Building B2B relationships is one of the most important lifelines of any business. If you do not connect with the right businesses and maintain long-lasting partnerships, your very own venture is doomed to fail. Dr. Ryan O'Sullivan, Global Account Manager at Introhive, is here to discuss how to create B2B relationships that lead to growth and success. Joining Mark Cox, he discusses his seven-year study on the importance of creating a network relationship map, doing in-depth intelligence gathering, and taking advantage of trigger events in sales. Dr. Ryan also explains why internal relationships are as essential as external ones, as well as the proper way to create a good first impression without actually selling.
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Leveling Up B2B Relationships With Dr. Ryan O'Sullivan
Team, what do the contributing factors that determine rate, quality, and business relationship? That's something we all want to know. We want to be able to teach and coach our team to elevate performance. It's also something that Dr. Ryan O’Sullivan spent years researching then getting a PhD when he did his dissertation on this topic. The result of that is an amazing book called Building B2B Relationships: How to Identify, Map and Develop Key Relationships to Win More Business.
Ryan wrote the book to help us do three things, to win those deals in the first place, to then manage those accounts so that we can grow share a wall with clients, and to get better results from large projects that were managing. This is an amazing book. Everybody should be picking up. Anybody in sales is going to want to take a look at this because Ryan gives us the strategy of what we're trying to do and he gets into some great tactics in terms of how to do it.
He's broken the book into three categories. Part one, what are trusted relationships and why do they matter. Part two is an overview of how to build an execute a relationship map. Part 3, we talked about putting the relationship mapping process into action to win those key deals or to manage those existing clients. There's a level of detail in this book. It's almost like a textbook that's well written, but this is something all of us can do a little more work on, and what a keen on is this research process and then figuring out how to map out the key stakeholders for a deal where working.
That's something I don't think many of us spend enough time on for most important deals, but the paradal principal runs most of our funnels. As companies, we're still living in the world where 80% of the revenue comes from the small number of really important clients. We want to figure out how do we replicate those clients.
By leveraging relationships, it ends up being the only differentiation because almost any product or service at some point gets viewed as a commodity by the buyer. It's that relationship that makes a difference. We've got a great conversation with Dr. Ryan O’Sullivan. You're going to enjoy this. I enjoyed it as well. If you do like this episode, please like and subscribe to the show. Tell your friends. That's how we get great guests like Dr. Ryan O’Sullivan. Here he is.
Ryan, welcome to the show. It's great to meet you.
Pleasure, Mark. Thanks for having me.
Dr. Ryan On Studying About B2B Relationships
As we said in the introduction, we're talking about the book, Building B2B Relationships: How to Identify, Map and Develop Key Relationships to Win More Business. It’s close to my heart, this topic and this subject matter as we'll get to in a minute. Maybe we'll start here because I find this so interesting that you were wondering about these contributing factors that determine a good quality business relationship as we all are and as we all think about. You were so determined to get answered to evidence-based questions here. You want to think through it. You spent seven years researching this and got a PhD. Tell us a little bit about this journey that got you to where you are.
Thanks, Mark. Anyone who's in our business, even more broadly speaking, should have an entry inter relationships and how relationships form. That was something that I felt. You're often find people saying they have a good relationship with somebody. Whether they do or not, that can be more of a subjective perspective. When I was working back at Infosys, a big IT service firm. We were working on some huge outsourcing deals. It’s often $100 million plus deals and big global accounts. We were focused accent on what relationships mean when you've got those types of numbers that you are dealing with. That coupled with my entry inter relationships. It led me to think, “What is a good quality business relationship?”
That took me on this journey as you hinted at the part-time as well as working full-time. Interviewing CXOs. I was quite fortunate and through the relationships I had, I've got access to a whole bunch of very senior people across global corporations such as JP Morgan, AmEx and BP. All these types of big names when and spoke to these individuals about what is a good relationship from their perspective. They're on the receiving end of a supplier or a partner relationship.
