All that glitters is not gold: exploring social selling through the eyes of B2B customers Open Access

Digitalization represents one of the most significant and discussed trends profoundly affecting the salesperson’s role (Corsaro and Maggioni, 2022; Wengler et al., 2021). Specifically, social media has been considered a game changer in B2B selling, thus influencing the buyer–seller relationship in various stages of the sales process (Cheng et al., 2023; Diba et al., 2019; Gustafson et al., 2021). Social media comprises an array of internet-based applications such as professional and personal social networks (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) (Bill et al., 2020; Franck and Damperat, 2023) as well as instant messaging (IM) apps (e.g. WhatsApp, WeChat, etc.) (Guenzi and Nijssen, 2020).

On top of B2B buyers’ sustained reliance on digital channels (such as supplier websites, third-party websites and social media), Gartner’s (2022) research identified a steady shift of customer preferences from in-person sales interactions toward these channels.

Thus, social media has increasingly drawn the interest of sales and marketing scholars who have begun studying their role and effectiveness in selling (Cartwright et al., 2021; Guenzi and Nijssen, 2020). Prior research has extensively tackled the salesperson’s perspective by shedding light on the drivers of salespeople’s social media use (Bill et al., 2020; Kumar and Srivastava, 2022), activities (i.e. social selling) (Ancillai et al., 2019; Terho et al., 2022) and sales-related outcomes (Agnihotri et al., 2017; Franck and Damperat, 2023; Itani et al., 2017). These contributions have greatly enhanced our knowledge of how social media is affecting the sales force.

Surprisingly, despite the important role the literature recognizes in customers’ perceptions of salespeople and their strategies (Paesbrugghe et al., 2020; Williams and Plouffe, 2007), only a few attempts have been made to include the B2B customers’ perspective in studying social media use in sales (see Agnihotri et al., 2017; Bill et al., 2020; Itani et al., 2020).

Notably, scholars are questioning if the potential social media can bring to selling is really all gold (Agnihotri, 2020; Bowen et al., 2021) or if this lack of attention on the “customer side” may be detrimental to the effectiveness of personal selling (Bill et al., 2020).

This study aims to fill this research gap by shedding light on the customers’ perspective on social selling. Given the scant empirical evidence, we adopted a qualitative approach and interviewed 26 key informants performing their jobs in customer roles in various industries. We studied the customers’ use of social media and the role of such platforms in buyer–seller relationships and inductively identified five themes that were linked to the extant literature on social media use in B2B sales.

Hence, study findings contribute to the lively debate on social media’s importance for sales by offering a rich and more detailed picture of social selling activities and outcomes that consider the customer’s perspective.

Academics and practitioners alike have shown a consistent interest in investigating how social media is transforming B2B sales processes and salespeople tasks (i.e. social selling) (Corsaro and Maggioni, 2022; Rangarajan et al., 2021). Specifically, social selling is defined as a selling approach that leverages social and digital channels to identify and enhance the understanding of customers and relevant actors, to build and maintain a network of personal and professional contacts for nurturing the relationship through continued dialogue and to engage customers by systematically sharing valuable content that fits their interests and problems, beyond sales-focused communications (Agnihotri et al., 2012; Ancillai et al., 2019; Lacoste, 2016).

Extant research is focused on the salesperson, who is considered the “ground zero” of social media activities (Moncrief, 2017). While some studies have addressed the organizational and individual drivers of salespeople’s social media usage (e.g. Guesalaga, 2016; Hansen and Levin, 2016; Schmitt et al., 2021), others have investigated its effectiveness in selling. In this regard, the use of social media in B2B sales has been found to help salespeople’s behaviors (e.g. information communication, adaptive selling, prospecting) (Agnihotri et al., 2016; Bowen et al., 2021; Itani et al., 2020), organizational brand performance (Rapp et al., 2013) and individual sales performance (Guenzi and Nijssen, 2020; Kalra et al., 2023; Ogilvie et al., 2018). Thought leadership is also considered a central performance outcome of social selling that can ultimately influence their performance (Itani et al., 2023; Terho et al., 2022).

