Your B2B Customers Don’t Want to Talk to a Salesperson

No matter what you may think, many of your customers don’t want to talk to a salesperson.

In essence, B2B buyers can be split into 2 buckets. Some need help with large or custom purchases, and will want to talk one-on-one with a sales rep to complete these complex purchases. The other group is self-educating online about products or services and have made a decision on what to purchase. For these people, talking to a sales rep is an unnecessary and unwelcome task in their workday.

Forrester forecasts that 1 million B2B salespeople will lose their jobs to self-service eCommerce by the year 2020. And that’s just in the United States. Also according to Forrester, 75% of B2B buyers want to self-educate versus talk to sales representatives to learn about products and services. Nearly the same percentage would rather access their account and order information online rather than call a company representative.

Why then, are so many B2B companies requiring their buyers to work with their sales reps to make a purchase or check order information? Does your website provide the things that nearly three-quarters of your customers already want?

To remedy the salesperson conundrum, you have a couple different options. I would recommend implementing a combination of them.

Option 1: Put your product information online.

As explained in another post of mine, your customers don’t want to shop your products in a printed catalog (or a PDF catalog online). They expect the same level of finesse in their B2B shopping experience as they would get on their favorite B2C sites, such as Amazon. And, it’s okay if you’re not ready to accept online payments. If you’re able to get your product information online, you’re providing a wealth of information to your customers that they previously had a harder time tracking down, sharing and coming back to. Additionally, this is the most time-intensive step of building your ecommerce store, and so it’s nice to get it out of the way sooner rather than later.

Option 2: Allow your customers to pay their invoices online.

Of course it makes sense to allow customers to pay online if their order originated online. But what about offering an online way to pay for phone or fax orders? The convenience of paying online will delight the busiest of your customers.

Option 3: Display a list of FAQ’s on your website.

Ever notice when you call certain business, the first thing you hear is a sound recording of their store hours? This is likely because so many people were calling to get this information that playing it right when someone calls is a way to cut down on employee interruptions for a simple question. Online FAQ’s are the same way. Are there 5, 10 or more common questions that people call your salespeople to ask? List those as FAQ’s on the website.

Option 4: Leverage chat capabilities rather than forcing your customers to pick up the phone.

I see this popping up more and more on all kinds of websites: a constant reminder in the bottom right hand corner of the screen with a friendly face saying something to the extent of, “How can I help you today?” Instead of firing your well-trained customer service or sales workforce, transition them to chat-based service, rather than phone based.

A multitude of benefits of online chat make this option so appealing. First, it’s cheaper. One customer service representative can chat with multiple customers at once, whereas he would only be able to speak with one customer at a time on the phone. This allows you to decrease wait times, and potentially encourage more inquiries because the customer knows they will be tended to in a timely manner.

Second, the service level increases for many types of questions. If a customer is having trouble finding their desired item on the website, the salesperson can quickly find it and send over a link to the product. Walking someone through this on the phone is cumbersome and does not provide a high level of service.

Third, it allows you to capitalize on the traffic already coming into your website. If someone is struggling to know or find what product they need, they have an easy way of getting help finding that product. That chat window in the lower right hand corner is constantly available for them to quickly submit a question and see who responds.