The New B2B Buyer Doesn't Want to Talk to You

Sean Weisbrot: Have you ever tried to buy something online for your business only to be forced to fill out a contact us form and wait for a sales rep to contact you, or worse yet, you spend time configuring an order and then inevitably have to talk to a sales rep who doesn't know the context and the history of your order, and you have to start all over again. That frustrating process is failing because the B2B buyer has changed. Close to 60% are now millennial buyers who were born online and expect a seamless experience. That's also personalized if your business isn't meeting that demand. You risk becoming invisible to the biggest buying group in the market. In today's interview, I talk with David Blue, the founder of Saltbox, and we break down the blueprint for creating that modern buying experience. You'll learn how to build that blend of the digital experience with smart automation to not only win over this buying group, but future proof your business. Let's get to it. How is the business to business buying experience changing?

David Blue: I mean, it, it's changing in many ways and it's changing constantly. Right. You, you hear a lot about, and, and read a lot about how the lines are blurring between B2B and and B2C, and, and all of that's true and. B2B always lags behind the consumer business, but what we're really seeing a lot of in, in our business and and our customers isn't necessarily the, the thing that you'll always hear, Hey, we wanna be more like Apple. We wanna be more like Amazon. Like of course there's, there's those elements that, that we hear, but what, what we're seeing is the, the B2B buying experience changing and, and. Airing towards personalization and the, the ability to traverse the channel that you're purchasing on, uh, in a way that is seamless from channel to channel. Uh, whether you're starting online or starting with a sales rep. Uh. Regardless of where you start and finish in order, that process being seamless and uh, and frictionless. Uh, and that's the biggest thing that has changed over the last few years, last decade in, in B2B. Uh, that's really driving. I think a lot of the, uh, a lot of the investment and, and a lot of the, the change when it comes to, uh, where B2B organizations are, are making investments in, in their buying experience.

Sean Weisbrot: Why is this happening? Why is personalization so important now?

David Blue: I think there's, there's a number of reasons. I, I think there's, um. There's demographic changes, right? The, the buyers are becoming younger. The, the baby boomers are, are retiring and, and millennials are becoming the, uh, the primary buyer, right? It's, it's close to 60% of, of B2B buyers are now a. Uh, millennials and they were born online, right? They expect the same, uh, the same kind of, uh, of experience that they get in their consumer lives in, in business, right? They, uh, it doesn't make sense to them that they have to, you know, fill out paperwork or call a sales rep or do both to, you know, to make a purchase. They want to pick up their phone, they want to go online. They wanna do all these things themselves. I think that's a, a large, large driver of. Uh, of this change is just the demographics, uh, of it. And then of course there's, there's the technology and, and the technology is obviously something that is constantly changing and, and improving. And the ability to, uh, to either consolidate platforms or, or stitch platforms together in a way that allows this seamless experience, uh, is easier than it's ever been before using platforms like Salesforce or, uh, or others to, you know, to make these experiences. Personalized and, and frictionless is, is becoming less of a barrier to entry than it was certainly, uh, a decade ago. And I, I think those are really contributing factors to, uh, to driving this change. And I think B2B organizations are finally becoming wise to the fact that, uh, this is what their customers are asking for. Um, right. COVID and, and the pandemic when everybody was stuck at home, really shined a light on, uh. The old way, not being the only way, the old way being, you know, handshakes and, and steak dinners and, and face-to-face interactions. We don't need that necessarily. It's, it's still an important part and, and I do think the pendulum will swing back a little bit and face-to-face will come back in vogue, slightly in, in B2B and really all sales. But at the end of the day, self-service and, and digital is going to win the day when it comes to how buyers wanna buy because buyers continue to get younger, buyers continue, uh, to get busier and digital and, and seamless buying experiences online, uh, are gonna be the only way that B2B organizations are gonna win that buyer over. And, and that's where the investment we're gonna, is gonna continue to, uh, to, to get placed.

Sean Weisbrot: So. I am a millennial. I was born in 1986 and I grew up around these, uh, you know, handshake meetings. And when I was living in China, in my early twenties and late twenties, there was this, uh, desire to meet in person and, and, and continue to do that. And when COVID started, I did see that people stopped wanting to meet in person. Uh, at the time I was living in Vietnam. But people in general, were not meeting in person anymore, obviously. And even after COVID, I've seen people say, why do I need to meet in person? Because they've gotten used to over the last five years not needing to meet in person. They go, well, why not? And, and as you said, the buyer is becoming younger and my philosophy is, why can't a video call suffice if I need to do a call at all? Why do I have to interact with anyone to purchase something from them? What I've seen with even Gen Z buyers is that they don't even have the skills to really talk to people. So I, I grew up in a very social, uh, society and I see that my cousins that are. You know, 15, 16 years old. Now the idea of a phone call is massively scary to them. They would rather just text terrifying. And I, I feel like this idea of going back to, uh, in, you know, handshake meetings is probably not gonna happen. Uh, or if it does, the, the bounce back may not be so great, but. Uh, yeah, I, I'm, I'm at a loss for how these things are changing so fast and, and how Gen Z is really pushing that forward. I think it's going to, you're right.