Interestingly, whilst the literature emphasizes that business customers increasingly use social media and that social selling practices might positively influence customer-related outcomes such as customer acquisition performance (Schendzielarz et al., 2022; Terho et al., 2022), customer relationship performance (Ogilvie et al., 2018; Rodriguez et al., 2012; Trainor et al., 2014), customer trust and customer satisfaction (Agnihotri et al., 2016; Ancillai et al., 2019), these contributions relied on salespeople’s assessment of performance outcomes. Only a few articles include key informants in customer firms to evaluate the effectiveness of social selling in B2B. Preliminary findings on the customer side show that salespeople’s use of social media positively influences customer-reported post-sales service behaviors, such as inducements, empathy and sportsmanship (Agnihotri et al., 2017) and customer loyalty (Zhang and Li, 2019). Yet, the effect on customer loyalty is likely to occur if the buying center is small and the customer is of high importance for the supplier (Bill et al., 2020).

Therefore, a thorough understanding of the customer’s perspective regarding social selling is still missing (Agnihotri, 2020; Ancillai et al., 2019; Bill et al., 2020). This is surprising as the sales literature emphasizes the important role of customers’ perceptions of salespeople and sales strategies (Paesbrugghe et al., 2020), and the ever-evolving nature of modern buyers’ makes their understanding a leading research priority (Lilien, 2016; Mohan et al., 2022).

Early evidence shows that the use of social media was not very common among B2B customers due to a low perception of its usability, mainly driven by their private social media use (Diba et al., 2019), colleagues’ support and age (Keinänen and Kuivalainen, 2015). Yet, contributions keep claiming an enduring shift in customers’ buying behaviors from in-person interactions toward an increasing reliance on digital tools (Marvasti et al., 2021; Rangarajan et al., 2021) and referring to a “social buyer” (Grewal et al., 2015). Specifically, Diba et al. (2019) suggest that social media’s building blocks have the potential to influence the buying process from needs identification up to supplier selection. Customers conduct more online research about their suppliers and their offerings, which includes website visits, social media interactions and attendance at webinars hosted by competing suppliers (Rangarajan et al., 2021). Social media-related information may lead to shorter transaction times, risk reduction in the buying process, management of information overload and increased confidence in decision-making (Gustafson et al., 2021), thus making the buyer less dependent on salespeople in prepurchase activities (Marvasti et al., 2021). However, preference for digital content seems to be greater for buyers of noncritical products or services, while the more strategic the purchase, the more buyers value personal selling and want to assess trustworthiness from the sales side (Grewal et al., 2015; Paesbrugghe et al., 2022).

Moreover, the use of social media is not limited to information research, suppliers’ comparison, assessment and selection, but it is deemed to reinforce existing supplier-to-customer relationships. B2B buyers’ trust is influenced by suppliers’ communications on social media, and this effect fully mediates the relationship with customer loyalty (Rose et al., 2021). B2B supplier’s posts on social media also trigger customers’ engagement behaviors such as liking, commenting, sharing and so forth (Cortez and Dastidar, 2022). Yet, tensions may exist: while suppliers praise the benefits of social media in increasing customer engagement and transparency, B2B customers show a passive attitude toward social media and an overall intention to remain “invisible” (Luo et al., 2021).

Despite these few studies providing some insights about the use of social media by B2B customers, there are no attempts in the literature to explore its implications in social selling.

To the best of our knowledge, only a few articles dealing with social media use in selling have considered B2B customers as the unit of analysis. Therefore, in line with B2B marketing research (Lindgreen et al., 2021), we applied a qualitative approach based on in-depth interviews to understand the B2B customers’ perspective regarding social selling practices and outcomes.

We selected key informants with relevant knowledge and expertise (Fready et al., 2022) and relied on a purposeful sampling procedure (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007) by asking the researchers’ personal network of salespeople to identify individual customer employees holding key decision-making roles and responsibilities in purchasing activities (Rose et al., 2021). We used a further snowballing technique to reach an adequate number of participants (Johnson, 2015). This approach is in line with qualitative research examining the customers’ perspective to draw implications for personal selling and sales management (Guenzi et al., 2016; Paesbrugghe et al., 2017).

