Every sales and marketing leader should ask themselves: What type of sales relationship do we have – and does it prioritize humans or machines?
This question goes beyond the CRM you’re using, the cadence tool you’ve deployed, or the AI platform you’re evaluating. It’s about how your organization connects with buyers. The answer determines whether you win or lose the largest trades.
Your customers are searching everywhere. Make sure your brand introduces himself.
The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need.
Start free trial
Start with
4 Sales Relationships That Define B2B Sales
Three of the four sales relationships that define B2B commerce are evolving rapidly. Only one of them gradually disappears. But it turns out that it is the only one that can conclude complex transactions reliably.
1. Machine to machine sales
A machine-to-machine sales relationship requires no human involvement on either side. It does not create trust and requires no human judgment.
Instead, algorithms buy from algorithms. Automated procurement systems evaluate, select, and transact with automated sales systems.
This relationship is efficient, scalable, and completely devoid of the connection that built the business in the first place. For renewals, replenishment, and transactional purchases, it works. But that’s not enough for anything that requires a buyer to take a real risk with their organization’s budget or with their own reputation.
2. Sale of machine to human
Most B2B buyers come into contact with a machine-human relationship before even speaking to a sales representative. This approach involves automated email sequences and personalized ads delivered by an algorithm that knows buyers’ job titles and browsing history. It also integrates chatbots that answer buyers’ initial questions and nurture campaigns that follow them through a predefined customer journey.
By the time a human seller enters the conversation, the buyer has already formed an impression. It is shaped entirely by machines that know what the buyer is doing but know nothing about who the buyer is. The data does not reflect their personality, motivations, fears or personal risks.
3. Person-to-machine sales
Most salespeople rely on human-machine relationships. The rep is technically ongoing, but he is selling to a machine rather than a person. This approach involves tactics such as:
- Enter data into a CRM.
- System-generated call queues.
- Follow the priorities determined by the algorithm.
- Submit proposals through procurement portals.
- Respond to automated request for proposal (RFP) systems.
The process has replaced the rep’s judgment, intuition and ability to read a room. As a result, salespeople execute a workflow rather than build a relationship. The machine on the other end of the line doesn’t trust, doesn’t feel, and doesn’t stake its reputation on anything.
4. Person-to-person selling
Human-to-human relationships have built every great business organization in history. They rely on building trust, reading personalities, and deciding whether the person across the table is worth banking on their reputation.
It is the commercial relationship in which a salesperson works to be chosen. This happens because the buyer believes in the person behind the promise, not because the rep’s product scores the highest in the evaluation matrix.
Salespeople focus human-to-human sales on the time remaining after the other three types of relationships have consumed their day. For many reps, that’s not much.
Why human-to-human sales are declining
We gradually moved away from human-to-human sales as performance metrics declined and the industry kept looking for the same answer: more automation, more volume, more technology. When email open rates dropped, we sent more emails. When win rates dropped, we added another tool to the stack.
What we never stopped wondering was whether the real problem lay in our understanding of the human side of the equation. We had built systems that failed to detect everything that motivates a human buyer:
Neither the hidden motivations, nor the personality behind the decision, nor the personal risk attached to each major purchase show up in a lead score or engagement metric. Since we couldn’t measure these factors, we stopped looking for them.
Buyers are more emotionally driven than any of our systems recognize. The factors that determine whether a deal goes through are human. They always have been.
People are the last competitive advantage in B2B sales
AI will accelerate this change. The first three types of relationships will evolve in ways that we cannot yet completely predict. But across thousands of buyers and hundreds of real-life transactions, it’s clear that the human-to-human relationship remains the one that gets made.
The sellers who win in the AI era won’t be the ones who automate the most. They will be the ones who are the most humane. People are the most important competitive advantage in modern B2B sales.
The question is whether your team invests in it.
This article was adapted from the upcoming book, “The Hidden Buyer Journey.”