David Blue: Um, and, and I think there will be there, there's always gonna be a time and place for a. A well-informed salesperson and, and those, um, you know, sales assisted, uh, buying experiences, whether that's in person or, you know, over a video call, especially in B2B, where oftentimes the sale itself can be complex, right? You have. Uh, whether it's a technical product or, or a sophisticated product that needs a, a subject matter expert to help explain to a buyer, right, how something works or how things work together, or maybe there's a configuration aspect that needs or requires a, a salesperson to, uh, or a technical person from, you know, the manufacturer, whoever it might be, to, you know, to interact with that buyer, uh, to. To help them understand what it is they, you know, they need or, or to get them over the, you know, over the line with, uh, with the details of, of their purchase. But to your point, if we can avoid that at all costs, most buyers are going to fit into that category, then, then the category that wants that sales assisted experience from the very beginning. So modern B2B buying experiences, mix both of those things together in a way that meets. That particular buyer where they wanna be, right? So some buyers maybe get 80, 90% of the way to to purchase without a sales rep at all. And, you know, they can do their own research, they can, uh, configure their own product and, and this is where you have to have the tooling and the, uh, the right. Architecture, uh, to set up this, uh, this ability for them to configure their own, uh, their own orders and configure their own products, et cetera. Um, and others, you know, may not feel comfortable doing that. Uh, so that's where sales assisted is, is gonna continue to be a part of. Uh, of that sales motion for a lot of these B2B companies, but one size does not fit all in, in any buying experience and B2B, uh, especially. So what we're seeing and what we're recommending to our customers is, uh, the modern B2B buying experience needs to have both. But it needs to, uh, it needs to make sure that we're where one motion. Ends and one motion picks up that we're not starting over and we're not, you know, starting from, uh, point A when we, when we move to a sales rep from online or vice versa, we're picking right up where we left off. Meaning if we've started to configure a product or we've started to configure an order and we're 80% of the way through there, we gotta pick up at 80%. We can't start from, from scratch and, and so many B2B organizations in. In, you know, the, the past several years, or I guess from really the beginning of time, uh, if that was the case, your sales rep would get to you. You've started an order, you've started to configure something online using a tool, and then they'd say, all right, well, you know, tell me what you need, and, and. You know, tell me about, you know, your use case and you'd start that whole process over. And, and that is, uh, that's something that modern buyers just don't stand for anymore. So that's the key is, is mixing, mixing physical sales with digital sales in a way that meets that particular buyer, um, in a way that they want to be sold to. And, and, you know, that's the personalization aspect, not just with the tooling, but also with the, um. The, the channel by which, uh, by which buyers want to be sold to and, uh, want to be interacted with.

Sean Weisbrot: Wouldn't it make sense then to push for a hundred percent of the way being without the need for a human sales rep? Because I feel like the. The system can be automated in a way that the AI knows who you are at every turn and every time you come back, they remember the previous interaction. So you get that personalization, you can get that friendliness. 'cause I've, I've had conversations with a number of different AI models in the voice mode and they're incredibly friendly and super helpful. And over time they remember who you are and they remember the details of the conversations you have with them. It's like a friend really. And so for, for sales. For, for you to have that and for it to have that memory, it knows the configuration of your order. So why do you need humans then?

