As business-to-business customers increasingly use online channels, sellers must reconsider strategic investments in at least two areas: the salesperson channel, which faces the threat of substitution, and customer-specific discounts, which may be more precisely targeted. The authors draw on communication theory to posit that a customer’s search and purchasing in the seller’s online channels interact positively with both salesperson contact and customer-specific discounts to drive the seller’s customer-level sales and profit return on these investments. A multimethod approach using a complex data set from a large industrial seller provides broad support for hypothesized effects. Two post hoc experiments reveal how online and salesperson channels are complementary, together improving customer–seller communication such that the seller is better able to fulfill customer needs and reduce customer perceived risk. This research advances the multichannel and pricing literatures and offers actionable insights for business-to-business marketers, revealing how online channels can complement traditional seller investments in salespeople and customer-specific discounts.

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When should B2B firms encourage their salespeople to advocate for the customer in pricing negotiations? This research extends dual agency theory to the sales domain to address this question. In Study 1, the authors examine discount negotiations with secondary data from a major U.S. industrial distributor. They find that the customer and seller both experience the most favorable outcomes when the salesperson engages in both customer advocacy toward the seller and seller advocacy toward the customer; either type of advocacy alone is counterproductive. Study 2 confirms these results using matched survey, pricing, and profit data and demonstrates a key boundary condition: broad customer–seller ties enable the synergy between customer advocacy and seller advocacy by enhancing the firms’ abilities to monitor the salesperson. In Study 3, experiments with B2B buyers replicate key findings and provide evidence for theorized mechanisms. This research emphasizes the interdependence between the salesperson’s dual roles and demonstrates how the salesperson can serve as an effective agent of both the customer and seller, thereby mitigating challenges associated with role conflict.

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As organizational buying systems grow more complex and sophisticated, suppliers increasingly rely on buyer advocacy: an individual buyer's efforts to influence his/her colleagues such that the supplier's standing is improved. Drawing from cognitive response theory, the authors hypothesize an inverted U-shaped relationship between a buyer's advocacy for a supplier and the customer's purchases from that supplier. They theorize that this effect is moderated by the advocate's industry experience and customer-supplier relationship characteristics. An analysis of multisource data from a B2B service provider (Study 1) supports the predicted inverted U-shaped relationship, while a unique dataset from a large industrial supplier (Study 2) provides broad support for the hypothesized moderators. Finally, a randomized experiment (Study 3) replicates key findings and corroborates the theorized cognitive response mechanisms. Findings contribute to the limited literature on buyer advocacy within the organizational buying domain and offer practical implications for suppliers and buyers.