The sample of knowledgeable company members was carefully elaborated to obtain as much variety as possible in terms of job role, industry and company size (see Table 1). Moreover, we also aimed at selecting participants who possess significant experience in their job and oversee both direct and indirect purchasing (Paesbrugghe et al., 2017).

We contacted key informants, explained the aim of the research and offered managerial summaries of the study findings to encourage participation. We guaranteed anonymity to all participants; hence, no individual responses can be identified from the findings. The sampling process ceased at saturation, as indicated by information redundancy (Saunders et al., 2018). Hence, we conducted 26 in-depth interviews with key informants in B2B customer firms between March 2022 and December 2022.

A semi-structured approach was deemed appropriate for deepening concepts as it allows participants to provide rich answers, both retrospectively and in real-time (Gioia et al., 2013). Interviews lasted 45 min on average and were conducted in Italian, audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. The interview track was based on open-ended questions within a standardized protocol. A common set of questions, carefully designed to be unobtrusive and nondirective (McCracken, 1988), were used; yet, the interviewees could elaborate and expand on their answers, which allowed us to ask additional probing questions when needed (Gioia et al., 2013).

Interviews began by giving informants an overview of the study and its purpose. Once informed consent was obtained, participants were first probed into their company background and their role, then specifically into how they use social media for work-related activities. Next, informants were asked to reflect on their use of social media in the seller–customer relationship (e.g. how social media affects such relationships, if they use social media to search for information on suppliers and sellers, etc.). Interviews ended with questions about their perceptions, preferences and behaviors regarding contacts through social media and digital content and salespeople’s use of social media.

During the interview, we constantly asked participants to refer to concrete situations and provide real-life examples to illustrate and describe how social media influences their work and the buyer–seller relationship.

Furthermore, we gathered empirical data from social media to triangulate the qualitative findings regarding customer’s social media activity and engagement behaviors.

Interview transcripts were entered into NVivo software for manual coding. Data analysis was conducted through inductive coding, which is recommended when the overall research context has not been studied sufficiently (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007). We followed Gioia et al.’s (2013) approach from the empirical to the conceptual, which aims at the identification of emergent themes that match the literature to facilitate theory building.

Accordingly, data were coded via open coding to identify first-order categories that adhere to the saying and doing of interviewees for maintaining the integrity of informant-centric concepts. Then, first-order codes were analyzed, looking for similarities and differences, and merged into second-order categories through axial coding. Finally, the second-order categories were gathered into higher-order aggregate dimensions (Gioia et al., 2013). Through several rounds of iterative coding of the interview transcripts and constant comparison within the coding team, five main themes were identified ( Appendix 1 provides an example for the first aggregate theme). In this regard, inter-coder differences were addressed via multiple discussions in the coauthorship team. Finally, the five themes identified were discussed in view of existing knowledge on social selling to draw research implications and provide a more complete picture of its activities and expected outcomes.

The following section presents the themes ( Appendix 2 provides illustrative quotes).

This theme looks at how B2B customers perceive and deal with cold message strategies delivered by salespeople on social media accounts. Buyers are constantly reached on social media (mainly LinkedIn) by a significant number of messages and requests from sellers’ profiles that are difficult to handle during office hours. This approach has been often referred to as “spam” and “bombarding”. Many buyers also stressed that the number of requests from unknown sellers often prevents them from actually seizing interesting opportunities (I17).

Overall, the interviewees complain about the lack of personalization in first-contact messages from salespeople whose products and services are sometimes not even linked to their business. The perception they have about sellers’ social media use is that they are “doing it randomly or maybe they look for the name of the company and maybe they find me” (I11).

Finally, the analysis of this theme sheds light on customers’ attitude toward social media messages. They generally feel annoyed, and sometimes this approach prevents customers from following up on sellers’ contacts, even when the offered product or solution could fit their needs (I26). On the contrary, when the message and the seller who made the first contact via social media appear to be interesting and nonintrusive, most of the buyers shift the conversation toward more institutional channels, such as email or eventually phone calls, to explore further the possibility of getting a new supplier.

