Social Selling in the B2B Service Industry. Opportunities and Risks

Seminar paper from the year 2021 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1,3, University of Applied Sciences Munster (Wirtschaft), course: Business-to-Business Marketing & Service Marketing, language: English, abstract: This paper deals with the question, what impact millenials' generational characteristics do have on the effectiveness of a Social Selling approach of a service company selling to B2B prospects. Research shows a convergence of business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) purchasing behaviour. Likewise, managers and employees search for information, check reviews and testimonials of sellers and their products online. To react to these changes, the sales process (SP) must be digitalised to serve the needs of today's buyers. This transformation is particularly driven by millennials, since this generation forms the major part of today's workforce . To get attention from millennials, service providers must rethink the traditional SP and use Social Media to respond to changing customer demand and behaviour.