For eCommerce Directors and Managers running B2B channels on platforms still routed through sales reps.
67% of B2B buyers prefer a fully rep-free buying experience, up from 61% a year earlier and 33% a few years ago. (Gartner B2B Buying Survey, 2026)
That number used to read like a thought experiment for procurement-heavy verticals. It is now the median. Gartner’s latest sales survey, fielded across 646 B2B buyers in August–September 2025, makes the direction unmistakable: buyers want to do the work themselves, and they want suppliers to get out of the way.
The driver is generational. Millennials and Gen Z now make up 71% of the B2B buyer pool, and more than two-thirds of the buyers involved in big-ticket deals come from these two cohorts (Forrester B2B Buyers’ Journey Survey, 2024). 68% of millennial B2B buyers say they prefer self-service research tools over speaking to a sales rep, and many complete up to 70% of the buying process before they ever engage a supplier.
It is not that B2B has gone B2C. The deals are still complex, the pricing is still negotiated, the approval chains are still long. What changed is who sits on the buyer side and what tools they expect to see when they land on your site.
Why this matters: if your B2B storefront still routes every quote through a rep’s inbox, you are forcing 67% of your buyers into a workflow they explicitly reject. The opportunity cost shows up as silent abandonment, not angry tickets. A buyer who wanted twelve SKUs, a volume break, and PO terms quietly closes the tab and finds a supplier whose portal lets them get the same answer in five minutes.
What B2B platforms ship today vs. what rep-free buyers expect
What most B2B storefronts ship today | What a rep-free buyer expects |
|---|---|
Quote form emails a rep, then waits | Stateful quote with defined lifecycle and audit log |
Contract pricing applied by a rep on a call | Account-level price lists applied at quote time |
One login per company, shared password culture | Hierarchical accounts with granular role-based access |
Quote PDF re-keyed into the OMS on conversion | Direct conversion from approved quote to validated order |
Email threads for negotiation | Structured comments and price adjustments on the quote |
Three failure modes follow from the left column.
The quote that dies in an inbox. When the quoting workflow is “form submission triggers email to rep,” there is no system of record for where the negotiation stands. A buyer who pushed back on a line price has to wait for the rep to find the original quote, the discount approval policy, and the right SKU in the price list. Half a day is the floor. Three days is the median for anything non-trivial. The competitor with a stateful portal is already done.
Contract pricing applied by hand. B2B pricing is the part of the platform that most often gets glued on instead of designed in. Account-specific prices live in a spreadsheet the rep references on the call. Promotional discounts stack against negotiated pricing because nothing in the platform tells them not to. The margin erosion is real and almost never visible until a finance review.
Account models that do not match real organizations. A regional distributor with three branches and an approval chain is not a single user with one login. When the platform cannot model parent and child accounts, role-based permissions, and account-level PO terms, buyers paper over it with shared logins and email approvals. Both add audit risk and slow the cycle.
The throughline: the platform treats the quote as a message-passing exercise between a buyer and a rep, instead of as a stateful object the buyer can drive. Fixing that starts with the quote workflow itself.
How we think about this at Kibo
A stateful quote lifecycle, not an email thread
The quote needs to be a first-class object with defined states, an inventory hold, and a complete audit history. Anything less and the negotiation lives in inboxes, with all the latency and lost context that implies. The buyer should be able to log in, see exactly where their quote stands, and act on it without a phone call.
Our B2B quote workflow is a five-state lifecycle (Pending, In Review, Ready for Checkout, Completed, Expired). Account-specific pricing is applied automatically when the buyer initiates the quote. Inventory is reserved while the quote is under review, so the buyer’s intent does not evaporate if stock moves during negotiation. Every status change, price adjustment, and comment lands in the Quote History, accessible to both sides without a ticket.
Account models that match how buyers actually organize themselves
Hierarchies, roles, and PO terms are not extensions you bolt on top of a B2C account model. They are the account model. A national account with regional children, an approval chain with three permission tiers, and an account-level PO with a credit limit are the baseline, not the high-end configuration.
Our B2B accounts carry three things that prove the principle. Parent and child account relationships with priority-based order release, so operations can model “Acme Wholesale” with its Northeast, Southeast, and Western branches the way the business already does. Role-based access across 11 permission categories, with three built-in roles (Administrator, Purchaser, Non-Purchaser) plus custom roles scoped to specific accounts. Account-level Purchase Orders with configurable credit limit, overdraft allowance, and payment terms, surfaced to the buyer during checkout.
Pricing without the spreadsheet lookup
Contract pricing should be resolved by the platform, not by a rep with a tab open. Promotional discounts should not stack against negotiated prices unless someone deliberately makes them. That is a default, not a setting you remember to flip.
Kibo resolves pricing through unlimited price lists assigned directly to a B2B account or through customer segments, with the direct assignment taking precedence so contract prices never get accidentally overridden. When a seller adjusts a price during quote review, the platform triggers a full reprice that recalculates discounts, taxes, and fees in one pass. Promotional discounts do not stack with B2B contract pricing by default, which keeps a site-wide promo from quietly eroding negotiated margin.
Quote to order without the handoff
The conversion step is where most B2B platforms drop the data. The quote is approved, the buyer wants to check out, and now someone has to re-key it into the OMS, or the platform builds a half-trusted bridge between two systems. Both options cost time and introduce errors. The right shape is a direct path: an approved quote becomes an order, with the same line items, the same pricing, the same PO reference.
Our quote to order flow does exactly that. The buyer clicks Continue to Checkout on an approved quote and the platform moves it into order validation and processing with no re-entry. Account-level product lists and surfaced order history let repeat buyers reorder without rebuilding a quote, which removes the most common “call the rep” trigger in the entire workflow.
The takeaway
The 67% of B2B buyers who want a rep-free experience are not waiting for permission. They are quietly closing tabs and ordering from suppliers whose portals already work the way they think. The platforms that win the next cycle are the ones where the quote workflow, the account model, the pricing engine, and the order conversion are designed as one system, not four. Kibo’s B2B capabilities sit on a composable foundation, which means you can put the RFQ portal in front of buyers without ripping out the OMS, the ERP, or the storefront you already trust.
If your B2B channel is still routing every quote through a rep’s inbox, that is the place to start. Talk to Kibo about B2B self-service.
