"You're all gonna die!" says the Harvard Business Review.
But people buy from people and in B2B, certainly in enterprise, there will always be a role for the salesperson. But sales people do need to use social channels to create relationships, demonstrate expertise and build trust.
Sales will change a lot in the next few years but it may not be terminal.
If organizations don’t change their outdated thinking and create effective sales models for today’s digital era, Forrester warns that 1 million B2B salespeople will lose their jobs to self-service e-commerce by 2020. The answer to the shift away from reliance on outbound sales could reside in social selling, the strategy of adding social media to the sales professional’s toolbox. With social selling, salespeople use social media platforms to research, prospect, and network by sharing educational content and answering questions. As a result, they’re able to build relationships until prospects are ready to buy.
/Passle/53d0c8edb00e7e0540c9b34b/MediaLibrary/Images/2026-10-14-09-22-13-024-6acf49c5944aac193a981bb9.jpg)
/Passle/53d0c8edb00e7e0540c9b34b/MediaLibrary/Images/2026-11-10-10-38-21-619-6af2f41d5007312d05766e7b.jpg)
/Passle/53d0c8edb00e7e0540c9b34b/MediaLibrary/Images/2026-11-04-17-10-44-050-6aeb6714ba0bff4af3658ce7.jpg)
/Passle/53d0c8edb00e7e0540c9b34b/MediaLibrary/Images/2026-11-03-15-11-15-803-6ae9f9939223331c13f47fc7.png)
/Passle/53d0c8edb00e7e0540c9b34b/MediaLibrary/Images/2026-10-27-11-04-12-699-6ae0852c821c27f27de73832.png)