There are two ways to start a B2B online shop. The common one: You buy software, book a few integrations, send out an email to the sales team—and then wonder why the revenues don’t come. The right way: Define a business goal, align your organization and incentives accordingly, build the digital channel around it—and watch clicks turn into customers. The difference? Leadership.
A shop is not just a fancy interface. It is a sales model embedded in software. And sales models shouldn’t be in the IT department, but rather on the executive board’s table. Because this is where the decisions are made that define success: Which customers should buy and how? What prices apply to whom? How do we balance field sales, inside sales, and self-service? What metrics guide the course? None of these questions can be answered with a plugin. Each requires direction.
Thinking Systems or Impact?
The cardinal mistake starts in the thinking: “We need a system.” No—you need impact. Systems are means. Impact is the goal. Impact arises when three levels come together. First: a clear promise to the market. What do you stand for, what makes purchasing from you easier, faster, more reliable? Second: a process that delivers this promise every day—from initial interest to repeat orders. Third: an organization that embodies this—with incentives that encourage, not hinder, behavior. Those who buy only level three (the software) get a nice shell without an engine.
Leadership Decides—Not Technology
The shop touches everything that matters: pricing, assortment, availability, service level, payment, logistics, complaint handling, data quality. If you delegate the responsibility for this to “the IT,” you are delegating your business model. IT can implement excellently, but it should not decide which customers you want tomorrow. That is executive business because it is strategy.
Many executives fear cannibalization: “Does the online channel eat up my field sales team?” It only eats emails, spreadsheets, and wasted time. A well-managed shop gives sales back the spotlight: standard cases run via self-service, and salespeople focus on potentials, framework contracts, upsell, and cross-sell. Those who get this change their compensation—from channel egoism to shared profit. It is not technology that creates acceptance, but a fair story: when the customer buys online, the team benefits.
What Customers Really Want—And What You Should Leave Out
Your customers are not homogeneous “users.” The buyer wants control, the technician wants security, the accountant wants documentation, the operations manager wants speed. A B2B shop that sells is not a digital brochure but a role-based tool. It shows customers only what is relevant, knows individual prices, manages approvals, interacts with ERP and CRM, and delivers status updates without a hotline. It doesn’t have to start perfectly—but it must start sensibly. Sense is created when management defines the initial use cases that are measurably better for customers than before.
The hardest part is not integration but elimination. Those who want to map everything never start. Those who deliver the essentials gain trust and data—and thus the foundation for scaling. Leadership shows courage to prioritize: better three things that move revenue than thirty features that no one misses.
Change isn’t a poster in the corridor. Change is the moment when the CEO in the sales meeting says: “This system is our new standard. We measure ourselves against it. We reward behavior that strengthens it.” After that, training follows—short, specific, recurring. Then playbooks are brought into the CRM, not buried in PDFs. And then the sales team tells the first stories of something becoming faster, easier, bigger because the digital channel did its job.
In the end, a simple truth counts: A B2B online shop is a profitable promise—or a costly hobby. Profitable promises are born at the top. When management sets the vision, aligns the organization, and only then purchases technology, a project turns into an outcome.
If You Mean Business: Don’t start with the toolbox. Start with a solid strategy development. In a focused format, we clarify with you what your digital sales model must look like, which customer experiences add value first, and how you measure success. Only then do you decide on systems—and make the right ones.
