Interpersonal skills still matter, but modern B2B selling asks salespeople to build influence across an entire ecosystem of stakeholders.
Strong interpersonal skills have always mattered in sales.
Salespeople need to communicate well, build rapport, understand customer needs and develop trust. Those capabilities remain essential.
But our recent study suggests that, in many selling environments, another capability is becoming increasingly important.
Among the factors whose influence varies depending on the sales context, inter-organizational skills emerged as the strongest factor associated with salesperson performance.
Selling now happens across an ecosystem
Traditional selling was often centred on a relatively simple relationship between a salesperson and a buyer.
Modern B2B selling can look very different.
Customers increasingly purchase complex or customized solutions that involve multiple stakeholders, functions and organizations. A salesperson may need to work not only with people across the customer's organization and their own company, but also with technology partners, distributors, consultants, financing providers, implementation partners and other third parties.
In other words, the salesperson increasingly operates within a sales ecosystem.
Success depends on being able to understand that ecosystem, build the right relationships within it and mobilize people and resources around the customer's problem.
What strong ecosystem skills look like
Effective salespeople develop relationships with the people who matter across the customer's organization rather than relying on a single contact.
But they also build strong networks inside their own organization and across relevant external partners.
They understand:
- who influences decisions;
- where expertise and resources reside;
- whose cooperation will be needed;
- where resistance may arise; and
- how different parties need to work together to create a viable solution.
This requires more than being personable.
It requires network-building, communication, coordination and political savvy.
A salesperson may need to advocate internally for a customer's needs, secure scarce resources, persuade colleagues to modify a standard offering, engage an external partner or bring senior leaders together to move a solution forward.
The salesperson increasingly becomes an orchestrator within the sales ecosystem.
What sales leaders can do
- Develop broader relationship maps.
Move beyond identifying the buyer and decision maker. Help salespeople map the people and organizations that can influence whether a solution succeeds.
- Assess network breadth and quality.
Ask whether salespeople have the relationships needed across customers, their own organization and relevant third parties.
- Build internal advocacy skills.
Salespeople need to know how to represent the customer's interests and mobilize support without relying on formal authority.
- Coach ecosystem thinking.
When reviewing opportunities, ask not only “Who is the customer?” but also “Who else must be involved for this solution to work?”
The takeaway
Interpersonal skills remain fundamental to selling.
But as B2B markets have shifted from selling standardized products toward solving more complex customer problems, salespeople increasingly need to operate across a much broader network of relationships.
Their role is no longer simply to build a strong relationship with a buyer.
It is to build influence across the sales ecosystem and bring together the people, knowledge and resources needed to create a workable customer solution.
For sales leaders, an increasingly important question may therefore be:
“Can this salesperson build and mobilize the ecosystem required to solve the customer's problem?”