That was the genesis of my doctorate research. That, in itself, is a body of work. People can search my name and Portsmouth University and find the whole doctor available online for free. There's a lot of content in there, but the way I describe my journey is that I understood relationships are important then I jumped to, what is a good relationship? As I was finishing the doctorate and getting into the details of the insights from that and the different factors that support a relationship. I realize I missed the step out, which is such there’s no such thing.
We all know relationships are important, but then, who should you build relationships with? It's, “Do I have good relationships with those people?” That was the focus of the book. It was to say, “Before we start to define whether we've got good relationships with people,” just understand and even take a step back at a deal level or an account level. Figure out who are the key people that are relevant to me and my business and what the executives and the key buying personas for the service line. I suppose that's in a nutshell my journey for years through the doctorate and the book.
What an exciting one, by the way. The book is doing super well, and I can see why because you've focused in on a very important subject, but there hasn't been that much time in attention spent on this specifically. One of the things I would add. You talked about the what you're trying to do. I got a lot of value, frankly. What I found while reading the book, there's a lot on the how. Team, as you're reading through this book, in some cases, it's almost like a well-organized easy to read textbook, but it takes you through step-by-step how do we do some of these things.
Being First In the Door With The Right Solutions
If I am trying to make an amazing impression on that senior executive, once I've executed on my relationship strategy and gone in front of them. What are the elements required to make a great impression? What do we do? The, how we do this is also contained in the book. There are a couple of things that jumped out. We love facts, data, and research associated with B2B selling, Ryan. A couple of things just in the introduction that jump out.
Craig Elias from his book, Shift says, “From his analysis, when you're the first to engage with key decision makers, with the right solutions, you win 74% of the time. First of all, when we start to think of win rates and conversion rates and you referenced in your book, our pals Matt Dixon, and Ted Mckenna. I'm talking about deals that go to know decision. The percentage of deals going to know decision in their book, The JOLT Effect, to think you win 74% of the time by being first in the door with the right solution. What a crazy stat.
You need clients on the other side of a business relationship who will tell you things you do not want to hear.
That's an interesting one. I don't know if you know Craig. I've had a chance. He’s a fellow Canadian.
We're going to have to get him on the show, for sure.
You should because at the pleasure. He did offer. That's something I should take him up on. I mentioned my book and I let him know what I was doing. He's got some great content, but it talks about this concept of a trigger event in sales. You’ve got to look for the trigger, which is obvious when you understand. When you look back in the deals that we've won in significant events, there is often a trigger.
When you think about that stat in particular, there's a few components to it. You’re talking about the right individual with the right solution and first. As we talk about professional services firms, there are often industry or regulatory type of events that are happening in any given industry and in any given day. Even the micro level or regional level, so that's happening. Often, you'll have your research teams preparing to the thought leadership content around that.
It's like, “Who's the right person for us?” You should get their hands on this. It's about, the who part if it's for a specific service, line cybersecurity, or whatever it might be. You need to know who that person is and have the relationship with that person to get it into their hands. Whether you directly or someone else within the organization or your wider relationship network to get this into it hand first.
You go into week 3 out of 4 of those conversations and it will turn into business because you've got that trigger event. I try to incorporate a few of those components. There’s another one which I often use and I don't think I mentioned it in the book It’s from Heidi Gardner's work with Smarter Collaboration . That's about some analysis she's done about the relationship network, the size of your network. She did some analysis around digital twin, I think she called it. They looked for a lot of factors that were similar about their tenure, role, and sector.
The only difference at one end of the spectrum, one individual had a low network and the other had a high net worth by comparison. When they looked at the revenue generated, the person with a high network generated four times the revenue of the person with a low network. There's a bunch of these stats that are starting to come out now that support what we already knew that relationships matter.
First of all, our books are in the same boat. I released it months ago. I wrote it a year before that. I always often forget bits and pieces that are in my book as well, Ryan. You do have that in the book. You reference Heidi right after you reference Craig in the introductory area. It's so important like this topic to focus in on. It’s so important because it is one of those things where this assumption made about relationships.