Analysis reveals that B2B customers display a basic activity on social media. Some interviewees consider social media not helpful for their work and feel to waste time on such platforms, while others point out their utility as tools to search for new job positions. Sometimes, the limited social media usage for work-related purposes mirrors a seldom use for private purposes due to lack of time and low consideration of these platforms (I13).

Interviewees are used to reveal basic information about their professional profile, such as the job role, the organization they work for, as well as previous job positions and educational background. Moreover, posting first-hand content on social media is uncommon among B2B customers. They usually re-share content published by their organization’s social media accounts to give visibility to the company content.

B2B customers use social media mainly to stay up-to-date with industry-related events and latest news. Social media is often compared to industry newspapers and magazines, and interviewees are more interested in following industry leaders’ official social media accounts than suppliers’ pages. Therefore, social media represents an information source and a personal training channel.

Study findings show that social media content can inspire thoughts and considerations, but it hardly fosters conversations on work-related topics. Accordingly, the levels of interaction within such platforms are also quite low and at the most limited to likes, while comments and shares are much less frequent. Commenting or sharing is most often used with friends or colleagues rather than suppliers or their salespeople.

Discussion groups within social media are neither interesting nor helpful for B2B customers job-related activities. If they joined these groups, they emphasize that the conversation within these “places” is very disorganized and chaotic, and, at the most, they state to follow the updates passively without interacting or commenting. Moreover, B2B customers struggle to assess the average reliability of unknown group members and the resulting level of authenticity of such conversations, with a subsequent unwillingness to show their opinions and interests.

A second dimension of this theme concerns a fear of information disclosure on social media. This is mainly related to two factors. On the one hand, participants highlight the need to maintain a certain degree of privacy in their work. A risk exists in making the company’s potential or existing supply relationships public and visible to all, especially when it comes to product purchases, and, in general, the interviewees recommend being neutral toward suppliers. On the other hand, data analysis shows a general lack of organizational policies or guidelines about the use of social media for work-related purposes, which prevents the active use of such tools due to high uncertainty on how to behave.

Data analysis indicates that B2B customers are aware of salespeople’s interest in social media to reach out to new leads, gain visibility and showcase their activity. However, participants emphasize little or no interest in the salesperson’s social media profile and activity. For instance, when receiving contact requests on social media, B2B customers do not check the sellers’ professional profiles. They are more interested in the selling firm’s social media page and are influenced by the corporate brand reputation. Some interviewees even state that they do not follow salespeople on social media, while others point out not to trust social media profiles as they can be built ad hoc to show certain skills and provide a certain professional image. Rather, they believe other channels, such as Teams, are more valuable for learning more about the sellers and the companies they represent.

Consequently, they also emphasize not being interested in the person or profile sharing the content they find in the newsfeed. Moreover, they also note that salespeople tend to re-share the suppliers’ company page content regarding new product launches, certifications, acquisitions or investments in general.

Interviewees use social media for scouting and evaluating supplier firms. They emphasize a significant advantage in terms of reducing the time to search for information, comparing suppliers’ and products’ alternatives, as well as understanding the business of potential suppliers, how they deal with specific issues (e.g. sustainability) and what types of references they may have. In this regard, some participants also stated they directly reach out to potential suppliers through the official social media page or by looking for key company roles that better fit the buyer’s needs. However, buyers still prefer existing and long-lasting relationships rather than social media when selecting suppliers. Even when suppliers are not able to carry out a new project, B2B customers ask current suppliers for names of other companies with which to start a collaboration. Participants underline how turning to existing suppliers – alongside with colleagues, competitors and partners – and industry-specific trade fairs is faster and more trustworthy than searching for potential suppliers online.

Hence, instead of acknowledging the value of social media to network with suppliers and salespeople, interviewees suggest rethinking their role in an even more professional way since they can often be the venue for trivial conversations with no value. Interestingly, buyers foresee a future social media scenario where such platforms become more sort of “inventories” of suppliers by integrating functionalities that allow gathering company-related information, making comparisons among suppliers’ alternatives and even accessing reviews and ratings of the suppliers’ customers. Therefore, they hope for platforms that move away from the logic of marketing and sales to become closer to the needs of people in charge of purchasing products or services. This would improve the quality of conversations around topics and issues that are focused on purchasing.

