Relationship management? Really?

I’m on a roll, ducking and weaving and landing punches, so I might as well continue!

Last week I lamented the use of the terms “operational reasons” and “regret” that corporations use to justify endless service failures. This week let’s move on to another such term: “Relationship management.”

Many years ago I wrote a piece for this page, asking relationship managers (RMs) whether they were really just hucksters. Here’s an excerpt: “In business, relationship management is all the rage these days. There seem to be no salespersons any more, just relationship managers. It sounds warm and fuzzy and touchy-feely, as though you, the customer, have someone in the organization specially focused on you. Most of the time, it’s an elaborate hoax.”

I went on to say: “What’s the difference between transacting and managing a relationship? To put it crudely, it’s the difference between a one-night stand and a marriage. The former is easy, momentary, fleeting and soon forgotten. The latter is difficult and hard-won but accrues benefits over a lifetime.”

What can I tell you, I was much younger and more feisty then! But what’s sad is that those words were written exactly thirteen years ago, and nothing much has changed. So let me come out swinging all over again.

Most RMs aren’t managing relationships at all. They’re managing transactions. They aren’t there to deepen trust, to build something lasting, to guide you with your best interests in mind. They’re there to sell. The relationship, such as it is, lasts only as long as the next pitch. They are not rewarded for looking after you; they are rewarded for converting you. They don’t manage relationships; they manage quotas. If they were called Transaction Managers instead, it would be more honest—but, of course, that doesn’t look as good in the brochures.

If you’ve ever had an RM assigned to you, you’ll notice the pattern. They’ll call periodically, usually with an overly chirpy tone, checking in to see how you’re doing. They’ll feign interest in your business, your personal goals, your future plans—until they steer the conversation towards an “exciting” new investment, a fresh facility, an upgrade. This is not a relationship; it’s a transaction wrapped in the thin veneer of familiarity. You could replace the human being with an algorithm and get pretty much the same experience.

It’s not the RMs’ fault. Some of them would probably love to do real relationship-building, but their KPIs don’t allow it. They are measured by sales volume, product penetration, and revenue per customer. Their bosses don’t reward them for depth, only for speed. If every metric and every incentive points toward short-term selling, how could they possibly focus on long-term trust? The problem isn’t the individual; it’s the system. It’s the organization’s own shallow, self-serving definition of a “relationship.”

I have been fortunate enough to have encountered a few excellent RMs in my time, and I know this: A real relationship isn’t about relentless selling. It’s built on trust, not urgency. It is driven by the customer’s needs, not the provider’s targets. It is sustained through value, not repetition. You can’t have a relationship if one party is always in a rush to close the next deal. You can’t claim to be a trusted advisor if your agenda is dictated by sales cycles rather than life cycles. You can’t expect loyalty if every interaction feels transactional rather than meaningful.

Think about the best relationships in your own life. They aren’t with people who only show up when they need something from you. They are with those who invest time, listen, understand, and are there when it matters. A bank, an insurer, an investment firm, or any service business that truly understood this, would train their RMs differently. They wouldn’t just equip them with product knowledge and sales tactics; they would teach them how to listen, how to anticipate needs, how to be genuinely useful to customers beyond the moment of a sale. They would measure success in years, not quarters.

If organizations truly want to build relationships—not the fluffed-up, marketing-friendly version, but real ones—they need to change how they measure success. Stop judging RMs by how many products they push and start judging them by how many customers trust them enough to stay. Stop scripting interactions to close deals and start allowing them to have real conversations. Stop treating the relationship as a pipeline and start treating it as a privilege. This means changing incentives to focus on longevity, satisfaction, and genuine problem-solving, not just revenue generation.

Hey, I get it. Businesses must sell, and shareholders must get returns. But long-term success is never about short-term cashing-in. Relationships actually matter, but they require patience to develop properly. We need to build them without the fru-fru. A relationship isn’t a tagline in an ad campaign. It’s not a shallow pretext for relentless selling. And it’s certainly not a meaningless title slapped onto people whose real job is to extract more money from customers. If you’re going to use the word, then mean it. Otherwise, don’t insult people’s intelligence by pretending. They can tell the difference.

(Sunday Nation, 23 February 2025)

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