What image pops into your head when you hear the word salesman? Is it a tired middle-aged man lugging around a suitcase door to door? A shady guy on a used car lot with a bad tie? Or maybe a bunch of slackers sitting in a paper company office in eastern Pennsylvania. 

The challenge isn’t creating customer relationships. It’s translating decades of relationship knowledge into digital experiences that customers actually want to use. 

What do they all have in common? Direct human interaction. For decades, that model powered B2B sales. And for good reason. Industrial products are complex, relationships matter, and trust is earned over years.  

What else? They don’t exactly exude modernity, do they? Whether your image is of Willy Loman or Jim Halpert making in-person visits or phone calls, it doesn’t jive with today’s idea of analytics-driven conversion funnels. Yet, this is how most of the B2B world operates.  

But the way buyers discover, evaluate, and purchase products has changed dramatically. The question is whether industrial manufacturers’ sales processes have changed with them. For much of the manufacturing sector, the commercial side of the business simply hasn’t evolved as quickly as the operational side. Many manufacturers can tell you the exact location of a pallet on the warehouse floor, but they still can’t let a customer reorder that same pallet online.  

If you remove the B2B technology sector and focus on manufacturing, their sales processes are startling. According to Salesforce, fewer than half of manufacturers have a fully implemented CRM, a foundational technology for modern sales organizations. And even those that have one implemented, 43% consider user adoption their biggest challenge, according to Gartner. Don’t ask about marketing automation. 

When eCommerce capability is considered, the picture gets even more surprising.  Shopify’s analysis of the manufacturing market shows that only 7% of the $14.85 trillion in manufacturing sales happens through modern online commerce channels. While awareness is growing, adoption still trails buyer expectations. Only 47% of manufacturers even consider B2B digital commerce a strategic initiative for improving customer experience, according to IDC. Heck, the SANA’s Manufacturing & E-Commerce Benchmark Report reveals that only 39% of manufacturers are planning an eCommerce project to help remediate the issue. And 71% still take more than a day just to put together a quote.  

You may be thinking, well, that’s not great for new purchases, but the B2B business model is different. The vast majority of B2B manufacturing businesses are repeat orders, and eCommerce is not a critical channel like it is for retailers. This is an outdated assumption, and that’s exactly why this matters. McKinsey’s Quarterly research indicates that only 15% of buyers want to speak with a salesperson when repurchasing the same product or service. They want saved orders, pre-negotiated pricing, availability, delivery dates, and a 1-click reorder process. They want salespeople involved when expertise matters, not when they need last month’s invoice. That same article reports 62% of industrial buyers prefer digital reordering, but only 10% of industrial OEMs provide that self-service reordering capability. Their competitors could drive a delivery truck through that gap.  

So why is this a big deal? They’re still successful and moving product, right? Not exactly. The disparity between what buyers expect and what these organizations are providing is getting worse. If it’s apparently not keeping manufacturing leadership up at night, it should. 

Thomas Industrial Survey research has consistently shown that industrial buyers increasingly use digital channels during supplier discovery. In fact, 73% of industrial buyers visit a supplier’s website before making a purchasing decision, and they expect real information: specs, CAD files, and certifications, not just a brochure. In addition, that same McKinsey report reveals that B2B buyers use an average of 10+ channels during their purchase journey and increasingly expect the ability to move seamlessly between digital self-service and human interaction. 

And it doesn’t stop there. Gen Z and millennials are projected to represent roughly two-thirds of the workforce within the next few years, according to Deloitte. These workers are accustomed to digital-first experiences and increasingly use AI and digital tools in their daily work. And we’re talking individuals who grew up with Amazon, online banking, Uber, and who are now early adopters of AI. BCG’s research shows younger buyers strongly favor self-service when the task is straightforward. And Gartner reports that 38% of Gen Z and millennials said they are likely to give up on resolving a customer service issue if it cannot be solved through self-service. The personal supplier relationships and tribal knowledge that power today’s industrial sales will remain valuable, but they will no longer be enough on their own. 

Taken together, this paints a grim portrait for those B2B companies that don’t adapt. Fortunately, there is still time, and B2B has some built-in advantages. Ironically, manufacturers may have an easier path than consumer brands. Unlike B2C, manufacturers have full control over their product data and can create the data foundation from within.  They already know their customers. They already have years of purchasing history. They already have trusted relationships. They already know which products customers buy, how often they buy them, and what pricing they’ve negotiated. Consumer companies spend billions trying to acquire that information. 

Manufacturers already own it. 

The challenge isn’t creating customer relationships. It’s translating decades of relationship knowledge into digital experiences that customers actually want to use. 

This isn’t about replacing the salesperson. It’s about elevating the role. Modern CRM, digital commerce, marketing automation, CPQ, and AI don’t eliminate relationships; they eliminate administrative friction. They allow sales teams to spend less time generating repeat quotes, tracking down order status, and manually processing reorders, and more time identifying new opportunities, solving customer problems, and proactively strengthening relationships before customers start looking elsewhere. 

The manufacturers that succeed won’t be the ones that eliminate sales relationships. They’ll be the ones that amplify them. 

The future of industrial sales isn’t digital instead of human. It’s digital where convenience matters and human where expertise matters. 

For decades, manufacturers have competed by removing friction from production. The next competitive advantage will come from removing friction from purchasing. 

That transformation starts with data, not because data is the end goal, but because every modern commercial capability depends on it. CRM, CPQ, AI, customer portals, marketing automation, and digital commerce are only as effective as the information behind them. 

That’s the work we do at SCIGON, turning purchasing history into systems customers can actually use. Worth a conversation.