Data analysis shows that customers are generally not very interested in and reluctant to interact with social media content unless it is truly relevant to their job. Such interactions range from simple likes, sharing and downloading content to requests for additional information via private contact and word of mouth with other colleagues, while comments in public social networks are still seen as risky exposure, especially for products versus service providers (I26). By and large, the discussion is limited to one-to-one interactions, for instance, via IM apps, emails or face-to-face contacts.

Regarding content types and formats drawing B2B customers’ attention on social media, interviewees highlight avoiding “salesy” content while being more responsive to content focused on general industry-relevant topics and customers’ specific needs (I25). Participants prefer content that is not simply focused on selling products and services but possibly links the company’s offer to broader themes that may be interesting for buyers. This content can also contribute to fine-tuning the idea of reliability and knowledge of a salesperson developed outside of social media. Case histories describing partnerships and projects with other customer companies are particularly attractive, especially when they regard collaborations with renowned industry firms or competitors.

This underlines the importance of customer referrals in B2B contexts. Yet, some criticalities exist. First, case histories tend to emphasize only the positive aspects and it can be difficult to match them to what the customer company or the single buyer experiences daily (I20). Second, case histories share collaboration details which may worry buyers regarding the management of confidentiality.

B2B customers also appreciate content describing the company’s production process and products which help customers in solving their pain points, as well as major investments, organizational competencies and awards. Interestingly, some participants emphasize how such content is especially valuable in one-to-one interaction through social media such as WhatsApp or WeChat, because it can be specifically tailored to the customer’s needs (I5).

As far as post formats are concerned, participants prefer content such as texts or images (e.g. charts, infographics, business data, etc.). Attitude toward videos changes according to different social media channels and the customer journey’s phase. Videos are perceived as highly explanatory when sellers use them in one-to-one interactions during the post-sales phase (I5). However, when it comes to gathering relevant information about the purchase, videos are more demanding to enjoy because the audio makes them less usable during working hours.

Despite the importance of relevant social media content in cultivating relationships, especially in one-to-one touchpoints, customers appear to craft their opinions about the salesperson mostly outside of social media. In this regard, participants highlighted several salespeople’s personal traits, such as clarity and transparency in communication, reliability in keeping the promises made, empathy, responsiveness and proactive behavior.

Besides personal traits, participants highlighted the importance of salespeople’s specific skills and abilities, such as showing a professional approach in negotiation, technical knowledge of the product or service offered and the ability to provide critical information to listen to customer needs and support them in solving problems.

Although public social media still seems to play a limited role in B2B customers’ job, digital channels are increasingly affecting everyday purchasing-related activities. Notably, data analysis shows significant use of IM apps and video conferencing tools (es. Microsoft Teams and Skype).

These tools allow to convey immediate information, speed up urgent communications by leveraging the back and forth of conversations and even share documents (e.g. commercial documents, product certifications or documents relating to goods shipments), with the advantage, compared to other social media, of keeping the conversation private (I17) and building human relationships (I12).

Hence, e-mails are still, by far, the most preferred channel to be used in the buyer–seller relationship (I7). Also, despite the benefits of managing existing business relationships, IM apps increase the number of channels they need to check, even risking losing important information. Furthermore, official communications may affect other colleagues in the company or future employees with no access to IM apps. Therefore, if emails are a less suitable channel for back-and-forth communications, they are better for storing information, data and official attachments.

The five inductively identified themes focused on the customers’ view allow us to draw valuable implications for social selling research. Henceforth, the themes’ content is discussed and linked to the social selling activities (i.e. understanding, connecting with and engaging) and expected outcomes (e.g. thought leadership customer trust, customer satisfaction, etc.) (see Table 2).

