B2B sales
B2B sales, or business-to-business sales, are sales where both the seller and the buyer are companies rather than private individuals.
What it looks like
In B2B, the buyer is an organization. The person in the chat is rarely the only one who decides. There may be a user of the product, a manager who approves the budget, an accountant who pays and sometimes a legal department that reviews the contract.
Deals are usually larger and slower. There are more questions, more documents and more steps: an offer, a call, a pilot, a contract, an invoice. Relationships often last for years.
Why it matters
For an owner, B2B means fewer clients with a higher value each. Every deal carries more weight, and losing one key client can affect the whole month or year. Planning depends on a long, visible pipeline and on knowing exactly where each deal stands.
The continuity of the relationship also matters more. A company buys from a company, but in practice trust is built between specific people.
Typical mistake
Selling to a company as if it were a single person. The rep convinces the contact in the chat but never learns who else decides, and the deal stalls without explanation.
Another risk is when the whole relationship lives in one rep’s personal phone. If that person leaves, the history of agreements, prices and promises leaves too, and the client starts again with a stranger.
What to do
Map who influences the decision in each deal and plan contact with each of them. Keep a clear record of agreements, documents and next steps. Measure the cycle and stages separately for B2B. Make sure every client relationship and its history belong to the company, not to one person.
More in Signals
- A sales rep left and took the clients: how to make your client base belong to the companyClients leave with a sales rep when the channel belongs to the employee: their own number, history only on their device, and a client used to a person rather than the company. To prevent it, register work numbers to the company, write the rules into a chat policy, cover confidentiality and the client base in the contract and agree the departure procedure in advance. The client base is a company asset, so it must stay one.
- Why your CRM isn't working in sales, and what to do about itA CRM stops working when it lives apart from where the selling happens: clients write in messaging apps, sales reps answer from personal phones, and the records get an after-the-fact retelling. The data starts to drift, you stop trusting it, and the CRM goes empty. The fix is not more fields or penalties. It is order: you decide who owns the numbers and the conversations, what counts as a fact and who answers for it, and then you work by those rules yourself.