Why WhatsApp Is the Future of B2B Sales and Customer Engagement
The success of B2B sales depends on two undeniable facts: every second counts and every lead matters. But how do you keep up with customer demands without losing the personal touch B2B sales need? The answer is simple: WhatsApp Business.
For years, email has been the main communication channel for B2B sales. It promised quick exchanges and clear communication. But today, that promise is long forgotten. Emails can’t keep up anymore. They’re slow, impersonal, and end up in spam folders more often than not.
What’s a better tool to replace email than WhatsApp? It allows real-time communication, helps you build more genuine connections with customers, and most of your target audience is already using it. Imagine you can respond immediately, nurture leads without the endless back-and-forth, and have everything you need in one platform.
In this article, we’ll show you how WhatsApp Business started and why we think it’ll slowly become the go-to app to run B2B communication, sales processes, and customer engagement activities.
History of WhatsApp Business
What if you could connect with your customers instantly, with no waiting, no missed calls, and no lengthy emails? That’s the idea WhatsApp introduced to the business world in 2018.
The journey from WA Messenger to WhatsApp Business
From the moment it launched, WhatsApp Business App changed the way businesses communicate. Instead of being just a messaging app, it turned into a direct and personal line to your customers, sitting right in their pockets.
Businesses used WhatsApp for multiple use cases, including marketing their products, addressing their customer issues, and closing deals.
And why not? Features like business profiles made companies look more trustworthy to customers, while automated messages gave faster responses and left no customers hanging. The product catalogs? They gave customers the opportunity to shop directly in the chat without the need to surf the web.
As more and more businesses adopted WhatsApp Business, it quickly became a common solution for small businesses, but the keyword here? Small. WhatsApp still wasn’t the top choice for medium and large businesses, and that’s when the API came in.
The introduction of WhatsApp API
The WhatsApp Business API was launched to help small businesses scale further than the app allows and support the growth of medium to large businesses. Its features support a lot of business types, including both B2C and B2B companies. However, our main focus today is how it can help B2B companies drive sales.
Unlike the WhatsApp Business app, which runs on a single device and is ideal for small businesses, the API operates on cloud-based or on-premise servers, allowing companies to integrate WhatsApp into their existing sales and support systems.
Because the API is hosted externally, it can handle higher message volumes, support multiple users, and connect with CRMs, automation tools, and any other platform you’re using. By allowing these integrations, the API helps you fit WhatsApp into your tech stack and build a smooth workflow where all your tools are connected.
This infrastructure is what enables advanced features like automated workflows, interactive message templates, and payments, all tools that help B2B sales teams manage deals, speed up response times, and scale their customer engagement.
How WhatsApp Business was used
With the API in place and advanced features on the rise, people started using WhatsApp to scale their marketing efforts. They could send more messages at once thanks to the API, so why not? However, WhatsApp had different plans.
To protect its users from spam and maintain their privacy, WhatsApp put strict guidelines in place. You needed to get opt-ins from customers before sending them promotional messages. And if you sent messages at scale, they could be marked as spam, and the worst-case scenario? WhatsApp could ban your account.
Not only that but to increase your messaging limit, you had to verify your account and maintain a high-quality rating. If your rating goes low, your limit decreases.
Because of this, WhatsApp’s use cases started to expand beyond marketing.
The shift toward sales
After the introduction of a few features that support sales, WhatsApp started to look like an attractive channel for selling.
Features like quick replies allowed sales teams to respond instantly to customer inquiries, reducing delays and keeping conversations flowing. Meanwhile, product catalogs let businesses offer their products directly within the chat. And with payment integrations, transactions could happen in the same conversation without the customer having to use another platform.
Businesses could guide their customers through the purchasing journey much easier than before. But could WhatsApp become the ultimate B2B sales channel? The way things are going, it just might.
WhatsApp Business Platform in 2025 and beyond
Now that we’ve touched on the past, what does the future look like for the WhatsApp Business Platform?
Meta’s vision for WhatsApp seems to be shifting toward the sales use case. Some of the new features users can expect soon that support sales are voice APIs, group APIs, and more.
Group APIs
Group APIs allow you to create group chats and add multiple people to a single thread. This means that you can create a group for all decision-makers and stakeholders of a specific business and communicate with them at once rather than separately. You can also create groups with sales and support team members to make the customer handover process easier.
The uses are endless, but one thing for sure is that this feature, once out, will change the way your sales team works.
Voice calls
While voice calls are already a feature on the personal messaging app, they’re only starting to be available for WhatsApp Business users. It’s the perfect tool for B2B communication because it combines speed and personalization, the two aspects that get you more sales.