The first social selling facet relates to the deep understanding of prospects, existing customers and influencers through social and digital channels (Ancillai et al., 2019; Lacoste, 2016; Rodriguez et al., 2012). Specifically, it means to effectively identify potential customer companies and key decision makers by abandoning less effective hard-selling techniques in favor of carefully targeted initiatives (Andzulis et al., 2012). However, study findings show that B2B customers complain about receiving a huge number of cold and non-personalized social media messages. This reveals an oversimplistic use of these channels by sellers which seems to still lean toward a one-size-fits-all approach without seizing the benefits of social selling yet. In line with the literature on salespeople perspective (Lacoste, 2016), to effectively address B2B customers through social media sellers should select the right customer and invest effort in message personalization.

Moreover, the social selling understanding facet refers to acquiring deep insights into customers’ requirements and pain points in a nonintrusive way (Ancillai et al., 2019). Nonetheless, study findings on customer perspective seems to scale down the importance of this part of the social selling construct. Especially, B2B customers’ attitude toward using social media by lurking behind the curtains lower the potential of such platforms for effectively knowing customers’ needs and problems, thus making it difficult for salespeople to get a thorough understanding of the customers’ activities based on social media.

The second social selling dimension regards connecting with prospects, customers and influencers through networking and consistent dialogue (Ancillai et al., 2019; Lacoste, 2016). The thematic analysis highlights buyers’ unwillingness to follow salespeople on social media either for privacy reasons or for an overall lack of interest in their social media profile and activity. Hence, salespeople, when using social media to build a network of valuable contacts among potential and existing customers, should carefully monitor the effectiveness of their efforts. Interestingly, B2B customers’ reluctance to comment, chat, ask questions and participate in open dialogue in social media groups may prevent salespeople from being able to exploit public social networks to develop valuable conversations (Lacoste, 2016). Rather, B2B customers acknowledge that private social media and other digital channels (e.g. video conferencing tools) are more trustworthy in their daily work. Thus, salespeople can leverage such channels to nurture a constructive dialogue with customers and build human bonds and trust, even beyond the professional relationship.

The third social selling facet relates to engaging customers and other relevant actors through valuable content, thus influencing their disposition to invest resources in their interactions with the seller (Ancillai et al., 2019; Brodie et al., 2019). Yet, salespeople’s efforts in crafting valuable content can be undermined by customers’ limited attention to their social media activity. In this regard, we add to the current sales literature the customers’ view on which content is indeed perceived as compelling and relevant (cf. Järvinen and Taiminen, 2016). Specifically, when sharing content on public social networks, sales professionals should focus on timely industry-relevant topics, as well as on companies’ major investments, organizational competencies and awards. Differently, as B2B customers feel more confident in private social media, salespeople can effectively leverage such channels to share content that effectively addresses the specific buyer’s needs and pain points.

Moreover, we also shed light on B2B customers’ behavioral engagement toward salespeople’s content. Notably, salespeople should be aware that buyers’ behaviors on public social networks may display a lower level of engagement, through liking and sharing (Malthouse et al., 2013), while commenting is perceived as an overexposure. Instead, they can expect higher levels of engagement on private platforms.

The literature pinpoints that social media is effectively useful for lead generation, thereby positively affecting customer acquisition performance (Schendzielarz et al., 2022; Terho et al., 2022). Our study corroborates, through data from the customer’s side, the perception of salespeople on the effectiveness of social media in lead generation activities and provides a more nuanced understanding of such a relationship. First, a non-personalized approach prevents customers from developing the buyer–seller relationship even if the product or solution may be of interest to the company, and effective customer acquisition requires shifting the conversation to more institutional channels such as emails and calls. Second, B2B customers use social media for supplier scouting and assessment to accelerate the information search process, thus spontaneously reaching out to potential suppliers and their sales professionals. Hence, social selling may positively affect inbound lead generation. More importantly, since B2B customers largely leverage their existing relationships with existing suppliers, colleagues, partners and competitors in supplying decisions, the effect on customer acquisition performance should take the interplay between these channels into consideration. Moreover, researchers have also suggested that social selling may enhance customer trust (Rose et al., 2021; Zhang and Li, 2019) and customer relationship performance by successfully satisfying and retaining loyal customers (Ogilvie et al., 2018; Trainor et al., 2014). Yet, our study shows that B2B customers craft their opinion about the salesperson by cultivating the relationship over time, mostly outside social media, where they can thoroughly assess salespeople’s personal traits (e.g. clarity, reliability, empathy, etc.) and skills and abilities (e.g. professional approach, knowledge of critical information, technical competence, etc.). In addition, the customers’ view highlights that buyers consider public social networks not essential to building relationships with sellers, but rather that such platforms would be more useful as inventories of suppliers to compare alternatives. Thus, it seems unlikely that social selling alone affects customer trust and overall customer relationship performance. In addition, we show that differences may exist among platforms as private social media helps in strengthening human bonds and trust. Hence, the immediacy of social networks can be worthwhile to establish a first contact and emergent connections, but the ongoing relationship is then moved beyond such channels to private communication both online and offline (cf. Quinton and Wilson, 2016).