A lot of times, we win. You’re talking to deal teams and go. Why did we win the sales leads going to come back and say, “It’s because of my relationship.” Frankly, they may be right. If we can define it and understand it, what it means is we can repeat it, teach it, and measure against it when we're trying to measure progress with a particular pursuit or particular deal.
How To Differentiate Yourself From The Rest
The book focuses in on building these relationships with three goals, winning those larger deals, managing and growing large accounts, and then managing large projects. There's nobody reading this episode that doesn't want to do one of those three. The other thing is such a great point you reference many times in the book and outside of the CEO and founders, reading to this show, we can all relate. To the world, most the companies you've talked about being a part of all look the same to a client.
If you are not addressing a potential business partner’s priority, it will be difficult to get a mind share. Otherwise, they will immediately clear their desk for you.
If it's a mega Indian outsource company like, Wipro or Tech Mahindra or Infosys, the reality of it is, those look very similar to a client. Whether it's a massive law firm or massive professional services firm. They all look the same. The reality of it is, they are the same. They have the same resources moving from company to company and the same executive moving from company to company. The delivery of the project and the strategies are all extremely similar. This point of differentiation comes down to the relationship is where the point of differentiation comes into.
We think about in the sales context. We think relationship is convincing them to buy our stuff basically, but there's so much more to it than that. When you're getting beyond the sale, which is the wedding, not the marriage. The marriage follows. The relationship is the intimacy within that engagement. Often, you need to have clients or people on the other side of the relationship are going to tell you the things you don't want to hear.
They will give you the feedback, which is tough to take. They’re the best type of feedback because that can help you to adapt and to adjust because there's nothing worse than getting some bad news when it's too late, so that in the nuance of a relationship is important. One thing I evangelize in the book, and I since then talk about it, what are the key parts here? One is around the intelligence gathering, especially with LinkedIn.
They coined the phrase like a warm introduction, so we get a warm introduction. It's great for that, but the power of a relationship network and if you apply the way I evangelize it to map this out is to identify people that can provide insights within the account. It’s not available online. We know about AI now and how easy it is to capture already published content. That's only going to get better, but the real detail around the competitive landscape around the real priorities that people are talking about within that team within or that division, what's the mood when you walk in the corridors.
This is the stuff that comes from relationships and from getting access there. When you couple that with an integrated into your conversation with one of those key exists that you've mapped out in advance, maybe you're meeting them for the first time. That's the power of coming into that conversation with that context. It’s going to set you apart and build trust, the magic five letter word.
It's so difficult to do in a short period of time. Again, that's where I enjoyed some of the how. Part two of the book was this overview of how to build and then execute this relationship map. Team, one of the key takeaways and we can all continue to get better at this. Our belief is you can likely get one meeting with almost anybody. You can likely get a first meeting with almost anybody if you came from one of the organizations that you spent time with, so global leaders, the top 300 companies globally.
Three Components Of Mutual Disclosure
If you're one of those companies, you can get a meeting with all most anybody. If you don't execute that meeting well, you're not going to get a second one. What I enjoyed about the book is when you're interviewing, you were interviewing those CEOs and senior executives running things. You suddenly asked them a question about the best client executive or account manager they ever worked with. You said, they lit up. They still those relation, got energized, and enthusiastic in terms of talking. It sounded like they were gushing about these people in some cases. What were some of the real key insights you pulled out there?
That's the doctor insight. Anyone that doesn't know that purpose with any type of research, particularly a doctorate level is, what's original, what's unique, and what doesn't exist already. That's what you're fishing for the end and you're hoping you've got it.
You’re hoping to find something.
There’s two parts to it. One is what’s called mutual disclosure in the literature. It's a phase between not knowing someone at all and building trust because you don't automatically start to build trust with someone. I'm trying to unpick that because that is an important element to the relationship building process. It's more what not to do. There's three components that I uncovered around what I call mutual disclosure.
When you're meeting someone for the first time, there's first few interactions. What's going on there that is going to open the person you want to build a relationship with welcome you. There's three elements to it. One is surprisingly and unsurprisingly do not sell. The one thing, they are detestable to every single one of these people I met. They don't want people to sell to them and I know that's my job a lot of the time, but that is something that is very off-putting.
