In a market where B2B products and solutions are becoming indistinguishable, the real battleground has shifted to the buying experience.
As products and solutions began to look and sound the same, competition intensified, leading to a shift in buying behaviors. Buyers now spend less time with sellers, rely more heavily on peer networks, and use AI to sift through their options. In turn, the differentiating factors for B2B buyers have changed too. Challenger research found that a great experience is now more important to buyers than price, product, or brand reputation.
And there lies the biggest opportunity for B2B companies — a better customer experience. It’s time to focus on building great experiences, and even go beyond just the buying process to capture the entire customer lifecycle.
Growing demand for Digital Sales Rooms
In the rush to create an elevated experience, Digital Sales Rooms took off. According to top analyst Melissa Hilber at Gartner, next to generative AI, the most critical software for CSOs to invest in is Digital Sales Rooms. The market size for Digital Sales Rooms will reach $2.27B with an expected CAGR of roughly 12.5% by 2030. And by next year, 80% of interactions between buyers and suppliers will happen in digital channels.
This demand is coming from sales organizations looking to improve efficiencies, streamline processes, gather intelligence, improve security and compliance, and enhance buyer engagement.
These domains are critical for sellers, but the heart of Digital Sales Rooms must focus on the customer — not just the seller. At Showpad, we call them Shared Spaces because we believe the true power of this technology lies in benefitting both the customer and the seller. And that the best customer experience is one that is collaborative.
The value of a collaborative customer experience
The intelligence and insights that come out of Digital Sales Rooms certainly help drive seller effectiveness. However, there is an indisputable value for customers that have access to an always-on, accessible, and collaborative Digital Sales Room. Here’s some examples of how Shared Spaces bring value to our customers:
- Provide access to critical competitive information, helping buyers navigate the market.
- Ensure both parties are held accountable to the actions and the timelines that they’ve set with mutual action plans.
- Streamline onboarding of stakeholders who join the evaluation process later.
- Support and enable your buying champions with co-built business cases they can use with their internal decision makers.
To create value for the customer there is an art to how a sales rep should masterfully leverage the technology. From our own experiences, we’ve found two best practices every seller needs to follow:
- Meet your buyer where they are: Don’t overload your Shared Space with irrelevant content for your buying group. Too much information will make the Shared Space overwhelming and unusable.
- Leverage Shared Spaces throughout the entire customer experience: Shared Spaces are not intended to only be used until point of signature. If your customers see value in using a Shared Space during the buying process, chances are they’ll continue to find it impactful throughout their customer lifecycle.
Whether you’re investing in a Digital Sales Room or using Shared Spaces with Showpad, if you really want to drive sales, revenue, and lasting relationships with customers — your biggest focus should be on how you can empower a better full customer experience.
See a collaborative buying experience in action
How an eyecare leader engages customers to achieve £2.8M in incremental revenue.
Frequently asked questions
A digital sales room is a secure, shared online workspace where sellers and buyers collaborate throughout the buying and customer process. It serves as a centralized hub for content, mutual action plans, stakeholder communication, and deal-related resources. The goal is to make the buying experience easier, more transparent, and more productive for everyone involved.
A Shared Space is Showpad’s take on the digital sales room — built with collaboration at its core. It’s a secure, always-on workspace where sellers and buyers work together throughout the deal and beyond. Inside a Shared Space, you can organize relevant content for your specific buying group, set up mutual action plans with clear timelines and accountability, and give stakeholders a single destination to stay aligned. Rather than being a one-sided tool for tracking engagement, Shared Spaces encourage co-creation — from building business cases together to onboarding new decision makers who join the evaluation late. And because it’s built into the Showpad platform, sellers get real-time analytics and insights on buyer activity, helping them understand what’s resonating and where to focus next.
Email is a one-way, fragmented channel. Documents get buried in inboxes, version control becomes a nightmare, and there’s zero visibility into whether a buyer actually opened or shared what you sent. A digital sales room solves all of that. It gives buyers a single destination where every relevant asset lives in one place. Sellers gain analytics on what content buyers engage with, which stakeholders are involved, and where deals might be stalling.
Yes — it should be. One of the most overlooked opportunities in B2B is extending the digital sales room beyond the point of signature. If your buyer found value in the collaborative workspace during the sales process, that same space can support onboarding, training, ongoing account management, and expansion conversations. This is exactly the approach Showpad encourages with Shared Spaces. That continuity builds trust and strengthens long-term relationships.