Extant results emphasize thought leadership and reputation as central performance outcomes (Itani et al., 2023; Terho et al., 2022). Although salespeople are important touchpoints in B2B supplier–customer relationships, buyers show little interest in their social media profiles and activities that do not influence the customer’s assessment regarding their expertise and trustworthiness. Importantly, the more buyers perceive their purchasing activity as strategic, the more they rely on their professional expertise and personal relationships to assess salespeople and companies, rather than digital content (Paesbrugghe et al., 2022).

Finally, salespeople find social media to positively affect the organizational brand performance (Ancillai et al., 2019). However, we find that B2B customers are more interested in the selling firms’ social media page and information and less interested in the salespeople’s activity. Thus, the supplier’s social media presence is more likely to have a positive influence on organizational brand performance than the salespeople’s social media use.

This study makes contributions to and extends current knowledge on the social selling research.

Importantly, rather than focusing on the salesperson’s or sales organization’s standpoint, we offer a complementary view of the B2B customers, which is largely missing in the extant literature. Specifically, we investigate B2B customers’ use of social media and the role of these platforms in the buyer–seller relationship. To draw valuable implications for research, we discuss and link study findings to the social selling activities (i.e. understanding, connecting with and engaging) and expected outcomes (e.g. thought leadership, customer trust, customer satisfaction, etc.).

This allows for richer and more nuanced insights into social selling. By doing so, we respond to recent calls for additional research on the customer side of social selling (Ancillai et al., 2019; Agnihotri, 2020), which may offer “a more realistic discussion of social media’s importance for sales” (Bill et al., 2020, p. 747). More research on the purchasing side is certainly beneficial, as the lack of research and understanding of the needs of the purchasing function can undermine the efficiency and effectiveness of sales teams (Paesbrugghe et al., 2017).

Existing studies largely use constructs that appear rather broad and focus on general salesperson’s use and integration of social media technology to perform the sales job (e.g. Agnihotri et al., 2016; Ogilvie et al., 2018). Yet, complementing the social selling phenomenon with the customer’s perspective shows that different activities and tools may not have the same value. Some social selling activities, such as prospecting, may have a greater impact, whereas others, such as understanding customers’ needs and pain points, appear less feasible. Likewise, differences may exist between platforms as social networks (e.g. LinkedIn) appear more useful for prospecting, while IM apps seem more valuable to develop consistent dialogue and engage customers. Future studies should take such differences into account. Furthermore, we provide additional empirical evidence on how B2B customers use social media. More specifically, B2B customers having little regard for social media display a lower use for both private and work-related purposes (Diba et al., 2019; Keinänen and Kuivalainen, 2015). In addition, while the extant literature suggests that social media have the potential to influence the entire buying process (Diba et al., 2019), their role seems to be limited to the early phases of information search on potential suppliers and alternative evaluation (Marvasti et al., 2021; Paesbrugghe et al., 2022). Buyers even advocate a more business-oriented evolution of social media into search engines for supplier companies. This finding supports the notion of social media being characterized by a transactional, rather than relational, approach, usually based on a specific, focused need of members (Quinton and Wilson, 2016). Instead, they seem less helpful in the identification of needs, establishment of specifications and actual selection of suppliers. The network of relationships with existing suppliers, company colleagues and even competitors is still fundamental to the purchasing process.