David Blue: I think that's a, it's a really great question, and I think the, the answer depends on, on the what and the what you're buying, right? Because a lot of B2B, right? They're order ordering the same thing every month, the same thing every quarter, right? These are are long tail orders that are largely the same every month, right? Think about hospital systems that are buying consumables or you know, manufacturers that are buying, you know. Bolts and, and things that are just, uh, you need to buy, you know, the, the same quantity of, or, or pretty close to the same quantity of, uh, you know, over the course of, uh, over the course of the year pretty consistently. Right? Those are the, the types of orders that we do wanna drive to almost a hundred percent digital because you don't really like, to your point, need a sales rep to, uh. To, you know, create or, or process an order, uh, when you know it's gonna be the same every month. Um, now where a sales rep can come in and is, uh, effective is cross-sell upsell opportunities or where that. That customer may be wanting to explore new applications or, or new use cases, uh, that they are, you know, not taking advantage of from that particular manufacturer, for that particular, um, for the, from the organization that they're buying from today. So utilizing the sales rep to, you know, to educate on, uh, on new product or new applications of of product to help make. Them stickier or expand the, the share of wallet, that's where the sales rep comes in. But what we're seeing in, in a lot of those long tail customers is let's move all of those to digital. Or let's even move all of the, you know, the high volume, low touch, uh, hi historical buyers to a hundred percent digital because then our sales reps can, they go, go finish, you know, working on the large deals. They're breaking into new territories, finding new logos, uh. And not focus on, you know, spending their time because time is, uh, is not infinite. It's the only limited resource they have. Uh. They're not spending their time processing an order that, uh, is going to process whether they're there or not, because the customer's going to buy it, uh, month over month, quarter over quarter, either way. And, and that's where digital really, uh, really comes in, uh, to the picture, uh, in a, in a very effective way, uh, to offset the cost of, uh, of sales and, and free up sales rep time to go, you know, do the more effective things. Taking down new logos, expanding territory, and, and selling new product into that customer set.

Sean Weisbrot: I agree. I think having humans focused on new business is far more valuable for any organization, especially when I don't see a reason why the AI can't be trained to understand the cross-sell upsell opportunities and new products so that they could, uh, you know, keep a, a friendly conversation going where. Human has to be trained on those things and remember those things and be tested on those things and have multiple opportunities to sell those things before they start to become proficient in it. But the al will be proficient in it immediately.

David Blue: Absolutely. Uh, absolutely. I mean, think of, think of any online experience you've had or something goes in your cart and, uh, and its customers. Also bought this, you know, that bought this also bought these things, right? Yeah. The, you know, the ai, and that's a very simplistic use case, but you know, you can get very sophisticated in, in the, you know, the attribution of, of products or the bundling of, uh, of products. Using things like AI to, you know, to help your buyer understand, you know, the products that they should be exploring or the products that they should be considering given. The products that they already buy from you, the frequency they buy, those products, the quantities by which they're buying those products in, uh, and you know, the ais are, are getting very, very good at, uh, at. Kind of dialing in those recommendations and, and we're starting to see more and more of that in the storefronts we're building for customers. And, uh, and that's becoming, you know, something that customers are, are asking for more and more, uh, in, in the user experience of, uh, of the sites and, and storefronts that we're building for the exact, uh, reason you mentioned.

Sean Weisbrot: Well, it's great, great to hear that companies are asking for that because I feel like now is a very pivotal moment in the use of ai. In business that if business owners are not thinking about how they could be using this or they're not actively testing implementations, that they're gonna lose business to businesses that are doing it. And I think if, if a business doesn't have any AI in the next 24 months, they will be dead. I think a hundred percent chance they will not make it if they don't have ai.

David Blue: They, they certainly are gonna be far behind, uh, and, and on the, on the path to demise, uh, if, if they don't. For sure.

Sean Weisbrot: So what are you working on internally that you're able to talk about that's new and exciting? Something that you're passionate about that you're not maybe talking about too much?

David Blue: Yeah. Um, it. It's on the topic of ai, right? We're, we're spending a lot of time and, and a lot of resources, uh, with, with how we use AI internally. And, you know, we're a professional services company. We develop software and what, what we do with AI is becoming more and more important for our own, you know, efficiencies and our own, um. Our own kind of quality of life from, from our consultants' point of view, right? We have a, a very, uh, you know, labor intensive, uh, you know, service offering, right? We do project based services and, and AI is, you know, disrupting, disrupting the way that. You know, consultants and professional services organizations do work in, in a pretty meaningful way. And, and we want to be on the bleeding edge of, uh, of using it in a way that, um, that allows us to, uh, not only do our job better, but do it in a way that benefits our, our customer. And, um. Those benefits, meaning, you know, time to market, you know, help get done, things get done faster, uh, help get it done at a, at a more competitive price because we're able to do things faster. Um, and of course, right, most consultancies, uh, are work still working on, uh, you know, some sort of fee based or, or time and materials, uh, type fee structure. Um, so we're working on, on tooling internally that allows us to. Take our kind of historical, um, historical context and, and how we develop software and, and you know, what our definition of good looks like when it comes to how we write user stories or test cases or, um, all of the nitty gritty that comes along with, um, being a, a software development. Uh, company and apply that to every role across with, across the software development life cycle, uh, in a way that improves our consultant's ability to do their specific role by, you know, N percent. And, and what that n is is, is still, uh, probably too early to, uh, to see what exactly that percent is. Right? Is it 10, is it 90? Uh, is it somewhere in between? That's, that's probably where it will net out, but we're spending a lot of time. Making sure that we're transforming ourselves into a, an AI enabled services organization, not a services organization that sometimes uses ai.

