Millennials Are Shaking Up B2B Buying, Are You Prepared?

If your customers still have to email you for orders, pricing or call for invoices and order updates, you’re making it harder than it needs to be to buy from you. And in 2026, that friction costs accounts and sales.

With Millennials now making up the majority of B2B buyers, expectations have shifted fast. The question is no longer “Should we offer self-serve?”, it’s “How quickly can we meet the new standard?”

Below is our B2B Self-Serve Standard, the practical baseline these modern buyers now expect.

Customers expect specific pricing, instantly

• B2B buyers expect to log in and see their contract pricing, tiered pricing, special deals without asking anyone to “confirm the price”.

If pricing requires a back-and-forth, you don’t just slow the order down, you increase the chance the buyer moves on.

Stock visibility and clear fulfilment expectations

• Is it in stock?
• Can I collect in store?
• If not, what’s the ETA?
• Is there an alternative product in stock?

Modern B2B buyers want confidence, even if stock isn’t perfectly real-time, clarity beats silence. Uncertainty is what triggers calls, emails, and abandoned orders.

Reorder in under 60 seconds

• Order history + “buy again”
• Order from saved carts / favourites / templates
• Quick-add by SKU or barcode

Most B2B revenue is repeat business, buyers shouldn’t have to rebuild carts from scratch. If reordering isn’t fast, customers revert to emailing or looking at your competitors.

Invoices and statements on demand

• Invoices, statements and balances available after login
• Order confirmations and history accessible any time
• Price lists

If a customer has to contact accounts for invoices, statements, balances or price lists, your portal isn’t self-serve, it’s a brochure and will frustrate modern buyers.

Roles, permissions, and buying rules that match reality

• Role limits and controls (buyer vs approver)
• Ordering on behalf of reps, branches, sites, or teams

B2B buying is rarely one person, one cart, the key is making this complex process easy, too much friction kills adoption.

Quotes without email ping-pong

• Quote requests, direct from cart
• Quote to order conversion without re-keying
• Visible quote status and history

Quotes are still important in B2B but shouldn’t live in inboxes. They should be online and reduce delays, errors, and confusion.

What modern self-serve really does (beyond convenience)

• Fewer emails and calls for “routine” requests
• Faster ordering and fewer errors
• Higher customer stickiness (because switching becomes painful)
• Sales and service teams freed up for high-value work

Self-serve doesn’t remove relationships, it protects them. Your team spends less time doing admin, and more time helping customers win.

If you’d like to see how your current experience stacks up, start with our comprehesive B2B feature checklist.

Download B2B Feature Checklist Now