This is the third part in a series by our Head of Sales, Emil Lissborg, exploring how shifting buyer behaviour is reshaping B2B sales. This time, we look at what it really means to digitalise complex B2B sales and why a customer portal must be more than just a webshop to truly support the full customer journey.
Many companies I speak with think of a customer portal as a B2B webshop.
That’s not wrong. But it’s not the whole picture.
A webshop solves part of the challenge: letting customers find products and place an order. But B2B sales is more complex than that. There are negotiated prices that differ between customers. There are approval flows and role‑based permissions. There are quotes that need to be created, sent and accepted. There are integrations with ERP, inventory and logistics.
If a customer portal can’t handle all of that, it only solves a fraction of the problem and often creates new manual steps instead.
They don’t think of the portal as a channel next to sales. They think of it as the infrastructure for the entire customer relationship. The portal connects the customer and the salesperson in one shared flow, from the first quote to the completed order, with full transparency throughout.
The customer can see their negotiated prices, repeat their latest order with a few clicks, approve an order proposal and track their delivery. The salesperson can create quotes directly in the portal, see the full customer history and act proactively instead of reactively.
Something changes in the dynamic when this works. Customers order more frequently and in larger volumes. Sales teams spend time building relationships instead of handling administration. The organisation can grow without hiring more people for every new order.
This is what’s often referred to as Business to Sales, B2S, not a channel, but a way to connect the entire journey.
Many companies underestimate how much of the complexity in the B2B buying flow can actually be handled digitally. Customer‑specific assortments, price lists, role‑based permissions, multi‑step approvals, payment terms, all of it can be built into one coherent flow.
It doesn’t require a large technical organisation or a multi‑year project. But it does require thinking a bit broader than “we need a webshop.”