That was the question our CMO, Sharon Forder, tackled at the opening panel discussion for B2B Online Chicago – the leading conference for manufacturers and distributors focused on digital transformation.
Today, digital natives make up 71% of B2B Buyers. In a world where the supermajority of your buyers views online ordering with 2-day delivery as the default, not the exception, how do you evolve your business to stay competitive?
Here’s what we discovered.
Key trends shaping B2B in 2025
From interactive panels to hallway conversations, several clear themes emerged across the event:
Buyer values
Today’s younger buyers prioritize efficiency, reliability, and speed. Online buying is the most efficient, reliable, and fastest channel available.
Generational buying divide
Elder millennials to Gen X (45-55) convert 1.5x more frequently than Gen Z to Late millennials (25-35).
Buyer frustrations
40% of buyers said their top frustration was lack of accurate information, followed closely by lack of search functionality.
What buyers prioritize
Today’s younger buyers prioritize efficiency, reliability, and speed. Online buying is the most efficient, reliable, and fastest channel available, which is why younger buyers overwhelmingly prefer online to offline buying.
“The biggest thing [younger buyers] expect is reliability, efficiency, and speed. They want to be in the places they already live — portals and apps — and if you’re not there, you’re not part of their research or purchase journey.” — Sharon Forder, Chief Marketing Officer, Sana Commerce
Beyond that, buyers also value sustainability, transparency, and collaboration between buyer and seller. Sustainability has gone from a nice-to-have to a must for younger buyers. 92% of buyers will complete sustainability research before making purchase. If that information isn’t available online, half will call a sales rep, while a quarter will simply go to another supplier.
Generational divide
Younger buyers may be leading the charge for digital transformation, but older buyers convert at higher percentages. Elder millennials to Gen X (45-55) convert 1.5x more frequently than Gen Z to Late millennials (25-35).
It’s unclear what drives this disparity. It could be that the older cohort of buyers has more discretion to authorize purchases than younger buyers. It could be that the search process is optimized for the buying behavior of the older cohort.
What is clear is that businesses need to understand that their buyers are not monolithic; younger and older buyers will interact with online and offline buying differently. To address this, companies need to invest in unifying online and offline channels to support all buyer personas at every step in the buying process.
Alliant Power CEO, Houman Kashanipour, weighed in on the generational divide for buyers. “Business is becoming more competitive. Our number one job for our customers is to reduce their downtime. It doesn’t matter the generation. How do we create the fastest, most accurate buying experience?”
With expensive B2B purchases, it’s important that buyers make the right purchase, not just the fastest purchase.
What gets buyers frustrated
Online Buying isn’t perfect. 40% of buyers said their top frustration was lack of accurate information, followed closely by lack of search functionality. 75% of buyers would switch to a supplier who provided a superior online buying experience – meaning accurate information and high-quality search functionality.
In short, if you’re not giving your buyers what they want, they’ll go to a competitor.
How to stay relevant: key takeaways
Unify your digital ecosystem
Give buyers a single platform to connect shopping, customer service, and community
Make AI the backbone of product discovery
Embrace LLM-augmented, conversational search
Connect online with offline
Unify channels through hybrid tech like AR-assisted show rooms and ERP-integrated portals
GEO is the new SEO
Optimize your content for LLMs and GenAI
Unify your digital ecosystem
Give buyers a single platform that connects shopping, customer service, and community-building tools. A one-stop-shop means your buyers always know where to go whenever they need to solve their problems – from paying invoices to reordering complex bills of materials to live chat with customer support.
Sana Commerce Cloud, the only real-time commerce platform built for manufacturers, goes one step further by integrating this platform with your ERP and PIM in real-time, giving your buyers complete product + pricing accuracy and unifying online commerce with offline logistics.
Make AI the backbone of product discovery
Search has changed. Querying keywords like “3/8inch diameter steel bolt” has given way to LLM-augmented, conversational searches like, “I need to replace a steel bolt on my appliance. What model do I need?”
Businesses need to connect AI-powered search with heavily detailed catalogs and product information. This way, buyers can get fast, accurate answers to conversational queries that are rapidly outpacing traditional online search.
Connect online with offline
Buyers prefer online purchasing, but they don’t avoid offline channels. Between showrooming and ROPO, buyers of all generations use a combination of channels to make informed purchases. Businesses can bridge generational gaps by unifying these channels through hybrid technologies like AR-assisted showrooms, real-time inventory tracking, and making offline invoices payable via online portals.
GEO is the new SEO
GEO – Generative Engine Optimization – is a fast-rising opportunity businesses need to take advantage of.
CMO Sharon Forder shared this analysis, “When someone is about to make a purchase, 80% of their time, they’ve done all their research somewhere else. If you’re not on ChatGPT, buyers won’t include you in terms of their purchase decision. The question is, ‘How do I ensure that the consumers of today find me and include me?’”
Just like businesses optimized their webpages to rank high on search engine results, now businesses need to optimize to rank high on LLM responses. LLMs like ChatGPT and Google AI overview provide links within their responses. Optimizing your content to show up as a link on an LLM query will be a critical way to command market share and draw in new business.
How to stay relevant? Evolve
What’s groundbreaking today is outdated tomorrow. Businesses cannot rest on their laurels or take their customers for granted. Instead, businesses must constantly examine the rising cohort of new buyers andinvest in solutions that bridge the divide between the old and the new. In today’s market, that means seamlessly integrating online and offline channels into a one-stop commerce shop, supercharged with GenAI.
Listen to the entire panel
Hear all the latest insights from CMO Sharon Forder, Alliant Power CEO Houmon Kashanipour, and other brilliant B2B speakers.
