Looking back: April 2026
The patterns that defined B2B BD in the pre-2020 era don’t all apply anymore. Some do. Some have been reshaped. Some have disappeared entirely. Sorting which is which has been one of the most useful retrospective exercises I’ve done — because the patterns that are still durable are the ones worth continuing to invest in, and the ones that have decayed are worth actively unlearning.
What Worked Then and Still Works
In-person relationship building still works.
Despite everything that changed around 2020, the underlying mechanics of trust-based selling are unchanged. People still buy from people they trust. Trust is still built through consistent, low-extraction behavior over time. The physical modality of how that happens changed, but the underlying dynamic didn’t.
Referrals still convert at multiples of cold outbound.
This hasn’t shifted. If anything, the value of a warm referral has increased as the noise around outbound has grown. The difference is that the mechanics of making referrals happen have shifted — people are harder to reach, introductions require more context, and the expectation of specificity has increased.
Senior relationships still open doors that junior outreach can’t.
The CEO-to-CEO introduction, the peer-level conversation, the executive sponsor on a strategic deal — these moves still matter. What’s changed is the ratio of deals where they’re available versus where they’re required. In the pre-2020 era, you could occasionally skip this work. In the current era, senior relationships are the unlock for more deals, not fewer.
What Worked Then and Works Less Well Now
The conference circuit as a sourcing strategy.
In the pre-2020 era, a well-run conference season could produce most of an annual pipeline for many enterprise sellers. The industry events were attended by the right people, the relationships formed there were durable, and the pipeline conversion from conference meetings was reliable.
This still works — but at lower volume. Conferences have become more fragmented, attendance patterns have shifted, and the conversion rate from conference meetings to pipeline has dropped. The sellers who still run the conference playbook well can produce pipeline from it. The sellers who relied on it as their dominant channel have had to rebuild their sourcing strategy.
Long-form cold outbound with generic cadences.
Five-email sequences with light personalization used to work. They don’t anymore. The market has been trained by a decade of template outbound, and the response rate on generic cadences has collapsed — even when those cadences are well-designed by pre-2020 standards.
Quarterly business reviews as the primary account management tool.
QBRs used to be the backbone of enterprise account management. They still exist, but they’ve lost relative importance. Customers have become less patient with structured review meetings that don’t produce value. The account management work that matters is now spread across more frequent, lighter-weight touchpoints.
What Worked Then and Doesn’t Work Now
Relationship-based selling as a substitute for specific value.
In the pre-2020 era, you could occasionally close deals where the relationship was so strong that the specific value delivered was secondary. The buyer trusted the seller and the seller’s company enough to proceed on faith that the implementation would be worth it.
This doesn’t work as reliably anymore. Buyers have become more scrutiny-oriented. Boards require more proof. Economic pressure has made “I trust you, let’s do it” less available as a closing move. Relationships still matter enormously — but they’re now a precondition for being in the consideration set, not a substitute for demonstrating specific value.
The handshake-and-a-sketch procurement process.
Pre-2020, in certain industries, you could close seven-figure deals with a relatively light paper trail. Procurement was often deferential to the executive sponsor. Legal moved quickly when the economic buyer had decided. This has almost entirely reversed.
The Retrospective Lesson
Looking back, the mistake I’ve watched most often is operators who stopped doing the old things because the new things felt more current. The in-person investment, the senior relationship cultivation, the referral hygiene, the patient long-term depositing — these were valuable pre-2020 and they’re valuable now. Some got dismissed during the digital shift as old-school thinking, and the operators who let them atrophy paid for it.
The converse mistake — operators who refused to adapt to new dynamics — paid equally.
The ones who are winning now are the ones who layered new on top of old. Durable fundamentals, updated execution, honest assessment of what changed and what didn’t.
The fundamentals of trust-based revenue haven’t changed. The execution has. Both matter.