Reading time 10 min. / Summary:
Many medium-sized businesses still view websites through the lens of sales – and that’s exactly where misunderstandings occur.
A good website doesn’t replace a person; it supports sales: it informs, qualifies, and builds trust. In e-commerce, it can completely handle sales, and in the B2B sector, it prepares them.
The crucial point is that both work together—people and systems.
Why many Medium-Sized Companies Struggle with Websites
In many medium-sized companies, the digital presence is decided not by strategists, but by sales people. And that’s where the dilemma begins: A good website can seem like a threat to classic sales people (less technical, more emotional). Because it undermines the self-image of their profession:
- Loss of role and control
A website that independently informs customers and makes offers comparable changes the playing field. The sales department loses its interpretative authority over the initial contact and thus a piece of its self-esteem. What used to be “my customer” is now often an anonymous website lead. We experience this concern (often between the lines) in many conversations, and this concern is understandable. - Knowledge sovereignty as capital
Many sales people live on stories, on exclusive knowledge, on “Let me explain to you how it really works”. An open, transparent website takes away exactly this advantage. What used to be expertise is suddenly visible to everyone on the web. We often see how difficult this change of perspective is, especially where personal knowledge has been the key to sales for decades. - Distrust of the Digital
In medium-sized businesses, sales often involve relationship management: trust, presence, a handshake. Digital communication, however, appears distant, uncontrollable, sometimes even intrusive. The website is then perceived as a marketing toy, not as a real sales instrument. We are well aware of this skepticism and usually address it not with technology, but with understanding and clear functionality.
Marketing and Sales – Two Worlds?
In many companies, both departments work side by side, rarely together. Marketing builds websites, sales sells outside. The result: friction, misunderstandings and web presences that are more self-portrayal than tool. In our projects, experience has shown that things always went better when both sides talked to each other early on – and not about each other.
This is Exactly where the Potential Lies
The future is teamwork. When marketing and sales speak the same language, the website becomes the most powerful tool in the company. It provides data, insights, and warm leads. Sales remains the face and voice of the brand – but with a digital advantage.
Where Personal Relationships Count – and where Digital Processes Take Over
In classic B2B business, especially between industrial companies, suppliers and partners, sales remains central. Orders here arise through trust, experience and grown relationships. A website cannot replace this process, but it can massively support it – through clear information structures, rapid data availability, offer logic, and digital tools for preparing conversations.
It’s different in standardized business – for example, in e-commerce. Here, sales happen directly on the website, and customer support and personal assistance are deliberately reduced.
This has advantages: faster processes, clear structures, better scalability. But also risks: Where advice and personal connection are lacking, competition becomes tougher, comparability increases, and loyalty decreases. That’s also why even the best webshop needs a face – a brand, attitude, and communication that build trust.
Digital Efficiency and Human Sales
In e-commerce, products are sold; in sales, customers are convinced. Marketing, campaigns, and automations take over where personal interaction is not necessary. However, wherever trust, coordination, or individual solutions are required, true sales begin: personal, advisory, binding.
Marketing here is impersonal, sales remain human.
Whenever trust, coordination, or individual solutions are needed, true sales begin – and that is precisely where their lasting value lies.
Why many Still Underestimate the Change
Most salespeople would never explicitly name this conflict – and that’s precisely why it often remains invisible. In practice, we experience it as a spontaneous objection: “We don’t need any of this, our competitors don’t have it either, not that many people order online anyway – I prefer to call them directly.”
This attitude is understandable. It comes from a time when personal contacts, fixed customer lists, and telephone sales supported the market. But while many still think that way, customer behavior has long been changing—quietly, but radically.
Even in the B2B sector, buyers today inform themselves online, compare offers, check delivery times and reviews before they even pick up the phone. Anyone who only becomes visible when called is often already too late.
Therefore, today it’s no longer about the question “Do we need this?”, but about the question “How do we use it correctly?” A good website is not a substitute for experience, but a multiplier. It ensures that sales do not work against change, but rather leverage it.
Our approach: We develop websites that do not disempower sales, but relieve it of work.
More prepared conversations, less cold calling. This is exactly what we observe again and again in our projects when openness, trust and good cooperation come together.
Anyone who understands this dynamic recognizes: It’s not about who sells, but how early the sales process begins. And today it usually starts online.
