Kearney
The Future of B2B sales
Advances in business-to-consumer (B2C) sales have commanded considerable attention over the past decade and a half. The Internet has triggered several consumer sales revolutions, from new channels to the unlimited availability of information. Individual buyers can now search and find anything they want, whenever and wherever they want, and for the best possible price.
B2B sales, by comparison, appear to have gone through less of a revolution. But appearances can be deceptive. For one thing, B2B sales were already much more advanced. Electronic data interchange (EDI) and other technologies were making B2B sales transactions more efficient well before the Internet came onto the scene. B2B customers and suppliers also have a long history of cooperation in everything from consultative selling and design-in efforts to all sorts of sales and after-sales support. And B2B sales departments have long been rising to the challenges of their customers’ increasingly professional procurement departments.Yet there is still enormous potential for technological advancements—in the form of digitization, connectivity, and virtualization—to revolutionize B2B sales. B2B sales are on the verge of making a giant leap that will take them beyond all the traditional limits