Sean Weisbrot: I think that's a great way to think about it. Yeah. There's a term, I guess it's called AI Native or AI first. Yep. It's probably the same.

David Blue: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. It needs to be it, it needs to be embedded in everything we do, not. Hey, maybe we use it, or, Hey, I, maybe I'll, I'll try it over here. It, it needs to be in the path of how everybody across the organization works, and we need to do it in a way that, uh, is controlled to make sure that the way that we're using AI is, uh, or the, the way that the AI is helping us work is, uh, just the same way, uh, or the, the same way that it would be if our. CTO was doing that, or our, our lead consultant and, and, uh, it becomes an extension of us, uh, not a, you know, a crowdsourced version of, uh, of professional services from, you know, the, the broader internet, right? We want to curate it in a way that is very specific to us. Uh, and you know, that's been where a lot of the investment and, um, and energy goes into to make sure that everything we create is. Is specific to Saltbox and, and not, uh, not generalized. So that, um, it can be AI native, we can be AI first and it can be, um. Bespoke to how we work. Um, not generalized that anybody could pick it up off, uh, off the street because we have a lot of ip. We're very good at what we do and, uh, and our ais should reflect, um, should reflect all of that work that we've done over the last several years. And, you know. And make us, uh, more effective at, uh, at using that knowledge and, um, and kind of project history, uh, et cetera. How do

Sean Weisbrot: you balance the time and energy of your team to implement these initiatives while also not losing their focus on serving the customers you already have and using the existing processes that you have?

David Blue: That's a great question and, uh, I, I wish I had, I wish I had a perfect answer in that we were doing a great job, uh, at, at striking a, a perfect balance. But the truth is we're, we're probably not right, because we still are a, you know, a small, nimble organization that, you know, while we did raise funding, right, resources are still limited in, you know, in how we deploy our capital and, um. We are, we are trying to do our best in, in kind of siphoning off, um, both capital and, and people resources to make sure that we're dedicating a, a, a portion of our, um, of our consultants' time and our team's time to work exclusively on that. But as we know, right, uh. Everyone's gotta plan until they get punched in the face. And, and professional services is one of those industries that you get punched in the face a lot. So, uh, there is always going to be competing priorities with how you use time and, and resources when it comes to serving customers. And. We, we are experiencing that on a, you know, on a monthly and, and quarterly basis where we have to, you know, pull resources away from internal work to help, uh, help get a customer over a line because they're on a deadline and, uh, and things are running a little bit behind, or, um, you know, we've got, uh, we've got the need to, uh, to help a customer. Um, unexpectedly and, and, uh, and it's a good problem to have, right? We have a project that we didn't expect to, to start, that we need to start, but now we need to pull resources. So it's a, it's a hard balance for us to, to strike because the, the pace of change is also very fast. Meaning if we, you know, pull someone away from what we're doing, uh, in our own internal AI pursuits for, you know. 30, 60 days. Uh, a lot can change in that time. And, and, you know, when we get back to, when we get back to, to working, uh, on that project 60 days from, from now in this, uh, fictitious example, um. The way that we might be approaching it or, or the technology available us to us to solve that problem might have evolved in a way that, uh, we might need to rethink our, our, our approach. And, um, that's the hard part in, in, in all of this right now is, is the pace of change and, and competing priorities. When you run a, um, run a small professional services organization that is dependent on people for, you know, for revenue. Um, and I also think that's one of the areas that AI is going to, uh, to eventually help, you know, offset. Because eventually we're going to be able to use, uh, AI to help build out our, uh, our AI capabilities. And, and I think we're, we're a ways off from that. Um, but. That's probably not something that is too farfetched to believe at, at some point in, uh, in the future.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I think a lot of people are scared of that, but the reality is you can go to Cursor and you can use Cursor with Claude and you can ask Claude to build you an AI chat bot connecting to Open AI's. API I've, I've done it a few times. So you can actually have an ai, build another AI for you. I, it's, it's already here, but I understand what you mean, that you're probably thinking of something that an AI can code another AI that then can code itself or improve itself. The, this kind of, I think it's called recur recursion, or recur. I could be wrong.