Importantly, we answer previous calls to conduct more research in the engagement-social media domain (Cortez and Dastidar, 2022). Consistent with recent studies (Luo et al., 2021), buyers display monitoring behaviors instead of active engagement, particularly on public social networks, due to privacy reasons and a lack of organizational guidelines.

The study bears insights for salespeople, B2B customers as well as social media platform providers.

First, salespeople should not thoughtlessly embrace the social media trend by using these platforms to randomly reach out to potential customers with cold messages. Not only does this approach not entail any positive results for building business relationships, but it may even spoil the social media space and discourage buyers. Instead, they should stick to best practices, which require them to strive for carefully identifying the right key decision makers in customer firms and personalizing the contact message. Accordingly, sales managers should acknowledge the need to provide salespeople with adequate training and organizational-level strategy for knowing when and how to use social media for job-related tasks. Leaving the use of social media to the mere individual initiative may not lead to the desired results or even damage the organizational brand. Importantly, salespeople should bear in mind that it might be difficult to assess buyers’ needs and pain points from his/her social media activity as they tend to passively monitor these platforms. An in-depth study of the ideal customer profile and design of buyer personas can be of help in understanding how to properly reach out to potential customers.

The study also offers valuable insights on how organizations and salespeople should evaluate the effectiveness of social selling. First, if used properly, these platforms appear valuable for first contact and lead generation purposes. Specifically, customers are open to personalized contact messages but may tend to display low levels of engagement. Thus, performance metrics may include the social media-driven number of new leads, number of video calls and number of face-to-face meetings. while engagement metrics should be focused on the number of likes, shares and buyers’ spontaneous requests for further information. Second, salespeople should be careful in being over-optimistic regarding personal branding and thought leadership implications since buyers appear to bear little interest in salespeople’s social media profiles and activity. Likewise, although customers may appreciate the content shared by salespeople if it is relevant, salespeople’s traits and skills as well as the supplier company’s brand are the keys to building valuable business relationships. Moreover, we offer concrete guidance to salespeople regarding content topics and formats, which can provide additional value to customers.

Furthermore, we show that context matters. Social selling might be more effective in service vs. product industries. Buyers in charge of purchasing products seem to be more sensitive toward confidentiality and privacy issues, which makes them more skeptical about using social media in supplier–customer relationships.

Customer organizations should acknowledge that buyers would benefit from a social media policy on how to use social media. While they appreciate freedom in deciding whether or not to use social media, those who are willing to do so would benefit from proper, commonly agreed-upon guidelines on how to behave to exploit its fullest potential.

Lastly, the study offers valuable implications for providers of social media platforms. B2B customers advocate an evolution of the existing social media – or even the rise of new ones – to integrate more functions that transform them into business-oriented networks to find real lists of supplier companies alongside all the relevant information. In this scenario, customers will be eager to interact more within the platform, leaving ratings and comments and ultimately increasing engagement levels.

As with any other research, this study is subject to some limitations that open avenues for future research. We purposefully interviewed key informants in B2B customer firms by carefully selecting people with different job roles and from different industries. However, for generalization purposes, it could be appropriate to randomly select respondents and conduct more interviews outside the Italian context. Furthermore, it would be interesting to conduct additional studies by using a dyadic approach for data collection. In this regard, both activities and outcomes that emerge from salespeople can be confirmed by the counterpart (i.e. buyer).

Moreover, scholars can expand upon our research findings. For instance, we show that B2B customers appreciate certain content typologies (e.g. industry-related news, case histories, etc.) and formats (e.g. images, text, etc.). Future studies may quantitatively assess such preferences on larger samples of customers. We also suggest conducting additional research on the effectiveness of suppliers’ and salespeople’s communication via social media on B2B customer engagement, customer trust and loyalty. Although extant literature relying on salespeople’s self-reported performance outcomes indicates that social selling may increase salespeople’s thought leadership and enhance customer satisfaction and trust, our findings from the customers’ perspective show a more nuanced picture.

Moreover, our insights suggest that some boundary conditions may influence social selling activities and outcomes. Future research may explore the role of industry (i.e. product vs. service) or differences across countries.