Four out of ten B2B sales teams spend more than 40 per cent of their time on administration

What happened

On 17 September 2026 ECC KÖLN presented the B2BEST Barometer Vol. 23 together with the service providers synaigy and Intershop; on 21 September the analysis made its way into the trade press. In July 2026, 200 wholesalers and manufacturers were surveyed online, 41.5 per cent wholesalers and 58.5 per cent manufacturers. The key figures: 39 per cent of companies spend more than 40 per cent of their selling time on administrative and repetitive tasks, and for eight per cent it is even more than 60 per cent. The biggest brakes are seen to be high manual effort in preparing quotations and recording orders (39 per cent), missing links between sales, online shop, ERP and CRM (34 per cent) and complex internal coordination (33 per cent). On the customer side, 74 per cent consider the risk of losing customers to be high if enquiries are not answered the same day; 77 per cent see expectations of fast response times raised by AI, while 71 per cent still regard personal advice as indispensable. Only around a third have comprehensive self-service offerings, and 56 per cent provide only basic functions such as simple ordering. 72 per cent rate the economic situation as good or very good; the share of very good ratings has fallen from 20 to 17 per cent compared with the first quarter of 2026. Two of the three study partners sell digitalisation services themselves — that belongs in the reading of it.

Who it affects

Wholesalers, manufacturers and every B2B sales operation with products that need explaining — which includes the payments industry, because it sells in exactly the same way.

Assessment

The two figures have to be read together, and only then do they hurt: the customer expects an answer the same day, and four out of ten sales teams have more than 40 per cent of their time not available for customers at all. This is not a motivation issue, and a new activity target will not make it go away either. I see it in my own business with every quotation for a card terminal: if device, tariff, till integration and contract term sit in four different systems, the quotation takes two days — and in the meantime the prospect has spoken to two other people.

The lever therefore does not lie with the salespeople, it lies between the systems. Anyone who merges quotation and order entry and makes prices, availability and order status retrievable by the customer themselves wins back selling time without telling anyone to be faster. The study identifies the greatest potential in exactly those places: product information and availability (46 per cent), order and delivery status in real time (42 per cent), quotations and prices (40 per cent). The sequence matters here. First clear out the process, then digitalise it — another tool placed on top of a messy workflow only creates one more place where somebody has to maintain something.

What to do now

1. Measure for a week how much time the sales team actually spends on quotations and order entry. Without that figure you are discussing feelings.
2. Identify the three most frequent standard enquiries — usually price, availability, order status — and make exactly those three retrievable by the customer.
3. Set a binding response deadline for enquiries and track it in the pipeline review, not as an appeal but as a metric alongside revenue.