It's obvious but it's difficult to maneuver around that. When I introduced decorative, they were describing the best person they worked with. They often said they didn't feel in a ten-year relationship that they ever were trying to sell them anything. It would be great to pull that off. I'm not selling. That linked to understanding their priorities and trying to align with the key objectives and key challenges.
It's all around being a partner and all of the stuff we talked about, the books behind me about The Trusted Advisor, the things we know about. Not selling his key. Two is not to have a clash of personalities. That's another thing which is I think if you're aware of it, you can maybe avoid it. I talked about that in chapter ten, which is how the final chapter like, where do we go from here? Which is a bit using social styles to understand someone's personality. Also, then understanding what can irritate them.
There was a strong theme amongst the people I interviewed around. If it doesn't click, if we don't get along, it's not going to work. There needs to be that dynamic energy flowing. That was a what not to do again. The final part is you've got to have knowledge, experience, insight, or something valuable. If you imagine you've done your research, you understand the priority, the competitive landscape, and what's keeping them away at night.
You don't have to ask them that. You already know it and you're not selling. There's not a clash of personality, then you've got to position what you have. They recognize and respect you. There's some credibility there. That's a good combination of what you need to come to those initial interactions with and set your stall out with that in mind.
It's such good advice. Again, these are things, you would expect we would know, but the opportunity to continue to get better at doing this, the knowledge and insight and value is a lifelong pursuit. All of us continuing to level up our business acumen so we can have that conversation. Whether it's understanding that particular buyer persona or understanding what's affecting their business and their industry or understanding what we're seeing with all of our other clients and what they're thinking about in the future. Executives now know they think about the future, but not managing and maintaining the past. They're thinking about the future. They're wondering what's out there that I don't know that's going to come and kick me in the ass?
I’m going to add to that, which is one of the other interesting insights that came out from the research was I asked these senior executives about the best person they've ever worked with from the vendor side. As we've discussed, we went through that process, but there was another theme that came out from this. This is very telling. Every single one of them without fail, the person they were describing was working on an fundamentally important project for that person.
It wasn't that this guy, this person I met was brilliant doing something periphery for me. In some cases, this was an actual career defining projects. Again, it links to working on things and being involved in things that matter to that person. It comes to the priorities and the things that are driving their business forward. It all sits underneath that.
I was at a dinner discussing some of these subjects and that came as a question from the room. It’s tough to build new relationships. How do we do it? We were going around to sharing up thoughts. I just came back to that point, if you're not addressing something that you know is a priority, it’s going to be very difficult to get the mind share. If you are, they will clear their desks and have you in 9:00 in the morning if they feel that is something that can support their specific priorities. That, again, feeds back into this research and intelligence gathering phase.
These are all great reminders. I'm even thinking about this for us and our business. One of the other things that hit me about book and the approach, Ryan, we've always been big believers and research preparation, preparation meets opportunity, and good things happen. I believe this book takes it to another level in terms of thinking through before that moment of truth, what's the order and the priority?
B2B Relationships: You need someone on the client side to be your ally, support you in meetings, help you get access to the right people, and give you feedback.
If I'm trying to penetrate a new account, I'm trying to get to a certain amount of leaders or executives, what do I do to desktop research that I can do to understand what's going on with them, the business, the industry, and the priorities, then I'm going to be leveraging a network of relationship map of folks in their company and people outside their company. It could be channels or people in my company who used to work at the company.
It's thinking through, how do I get insight and knowledge? In that moment of truth, you're not going to get too many opportunities to make that amazing first impression. I can certainly add in the funnel, call that out. We don't spend enough time and that's one of the things I pulled from your book, is just measure four times, cut once, and do the preparation before the meeting. For some of the folks reading this, whether you're penetrating major accounts or Global 100 companies, or North American Top 500 companies.
