Ecommerce can threaten B2B sales teams. With education and support, management can help team members understand that ecommerce will help, not hurt, their performance.
A sales team can determine success or failure for a B2B ecommerce program. Sales personnel have the influence and trust among customers to drive ecommerce adoption. It’s the job of management to provide the sales team with the tools to make ecommerce a key part of their efforts.
In this post, I will share a 10-step approach for getting a B2B sales team to embrace ecommerce.
Embracing Ecommerce
Define ecommerce. Start with the basics. What is ecommerce? How is it used? Why is it used? What are the benefits, limitations, and advanced features (such as punchout integration)? Try not to make assumptions about what people know. Explain what ecommerce will mean to customers and how it will help the staff be more successful.
Share your vision. Communicate why ecommerce is a priority and what it means for customers, employees, and the company. Help your team to connect their efforts and successes with the bigger picture.
Establish expectations. Define your expectations for the sales team. Document these expectations and ensure the team agrees with them. Review the expectations with the team frequently. It’s easy for employees to drift from their original intentions over time. For example, if a salesperson is expected to obtain five new registered users per month, then management should track, report, and follow-up with her monthly.
Remove fears. B2B sales staff often fear ecommerce. Common concerns include (i) being replaced by ecommerce, (ii) losing commission, (iii) having less control, (iv) technology glitches, and (v) change itself. All of these fears can be addressed through education and communication. Often people do not admit their fears, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Address possible fears with your team in a group setting.
Plan together. Involve your sales team in planning for ecommerce. They understand the customer and often know the real-world implementation challenges and how to overcome them. Moreover, the team will believe in the plan and execute it better if they create it with you.
Work together. Going on calls with your sales team is the best way to understand customers and their needs. I once visited 60 manufacturing customers face-to-face and learned more than I expected. It was an eye-opening experience! It helped me connect customers’ challenges to our products.
Incentivize efforts. Be creative with how you incentivize your sales team for their ecommerce efforts. Consider short-term incentives, such as new user registration, first time purchase, or completed customer presentations. Rewards do not have to be monetary. They can be, for example, gifts, additional time off, or experiences.
Be creative with how you incentivize your sales team…
Measure success. Start with a handful of key performance indicators that align with your sales cycle. Make sure that your team understands what the KPIs are and how they are tracked.
Ask for feedback. Ask customers for feedback on your ecommerce program. This can be done in several ways. Open-ended questions can provide qualitative feedback. Survey questions, such as the Net Promoter Score, can provide quantitative data. And internal staff feedback can identify areas to improve.
Praise publicly. Let the team know when members deliver exceptional results. This positive affirmation encourages others to do better. Delivering praise can be as easy as sending an email to let everyone know who got a big win and, more importantly, how he did it. Over time, finding success, celebrating it, and offering help will become a part of your company’s culture.
Current-year considerations (what’s changed and what to do about it)
B2B ecommerce hasn’t replaced sales teams—but it **has evolved quickly** in ways that can change how sales, marketing, and customer success work together. The biggest shift is that ecommerce is increasingly **a core buying experience** (not a side channel), and buyers expect consumer-grade convenience alongside B2B requirements like terms, approvals, and negotiated pricing. As you roll out (or expand) ecommerce, keep these current realities in mind:
### 1) Buyers expect “digital-first” support—not “digital-only”
Many accounts now prefer to research, reorder, and manage routine purchases online, while still relying on reps for complex quoting, product selection, and problem-solving. Position ecommerce as a way to **remove low-value friction** (order entry, reorders, invoice lookups) so sales can spend more time on high-impact work.
**Best practice:** Clearly define what ecommerce is meant to handle (e.g., reorders, standard products, invoice payments) and what still routes to sales (e.g., engineered solutions, large bids, custom configurations).
### 2) AI and automation are raising expectations for speed and self-service
“Instant answers” and faster turnaround are becoming the baseline. Even if you don’t market your platform as “AI-powered,” customers increasingly compare your experience to vendors that offer smarter search, better recommendations, and quicker quoting workflows.
**Best practice:** Start with fundamentals that drive adoption—fast search, accurate pricing/availability, easy reordering—then add advanced capabilities (guided selling, recommendations, assisted quoting) once the basics are solid.
### 3) Sales compensation and attribution need to be explicit
One of the most common modern failure points is unclear credit when orders move online. If reps believe ecommerce “steals” revenue, adoption will stall—no matter how good the site is.
**Best practice:** Put attribution rules in writing (house accounts, rep-assigned accounts, shared credit, adoption bonuses). Ensure reporting is transparent so reps can see that ecommerce helps them win and retain business.
### 4) Omnichannel consistency matters more than ever
Customers notice inconsistencies immediately: online pricing not matching quotes, availability different from what reps promised, or promotions that don’t carry across channels.
**Best practice:** Align data sources and processes so the ecommerce site reflects the same truth as the rep: customer-specific pricing, contract items, inventory, lead times, and order history.
### 5) Security, privacy, and customer access controls are non-negotiable
B2B accounts often require multiple users, roles, spending limits, approval workflows, and strict data controls. Expectations for secure authentication and permissioning have increased.
**Best practice:** Implement role-based access, approval hierarchies, and strong account governance (who can see pricing, place orders, access invoices). Make it easy for customers to administer users without calling support.
### 6) Integration expectations are higher (ERP, CRM, punchout, and eProcurement)
Ecommerce success increasingly depends on how well it connects to core systems and customer procurement tools. Punchout and other procurement integrations can be table stakes for larger accounts.
**Best practice:** Treat integrations as part of the product, not a one-time IT project. Set shared ownership across IT, sales ops, and ecommerce, with clear SLAs for fixes and enhancements.
### 7) Customer success and ecommerce operations now strongly influence retention
Renewals and repeat business often depend on whether the buying experience is easy. Ecommerce is becoming part of the “service layer,” not just a revenue channel.
**Best practice:** Establish a lightweight operating cadence: review top friction points (search failures, cart abandonment, failed payments, out-of-stocks), publish fixes, and communicate improvements to sales so they can reinforce the value to customers.
### 8) Measurement should reflect the full sales cycle, not just online revenue
If you only measure ecommerce by web sales, you undercount its impact—especially when it supports reorders, reduces churn, or accelerates quote-to-cash.
**Best practice:** Add KPIs that sales will respect, such as: adoption by target accounts, reorder migration rate, reduction in manual order entry, quote turnaround time, rep time saved, retention/expansion among ecommerce-active accounts, and customer satisfaction.
These considerations don’t require rewriting your 10-step approach—they strengthen it. They also help management address modern objections with real operational answers: ecommerce isn’t a threat to sales performance; it’s a force multiplier when compensation, data consistency, integrations, and governance are handled correctly.
