B2B buyers want B2C experiences but your comp plan still rewards cold calls
While your marketing team obsesses over "customer experience," you're still getting paid to interrupt people on LinkedIn.
Every B2B conference in ANZ right now has the same panel: "Creating consumer-grade experiences for enterprise buyers." Meanwhile, your sales comp is still structured like it's 2015.
The data is clear. B2B buyers in Australia and New Zealand expect the same friction-free experience they get ordering from Amazon. They want self-service pricing. They want to trial products without talking to sales. They want to make decisions on their timeline, not yours.
Here's the problem: Your quota hasn't changed to reflect this reality.
You're still measured on meetings booked, demos delivered, and calls made. Your CRO still thinks "high-touch enterprise sales" means calling the same prospect seven times. Your comp plan still rewards activity over actual buyer intent.
The companies winning in ANZ right now are the ones letting buyers self-educate, self-serve, and only talk to sales when they decide they're ready. That's not the death of sales. It's the evolution of it.
But your comp plan doesn't care about product-led growth. It doesn't care that the buyer spent three weeks reading case studies and trialing your product before they ever filled out a form. It cares about you hitting activity metrics that increasingly have nothing to do with how deals actually close.
What this means for your career:
If you're an SDR grinding through 80 dials a day, look hard at whether those activities align with how your buyers actually want to engage. If they don't, you're not building transferable skills.
If you're an AE, start tracking how many of your deals came from inbound, product-led, or self-serve channels versus traditional outbound. That ratio is going to matter when you interview for your next role.
And if you're interviewing anywhere, ask this: "How does your comp plan reward sales when the buyer does most of the journey without us?"
The best companies have already figured this out. The rest are still paying you to make calls that go straight to voicemail.
The reality: B2B is becoming B2C. Your skills need to match. Your comp plan probably doesn't.