David Blue: I think

Sean Weisbrot: so. Yeah. I, I think that's what you're referring to, but, um. That's quite scary, but it's gonna happen a lot faster than people give AI credit for because the companies that are involved in building these things have no incentive to stop. So we're kind of at their mercy because capitalism wins. Yes, it does. So while you're answer was really important for understanding. The mindset of a service agency owner. A lot of people that are listening to this are in the process of starting a service agency or a SaaS brand. Can you go a little bit deeper and talk something that would be actionable for someone that's early in their journey for how to manage resources? How have you, how, how you have learned to manage these resources.

David Blue: There's, there's a lot of different flavors or a lot of different philosophies when it comes to, you know, how you're managing, you know, people capital. And we at, you know, at, at our firm, at at Saltbox, you know, we do project based services and, and you know, we always try to. Be very mindful of, you know, our, our hiring strategy and, and how we balance, um, bringing on full-time, uh, full-time employees versus, you know, when we might use, you know, third party contractors or, um, our contract to hire mechanisms. Uh, and there's, you know, there's varying, um. Varying philosophies on, uh, on how utilized, uh, or how much demand one needs, uh, to see in, in order to, uh, pull the trigger on a, on a full-time hire. Our philosophy is we wanna see line of sight to, um, at least six plus months of full utilization. Meaning, you know, 40 hours a week, billable time. Um. In the future, uh, to feel confident that we are going to, to pull the trigger on, on a full-time hire for that role and. If we see that, then it's an easy yes, we're, we're going to open a rec and, and we're going to hire. If it's less than that, those become, uh, those become different decisions that we as a, as an executive team have in, in real time. And that's when we're examining and, uh, and looking more closely at our, our sales pipeline and our bookings, uh, forecast to, you know, to predict whether or not we're soon to have, uh, you know, that that backlog that's going to. Help us feel comfortable about a, a hire. And if the answer is no, you know, then that's when we look at, well, how do we manufacture, you know, start dates differently or, or how do we look at, uh, how do we look at bringing third party contractors in to offset the need for hire? Because, you know, once in our business, you, you know, increase capacity, the only way you ever decrease capacity is if. View, reduce, uh, that capacity and, and, you know, that's never a fun conversation. Yeah. Uh, when you're dealing with, uh, dealing with people. So, um, we, we've been fortunate that we've been, uh, as I knock on wood, uh. Played that, uh, game very, very well in a, in a, the last couple years of, of very kind of uncertain, uh, whether it's economic headwinds, whatever you wanna look at it. Uh, as in, in a time where a lot of our competitors have, uh, have retrenched and, and gotten smaller. We've been, we've been growing. And I think a lot of that has to do with our, uh, our approach and, and philosophy on, uh, on how we hire. Um, but there's a lot of different flavors to, you know, to headcount management and, and people management. Uh, as, uh, as you grow and, and then obviously capital is, uh, is a big factor in that, right? If you're, if you're bootstrapped, you're probably taking a little bit more conservative approach then if you raised, uh, you know, seven, eight figures in, in capital where you can afford a little bit of a higher burn rate and, and higher to a bigger bench. And, um, and bet on the demand coming, uh, in a different way than if you were, um, if you were. Lacking, uh, you know, lacking capital to, you know, as the insurance policy to that demand not coming. And, um, I think there's a lot of different factors that go into, go into making those types of decisions.

Sean Weisbrot: You said betting on the demand coming. What does that look like?

David Blue: Yeah, so in, in our business where, where. When it comes to headcounts and when it comes to, you know, making hires, and if we don't have that line of sight, if we don't have that consistent demand, hey, we're gonna hire this person and they're gonna be busy for at least the next six, nine plus months. We, we have to look at our sales funnel and say, well, these, these deals, uh, we feel good about. These deals closing and we're going to make a bet that even though they're not maybe committed deals or you know, they're not to the point that we're going to count on them happening from a revenue side, we are going to place a bet that they are going to happen and we're gonna go make whatever. Um. Whatever we need to do to make those, make those deals happen, happen so that we can make that higher. And then we're really placing that bet that those deals happen so that then that capacity then, uh, does come into the revenue side of the business and, and fill up that, uh, that person's, that person's allocation.

Sean Weisbrot: What's the most important thing that you've learned in running this business?

David Blue: Change is the only constant, uh, I think. Whether it's technology, whether it's people, whether it's um, markets, uh. As soon as you get comfortable, something new happens, or something new changes that you have to react to both positively and negatively. Uh, and as soon as you get comfortable with that philosophy, as a CEO or as a business leader, you're gonna be in much better shape than, thinking everything's going to be the same.