Why We Will Always Need B2B Salespeople

One of the main topics I address when I talk to people about sales is that, in the first place, they need to understand the differences between consumer sales (B2C) and business to business, or B2B. 

For most people, talking about sales involves sales of insurance, financial services, real estate, automobiles, among others.  These types of transactions to the general public refer to what is known as consumer sales and one of their main characteristics is that they focus precisely on mass consumption, where the final consumer is almost always the buyer. That is, the goal is to reach a certain segment to obtain the largest possible volume of prospects and try to convert them into customers. Here, the marketing department of ​​the offering companies plays a fundamental role in advertising, promotion and prospect acquisition activities.

This large volume of prospects captured is transferred to the commercial department, where salespeople are in charge of closing as many sales as possible. In most cases, these are one-time transactions; that is, whoever buys a car will hardly buy another in the short term. The same thing happens with someone who buys a house or acquires medical insurance. 

From the customer's point of view, once the sale is closed, their relationship with the seller ends. In the best of cases, you will then be attended by some customer service area, but generally the relationship ends completely at the closing of the sale. Then, if the product or service does not meet what is offered or the customer's expectations, there is not much you can do about it. If he tries to contact the salesperson, he will be referred to the corresponding area, but it is unlikely that this customer will get any kind of support from the sales department with a post-sales complaint.

Let's think about the example of acquiring a credit card. The customer contacts the bank's account executive who will help him during the process and will do what is necessary to ensure that the client obtains credit authorization, and when this happens, the transaction is over.  If the customer subsequently has a problem with the product, such as an unwanted charge or some inconvenience in being able to use the card in a store, it is unlikely that the salesperson who helped them in the beginning will be able to do anything to help them with this situation. Furthermore, no matter the customer’s discontent, there are many situations in which the company that provides the service does not do much to resolve the situation, even in the face of the prospect of losing a loyal customer. I call this “the consumer's lost battle.” 

As an individual user among a large volume of prospects, the final consumer loses much of his power, especially after closing the transaction. We can see this in satisfaction surveys of companies that serve large volumes of users, such as airlines, cellular companies, banks, and others, that give us an idea of the service quality we can expect from a certain service provider. Generally, it is at the point where we seek to cancel a service that we see an effort by the company to keep us as a customer, and this does not always happen.  For many companies, it is easier to replace lost customers than to keep dissatisfied ones. It is only in times of economic difficulty or when competition begins to be very strong, when companies really worry about maintaining the loyalty of their customers. Again, this does not depend on the sales department.

On the other hand, B2B sales have a completely different dynamic. Because the work of prospecting and conversion depends directly on the seller, these types of sales are generally repetitive, and this is what keeps sellers active. Furthermore, for a B2B seller, resale to the same customer is one of his main assets. This forces the entire commercial department to be aligned in always seeking long-term relationships through customer satisfaction, because the survival of the entire organization depends on this. 

The seller's work begins with the prospecting activity and does not end when the sale is closed. Not only does it have to be constantly present as a means of dialog that conveys customer comments to your company, but it also ensures that you keep the customer satisfied in the long term. If this has not been the case, he is the most interested in remedying it, seeking to keep the door open for future opportunities.

In this case, the customer should know that they will have in the seller an ally who will help them find the best solutions for their needs and that they have great power based on their recurring purchasing capacity. Thus, this client-supplier relationship is much more productive for both parties when it is based on good commercial practices and you have a reliable seller at your side, who gives you priority and is capable of not only understanding your requirements, but who also constantly seeks satisfaction. 

At the beginning of this century, when I started my career in sales, the internet was just taking off. At that time, the talk was about how the different solutions that it would bring could begin to replace certain jobs, including that of the salesperson. Almost a quarter of a century later, we have seen how applications that generate contact with the prospect begin to replace human beings. However, the sales work has remained practically unchanged.

It is true that we now have more sophisticated tools that help us do our job better, but I see it as unlikely that an artificial intelligence tool will ever supplant a good salesperson who is not only capable of identifying a client's need and solving it, but who also cares about achieving your complete satisfaction. If we add to this that, in B2B sales, we generally interact with a variety of interlocutors, each of them with their own requirements, it becomes almost impossible to believe that a machine would be capable of developing “the art of selling” as a person does.. 

It is for these reasons that I believe salespeople will always be a valuable asset in the business world.

Will we always need salespeople?