B2B online sales reach €549 billion: 82 per cent expect a different field sales force
According to the B2B-Marktmonitor by IFH KÖLN/ECC KÖLN, CGI and Intershop, manufacturers and wholesalers in Germany generated €549 billion through online shops and marketplaces in 2025, 7.9 per cent more than the previous year. 82 per cent of decision-makers surveyed expect field sales to shift from traditional selling towards solution and advisory partnerships.
What does the new B2B-Marktmonitor say?
Manufacturers and wholesalers in Germany generated €549 billion through online shops and marketplaces in 2025, 7.9 per cent more than in 2024. IFH KÖLN reported this on 5 October 2026 from the B2B-Marktmonitor, produced by ECC KÖLN with CGI and Intershop. These channels account for 13.3 per cent of total turnover; total B2B e-commerce including EDI grew by 5.3 per cent and represents around 30 per cent of B2B turnover. B2B marketplaces grew by an average of 26.1 per cent a year from 2018 to 2025. 67 per cent of decision-makers surveyed expect a further shift to online within the next twelve months, and 82 per cent expect field sales to move towards solution and advisory partnerships. How to sell products that need explaining is covered in the guide Selling products that need explaining.
Which sales teams need to reorganise
Field and inside sales teams in wholesale and industry whose daily business consists of reorders, price requests and availability checks are affected. These are exactly the tasks moving to shops, marketplaces and, according to 65 per cent of respondents, soon to AI agents that answer price requests on their own.
Why advisory selling is not a label but a different job
“From salesperson to adviser” has been on every sales slide for twenty years. What is new is that the customer is now forcing the change: whatever can be ordered online is ordered online. Field sales is left with the conversation no shop can have: identifying needs, weighing alternatives, building consensus inside the customer’s organisation. That is a different craft, with different metrics and often a different commission model.
We have seen this in payment sales for years. Anyone can order a terminal online, but not the right pricing structure for a business with a €40 average ticket. If you keep measuring your people by units sold, you get salespeople competing with your own web shop. The B2BEST barometer in September already showed that four in ten B2B sales teams spend more than 40 per cent of their time on administration.
What sales managers should do now
- Sort the visit list by which customers only reorder and which face a decision, and steer standard customers consistently to the shop.
- Review target systems: make advisory work measurable, for example by the number of qualified needs-assessment conversations rather than visit count alone.
- Put conversation training ahead of the next product training.