happen across multiple platforms such as WhatsApp, email, or even phone calls, and face-to-face meetings. As a salesperson, you cannot always be scrolling through old conversations or remembering everything you spoke about over a call.
So, the best thing to do is to always jot down all the important parts of the conversations in notes next to their contact details. This could be in your CRM, your phone’s calendar and personal notes, or even your personal spreadsheet.
There is always a magic in showing that you listened to them attentively and remembered things they said, even weeks, months, or years later!
Remembering important details
Every single conversation with your client, whether it is related to the deal or not, is super important. These small details are what make conversations feel more personal, genuine, and a baby step towards building trust in the deal.
For example, your prospect or client may have casually mentioned that they love golf. Instead of remembering this detail to close the deal, you could use this as a stepping stone to build the connection. You could invite them for a casual golf day out, and might even close the deal on a golf course!
This may include a customer’s preferred communication style. or their preferred venue to have a meeting, etc. Sometimes, the best deals don’t close in a boring, white light boardroom.
Improving follow-up consistency
One of the biggest reasons customer relationships weaken is inconsistent follow-up. Follow-up in a sales process is super important, but when you are busy, you may forget to track prospects you were supposed to contact again later. Over time, they may start feeling forgotten or become more comfortable speaking to competitors who were more responsive and attentive throughout the conversation process.
Even the Brevet Group has also said that 80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls after the meeting, meanwhile 44% of sales reps give up after 1 follow-up.
Every top-performing salesperson we spoke to said one piece of advice in common: That is to rely on reminders and a to-do list. They often pick a date that gives enough time for the prospects to breathe and make a decision or discuss with their team.
The goal is to reconnect while the discussion is still fresh in the prospect’s mind. And this is also why building a relationship with prospects using little details from their personal lives is equally important.
Making handovers smoother
When a deal is signed, clients will eventually interact with multiple people across your organisation. This may include account managers, customer support teams, or even departments that handle operations. Without proper conversation history and customer records, handovers can easily become frustrating for customers.
This is where your organisation need a CRM to centralise the customer database that keeps track of every detail, requirements, and previous interactions. Even a properly maintained spreadsheet, shared notes, or handover documents can ensure important customer context is not lost during transitions.
Another solid advice most sales reps told us was to make it a habit to properly introduce the department that will be handling them. At the end of the day, customer relationships are not built only between a salesperson and a customer, but between the customer and the entire organisation.
Building long-term trust
Trust grows when your prospects and clients feel heard, understood, and valued over time. Sometimes, your prospect may be dealing with internal challenges, personal issues, tight deadlines, or unexpected situations happening in their lives. In moments like these, listening is often more important than pushing for the next step or trying to close the deal immediately.
Small moments of attentiveness can leave a much stronger impression than aggressive sales techniques. Prospects are more likely to trust a salesperson who genuinely cares about understanding their situation, rather than someone who only appears during the sales process.
Empathy goes a long way, and using your emotional intelligence in these situations helps customers feel more comfortable, respected, and confident in continuing the relationship over time.
Conclusions
At the end of the day, being a great salesperson is not just about closing deals successfully, but building the customer relationship that makes prospects know they can trust you, your team, and your service/product.
Using CRM systems or even your personal notebook is an ultimate tool to help you remember details, stay organised, and maintain customer relationships more consistently over time.
Because sometimes, the small details people remember most are not the sales pitch — but the feeling that someone truly listened.