Alex Sayyah

B2B purchase cycles are getting longer and buying teams larger as companies get more cautious about large purchases.

Yet conversely, the 71% of B2B buyers who are Gen Z and Millennials are looking for a more digital and frictionless buying experience, just like they get in their consumer lives, according to Forrester. This “Amazonification” of B2B selling is inevitable; it’s an excellent opportunity for companies that have traditionally relied heavily on direct and channel sales teams to shift to a digital commerce model that gives customers the freedom to choose how much of the process should be self-service. It eliminates unnecessary barriers when customers are ready to buy, allowing sales teams to build trusted relationships.

Consumers Are B2B Buyers, Too

As the saying goes, business-to-business is still business-to-people. Emotionally, purchasing complex B2B products isn’t that much different than purchasing B2C products. Think of the experience you expect in buying a car, and the way that companies like Tesla have mastered the omnichannel experience despite the complexities.

In “How Brands Grow Part 2” (2022), Jenni Romaniuk says, “It is easy to focus on the differences between B2B buying and B2C buying, such as the contracts, switching costs and more structured purchase cycle rather than the similarities, such as customers having a wide range of competing options and little time to process all the information available. However, remember it is the same B2B customer, with the same brain, who is also buying toothpaste, cars, weekends away, chocolate, whisky, a luxury watch, and home insurance.”

In other words, those consumer behaviors bleed into the workplace because the benefits still apply. When B2B sellers handle the benefits well, buyers receive:
• The convenience of having the history of past orders and receipts right at their fingertips.
• The ability to quickly reorder things again.
• Detailed product information that can easily be shared with colleagues.
• Fast action on moving from configure to quote.
• Abundant information about order status and shipping on demand.

It’s not a one-way street, though, as B2B sellers also benefit from:
• Dramatically shorter sales cycles, especially for configure-to-order and engineer-to-order products.
• Stickier customer relationships.
• The ability to update information (product, price, availability, etc.) instantly as needed.
• Valuable customer data that informs product and marketing strategy.

Consider an industrial ventilation system order worth perhaps $100,000. This deal might continue to be closed with the assistance of a sales rep, either at the manufacturer or distributor. But what happens when a $100 part breaks down the line and renders the system inoperable? It’s a critical issue for the customer. It’s economically negligible for the salesperson, so if the customer calls, they might not get a callback. So they call support, which creates a ticket, and someone reaches out to find out if the part is available. Meanwhile, the customer is losing productivity.

Alternatively, the customer logs onto their portal, pulls up a diagram of the system, clicks on the part, and orders a replacement. Which process is better and for whom? While we need to respect the differences between an Amazon purchase and industrial selling, those differences shouldn’t be a barrier to embracing a digital buying process and its many advantages, for you and for the buyer.

Handling the Complexities

As consumers, we expect to easily look up past orders and receipts, quickly reorder things again, change payment methods, and adjust shipping to fit our degree of urgency. These are the mechanical transaction processes that are no-brainers for digitizing in B2B and they are core functionality in any B2B ecommerce platform. The only addition is to ensure that sales team members can access this same information for their accounts.

However, one of the tricky bits is helping customers navigate their options. It’s one thing to choose from five sizes of shirts in four colors, all priced the same or virtually so, and all either “in stock” or “out of stock.” But you can’t just tell your business customer that the fuel pump they need is out of stock, so check back later. Never mind that there’s a significant chance the product is made-to-order based on hundreds of thousands of configurations and customer-specific pricing.

So, in addition to the storefront, some level of configure-price-quote functionality will be required. Implementation can be complex, but it doesn’t have to be. From an Amazonification standpoint, we’re going for automation and self-service when the ask is relatively easy (for the customer and for you) and responsive human interaction when it’s not. In my experience, for configurable industrial products, 80-90% of your sales will come from the most common 100 configurations. Do the sales research to identify those configurations, and you will be able to present drop-down website choices for the customer that they can navigate in just a few minutes with just a few questions, all of which can be priced on demand, applying the appropriate customer pricing model.

Finally, as the industrial ventilation system example illustrates, supporting spare parts ordering is critical. That starts with incorporating parts information management functionality. By providing easily accessible data on individual parts, components, or assemblies, you will make it easier for customers to handle these smaller-dollar spare part purchases in a largely self-service manner.

What of the Sales Force?

Do we even need a direct sales team? Absolutely, and that’s the limit of Amazonification.

A consumer marketplace assumes you know what you need. In complex B2B settings, a live salesperson can be a valuable partner in diagnosing business challenges and the right way to address them. Salespeople will have more time to do that if they aren’t spending all their time managing the logistics of transactions or sharing documents and data that should be readily available online.

Today, that time is only about 35-39% (See “How Long Should Sales Reps Spend Selling”). They will love spending more time building customer relationships, and you’ll love the business results.

About the author:

Alex Sayyah is CEO of Aleran Software, a provider of B2B digital commerce software for manufacturers. He is also a former B2B sales and marketing executive at companies including IBM and global logistics company Transdev.

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