When you're thinking about those meetings, leveraging the resources in and outside your company to get this point of view. Large software companies, by the way, call that point of view value engineering. They will bring in a team of MBAs who do nothing but all of that research. When we've got the meeting, we've had a team of MBAs figuring out key business metrics, how this company is performing against their peer group, and what they've been saying publicly.
Taking A Different Approach
You add to that what you're hearing informally through the channels and the networks. That can make for a very powerful first impression. For that reason alone, this book is just a great read. Regardless of the level in size of your business, we can all be doing this better. Again, this all leads to the account management side of things.
We're working with existing organizations. We've had relationships. As you say, we might be a little single threaded. How do we take a different approach in 2025 to say, “I'm going to land, expand, and figure out how to grow this account?” The vast majority of revenue growth for most companies comes from existing accounts.
Correct. I'll give you a stat. I mentioned this in the book as well. We all know the Pareto rule 80/20. I'm fortunate enough to manage some big clients and the number of the big four included in there. I was chatting this through with one of their executives. She corrected me and said, “It’s not 80/20 on our side. It's more like 99% of the revenue comes from 1% of the clients.”
You can imagine, because there's such a small number of huge clients and a long tail. It's possible. She was half joking and half serious, but it was closer to that, maybe 20/80. That's important. To think about the leveraging the partner network and relationship, that's all crucial and figuring out that the process from which to do that. I call it panning for gold in the book. Mark, you'll appreciate for any deal. Even the ones we talked about prior to these $100 million deals.
Often, it's one relationship that makes the difference. That's what I'm evangelizing here. It's about putting the hard work in to cover all the bases. It comes back in spades because the client knows it. By doing that through osmosis, you're picking up other bits of intelligence information. You might meet someone, your so-called junior person in the organization or left that you may be used to go to college with or someone previously did. Putting that work in and picking those tidbits of information up when you get the opportunity as part of that deal process or account.
Even in an account, you are still trying to sell more. You got big deals to cheeky deals within those existing accounts and they keep projects. It helps you and it proves to them that you're putting in the work and that's what they want to see. We have to keep reminding ourselves that the clients that we’re selling to, those people are among the most intelligent people on the planet to get into that positions, that big Global Fortune 500 companies by accident.
Even if you think they can't see it, they are smart as hell and treat them with the respect they deserve. It requires a certain amount of effort. As we said, it doesn't have to be like big global companies. It can like strong companies or big brands that make maybe strong in their local or specific vertical. That, to me, is the differentiated.
Automation and AI make it harder and harder to sell, not easier.
I mentioned AI already and we seeing even on ChatGPT now with this work you can do in the sources. It's amazing. I used to devote a lot of my time to the research side and that's how I could differentiate myself. I feel it focuses more now on the intelligence gathering, which we aren't seeing much from AI. There's a software available in the market and another that can help with that process like LinkedIn. We know that as well. It's just piecing that together, being diligent, and putting the right combination of context into the right format to have that intelligent exec level conversation.
These are fundamentals that haven’t been changed in 125 years. Outside of the technology, Dale Carnegie is saying, “You can make more friends in two months by taking an interest in somebody else than you can't in two years by trying to get them interested in you.” This relentless focus on just helping that company, that individual, and their company achieve this desired outcome that's meaningful to them. The more they believe we're helping them do that, the better our chances of winning.
Correct, and you talked about the history. I'll give you another name. Todd Caponi, I don’t know if you come across that one.
I haven’t.
I've done a few sessions with him but he has an Instagram page called the Sales Historian. A history buff in the field of sales. He pulls out these statements that you would think some bright intelligent person said in 2025. He'll say, “This is from 1924.” Many years ago, they were saying this. The handbooks, the training, and all the stuff. It is a sense of history repeating itself, but it's fascinating to me to see this has been there in front of our eyes for all this time. I feel as though the way automation and AI is moving now. It's harder to sell. Not easier.
You're right. You reference Gardner in your research and in the book a couple of times. I was taking a look at their 2024 Chief Sales Officer conference. I should get this stat, but the top insight was 75% of B2B buyers say they prefer a wrap free experience. Some of that I always think is a little overblown. I always like to dive a bit deeper into the research, but nevertheless, what it screams in a positive side is this opportunity to stand out by taking that consultative approach.
