When to do sales remotely vs in-person

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Topic: Sales | Customer Experience 
For: B2B
Research date: June 2026
Universities: Ruhr University Bochum

📈 Recommendation

If you’re selling a simple product (e.g. standardized steel pipes) focus more on remote selling. 

If your product is complex (e.g. highly customized ERP software), include more in-person interactions with customers. You can then gradually decrease the share of in-person meetings as the sales rep gets to know the customer better.

Your sales team will perform better, leading to more sales.

If a customer prefers to meet remotely, accommodate that regardless of how complex your product is.

🎓 Findings

• As part of an analysis of 15,172 sales interactions with 3,565 sanitary product customers (e.g. plumbers, architects, contractors), researchers found that:

  • For simple products (e.g. standardized pipes), holding about 1 in 3 meetings in-person (37.9%) boosted sales performance by 27.3% (vs only in-person meetings)

  • For complex products (e.g. custom-sized vanity), customers prefer in-person meetings. Doing only remote meetings reduced sales performance by up to 32.4%

  • For medium complexity products, the optimal number of in-person meetings was 64.1%

🧠 Why it works

• Remote calls are more efficient but make it harder to build trust and share concerns. When we meet someone in person, it helps build a relationship and understand needs.

• When we buy a more complex product, we need to trust the seller, understand their value, and feel they’re meeting our needs. This is done better in-person. 

• When we find in-person meetings too resource-intensive or inefficient, we appreciate it if a seller adapts to our needs to meet remotely.

✋ Limitations

• This research focused only on relationships with existing customers. It may change for new customers where there is no prior relationship or trust.

• Different types of meetings are likely better for different stages of the sales cycle (e.g. exploration, proposals, negotiation, renewals).

• The study looked at a single manufacturer of a wide array of sanitary products for construction. It likely varies by industry (e.g. tech companies may prefer remote meetings while the construction industry may value in-person interactions more).

👀 Real-life example

RemKliq offers a standardized, plug-and-play product to automate payment follow-ups for companies.

❌ Issue: Despite being a straightforward product without significant customization, their demos include an option for an in-person walkthrough at the office of potential customers.

✅ Solution:

• RemKliq should focus on, and push for, online meetings to increase the efficiency of their sales team. 

• To accommodate customers that really want in-person meetings, they can include a small line underneath the online demo option (e.g. “Click here if you’d prefer to meet us in-person instead.”)

• This is a good page to include their number of sales, or pageviews, to provide a social proof of their effectiveness (e.g. “Automating payment follow-ups for over XX companies”).

• On their video calls with prospective customers, their team should use an unblurred background that shows off the salesperson’s personality and carefully observe and copy the body language of the person they’re speaking to (e.g. lean forward when they do).

📖 Research

Ergun, D. & Schmitz, C.Hybrid Selling: The Optimal Mix of Face-to-Face and Remote Sales Calls with Existing B2B Customers. Journal of Service Research (June 2026).

Remember: This is a new scientific discovery. In the future it will probably be better understood and could even be proven wrong (that’s how science works). It may also not be generalizable to your situation. If it’s a risky change, always test it on a small scale before rolling it out widely.

🎁 Bonus: Trivia

Check your knowledge from previous insights (for paid Platform members only).

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