Everybody talks about selling, consultation, and solution selling. A consultative approach is knowing so much about the client's business that they see you as a resource that can help them. They see you as part of their team that's helping them achieve that desired outcome. A couple of things to share that is helpful. I love the way the book is structured as well. The way you put this together, Ryan.
We're talking about Building B2B Relationships: How to Identify, Map and Develop Key Relationships to Win More Business. Everybody reading this and in business wants to do those things. You've broken the book into three parts. Part one, what are trusted relationships and why do they matter, so defining it. Part two, an overview of how to build and execute a relationship map, so lots of great detail in terms of what to do and how to do it. Part three, putting all of this into action.
Getting The Time And Attention From Key Resources
One of the things that I call out is one of our final questions, Ryan and I was struggling with this as we prepared for this episode. You and I chatted. You've done very large deals and so did I. At one point in time, I spent years and did a couple of hundred million dollar deals in that time. One was North of ability. These were large outsourcing contracts. You had a bit of that background with the global tech giants you worked with.
One of the things that we had going for us on those deals was that was my only job. When I was leading these deal pursuit teams to close these mega deals for this company, we were so dedicated to this. We did not even go to company meetings. There'd be town halls and meetings. We have to apply it to any process that existed in the organization. We literally had groups hived off. We had different real estate and because those deals were one of the top priorities for the company I was working for, we got executive team anytime we needed.
You cannot start a relationship by asking someone for something.
Our executives would help us be part of that relationship mapping exercise. They were first to the table for all of those things. The organization through nothing I did was rallied around these deals. One of the things that might be a challenge for those reading is they might be chasing some of these deals but have the difficulty dedicating time to these deals amongst everything else they're doing.
Setting up this cadence to get the executive attention for their firms, or their teammates attention who have competing priorities to focus in on these pursuits. Any thoughts? I'm sure you deal with that as well. You would have dealt with that in your background or your past life where there were lots of deals that emphasis or Tech Mahindra, or anybody could have been pursuing. How do you get the time and attention from the key resources for your deal?
This again is back to relationships, but this time it's internal relationships, which is also a crucial factor. Back to Heidi Gardner’s statistics, it is not about external network, but internal. I talked about this as well when I speak publicly. We think about your team within your own organization and how we tend to be grouped together is with people doing the same job as me. That tends to be your team, so your other account executives or whatever. That's not your team, is it?
You can ask me if they've got a deck on X, Y, or Z. A team that helps you to be successful is the multitude of other departments within the organization. The executives are at the top, but you've got your legal team. You've got your solution consultant, finance team, direct manager, the other support agents, and marketing. In chapter three of the book, I talk a bit about this organization or network analysis thinking.
That's the way I laid this out to get this chapter going. At least the book going in that first part. Think about your organization and how well networked you are because that's what's important. That's what will help you to be successful. You need to bring in the right level of support to help you get the depth in the solution because you can't do everything. We often talk about you as the lead being the director of the film or the maestro in the orchestra. You can't do everything.
That's another thing we need to realize now. You need to take a step back and bringing in the right folks to map with the right people, but getting the visibility of the right folks is down to how well networked you are within your own organization. If you're feeling a bit isolated, that's a place for you to start. You can't just go the same as we talked about building relationships. You can't start a relationship by asking someone for something.
We know that and we see that in everyday life. If someone drops me a message on LinkedIn. You know that there are about to request a favor in advance. You've categorized those people in that scenario. Don't do that. You need to invest the time and catch up. Say, “How are you doing?” Be proactive because nobody wants to be used even in turn. At least, you've got to build that credibility. Build your network as well.
It's about putting the hard work again. You've got to recognize people. Sometimes, there’s a tendency, maybe not so prevalent, but to take the credit when things happen. I know if you’ve worked on a few deals. We do get the credit for when the deals come, but is a village, as they say, that brings these. I know we get the blame if things don't go well as well. Maybe keep the blame for yourself, but share the credits when things go well.
That helps to then get trust. Again, the next time you need some help, you can get that in and you may be a product if you're in a software firm or you might need support with product development and things like that. You tend to close everywhere and get the right folks to a client. What I would also say is, when it comes to building relationships on the clients and that's why this relationship map is so important because it's not for you to map everyone on the client side and you to own those relationships. It's the opposite.
Who do you pair with who? Who's got the right personality, that job role, or the profile? If you’re speaking to someone in the info check, or technical or data privacy, you need to pair them with the right person. That builds some credibility. It gets people talking internally. It will bubble up to the execs as well if this is a significant deal. It doesn't need to be financially, but strategically as well. One thing I will say as you go through the case studies I share at the end.
I was talking about this as well. There is one key factor which is present in anything you're doing and that at least one champion on the client side. We hear about the champion. That's fine. They're supporting you, but I'm talking about someone who is emotionally invested in your success and the intelligence gathering. We've talked about the complexity of deals and the number of stakeholders involved on the client side.
You need to engage with those people. You can use your network. You can try and piece this together and get this much fame warm introduction. The best person to do that is someone on the client side. If you can get someone as an ally who's helping you to be successful, but also not just supporting you in the meeting when they need to, but helping you get access to the right people in giving you feedback. I get to the situation.
You're drafting a team's note for them to shoot at in a chat and you’re using them as proxy almost for the effort but willingly. That is crucial. I've not seen anything significant happen at a deal level or an account level that does not have at least one of those people on the inside. That is an important factor to self-evaluate as well.
I 100% agree with you. We didn't win any super large deal where there wasn't somebody on that side who was a champion who had a medium to high degree of influence on the deal that said, “We want you to win,” and they could articulate why.
They're helping you navigate as well in getting you introduced. Whatever it is, 8 to 12 to 15 people that are involved and banging this on the table when it matters and saying, “We need this.” That's a huge component but also, helping you navigate. I've worked with people where they may not consider themselves particularly senior and not particularly involved in a thumbs up or thumbs down, but they are right suitably emotionally involved and supportive of the project that they're part of your team.
That's argued out the most important member of the team. They are sharing insights on the old chart and movement. Finally, all this stuff and a new role has been talked about. I remember for one client, we had a M&A use case. There was a role that came up about post-merger integration and it’s reporting to the CEO. That was a perfect use case for our solution. This role was being talked about, but this lady had happened to figure that out and got us in front of this person. It turned into a huge success. That was all thanks to the intimacy of those conversations and willingness to support.
Get In Touch With Dr. Ryan And Episode Wrap-Up
A great discussion. We could talk about this for hours, Ryan, but we won't. Given your time, I know you've got top of the hour here. First of all, thank you so much for joining. How do people learn more about you, what you do, and Building B2B Relationships: How to Identify, Map and Develop Key Relationships to Win More Business?
I was a big shareholder in LinkedIn before Microsoft bought them, then Microsoft as well is a big believer in LinkedIn. That's where I developed most of my time, to be fair. I'm not too familiar with all these other platforms. I tend to focus on LinkedIn and share my thoughts there. I’m happy to connect with anybody, or follow. Whatever you want to call it. I do a bit on X or Twitter, but most of my focus is on LinkedIn. I’d be happy to chat to anybody then.
LinkedIn is our main focus. Ryan, great to meet you. Thank you. Team, thank you for joining.
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About Dr. Ryan O'Sullivan
Ryan O’Sullivan is a senior executive, board member, business adviser, university lecturer and author. He has spent his career perfecting and then evangelizing a ‘relationship first’ approach to growing revenue.
This has resulted in many awards and accolades over his career, including the most net-new clients in a year on multiple occasions, fastest net-new client in the organization’s history, first strategic deal (total contract value over $50 million) in a new country and largest deal in the organization’s history. He has won deal of the year and salesperson of the year on multiple occasions and has been the number one annual revenue earner many times, often for consecutive years.