Here are the different ways voice calls can help your business once out:
- Centralization of all types of communication on a single platform (calls, messages)
- Providing hands-on, real-time support for customers
- Saving on costs for external calling apps
- Integrating voice interactions into sales and service workflows
Enhanced AI
AI is the future. That much is true for almost all industries that use WhatsApp, and of course, Meta wouldn’t miss a chance to incorporate it into the platform.
They’re releasing a new AI-powered messaging feature that’ll guarantee you don’t have any more missed opportunities because of customers contacting you outside office hours. It takes over conversations, answering inquiries, providing recommendations, and guiding prospects through the sales funnel, all with minimal effort on your team’s part.
This feature’s main aim is to increase sales and help scale customer support efforts.
Here are the most important uses for WhatsApp’s new AI:
- Sell after business hours: Your best leads don’t always come knocking during the 9-to-5 grind. With WhatsApp AI, your sales funnel stays active even when your team isn’t. The AI can engage customers in real-time, addressing their needs and pushing them closer to a purchase.
- Scale customer support efforts: WhatsApp’s AI handles large volumes of inquiries, delivering consistent, accurate responses to every customer. And because it operates 24/7, your clients get the support they need whenever they need it.
- Control and monitor workflows: WhatsApp lets you set times for AI responses, which gives you smoother transitions between automatic responses and live agents. This helps free up your team at times of high demand so that they can focus on priority tasks.
But these are upcoming features that haven’t seen the light in all countries yet. What about changes that have already happened?
On-premises API to Cloud API
Originally, WhatsApp Business API was offered as an on-premises solution**.** This means businesses had to host the API on their own servers, requiring them to manage hardware, software, and maintenance themselves.
In 2022, Meta introduced the Cloud API and pulled the plug on the on-premises API, which meant businesses could access the API directly from Meta’s cloud servers, eliminating the need for expensive infrastructure or technical management.
The Cloud API is faster to deploy, more cost-effective, and much easier to scale as businesses grow. What does it mean for sales, though?
While the shift to the Cloud API doesn’t directly impact your day-to-day tasks, it will improve how you do your job in ways you might not have considered.
Moving to the cloud, WhatsApp becomes more scalable, efficient, and better equipped to integrate with your existing systems, which helps you communicate faster and build a more unified sales workflow.
Meta’s decision to push this update helps businesses, especially in sales, work smarter. The cloud enables faster development of innovative features like WhatsApp Flows, AI-powered chatbots, and automated messaging sequences at a lower cost. All are tools that can help you personalize outreach, automate routine tasks, and provide quicker responses to leads.
But is that the only recent update that could support sales in B2B companies? No, there’s also WhatsApp Flows.
WhatsApp Flows
Sometimes, leads have to jump through hoops to get answers or place an order, which isn’t ideal. It’s always better to guide them through a smooth conversation, which is exactly what WhatsApp Flows does. It’s a feature recently introduced to help businesses build stronger relationships with customers.
With flows, businesses can create interactive customer journeys that feel intuitive and personalized. They can be used to collect feedback, answer inquiries through chatbots, and even send offers. For a sales team, they’re an indispensable feature, as they can help:
- Nurture leads by collecting information and offering personalized recommendations
- Onboard customers smoothly with in-chat forms and automated replies
- Reduce response time and increase customer satisfaction, especially during high-demand periods
For B2B sales, where relationships are key, flows create an engaging, professional experience that builds trust.
Role of WhatsApp Business in B2B communication
WhatsApp is changing the future of how B2B businesses communicate with customers. Conversational buying is on the rise, and long sales processes are being put out to grass.
Supports conversational buying
Today’s B2B business owners and decision-makers are the same people who, in their personal lives, make quick purchases on Instagram or Facebook with just a few taps. They’re used to fast and conversational interactions, and they expect the same ease in their professional lives.
WhatsApp Business is a huge supporter of this new buying behavior, and it provides features to make it possible, like interactive buttons, quick replies, and chatbots. Buyers can now inquire about products, get instant responses, and even complete purchases, all within the same chat window.
Provides features that can help B2B sales
B2B sales are known for being complex, with long cycles and multiple decision-makers involved. This often slows down the process and risks losing buyer interest. WhatsApp makes this process easier by providing features to support sales teams.
For instance, features like payment integrations and product catalogs make it easy for businesses to showcase their products and allow secure transactions directly in the chat.
Not only that, but WhatsApp’s automation features help the customer feel engaged and supported throughout the process.
Breaking down traditional barriers in communication, WhatsApp is bringing the ease of social media shopping into the world of B2B.
Scales with businesses
Communication is a challenge for growing businesses. Suppose you’re a large company with multiple teams operating across multiple countries. Trying to stay connected with each other and with customers seems like a logistical nightmare, right? That’s where WhatsApp Business comes to the rescue.
WhatsApp provides the infrastructure to handle large volumes of interactions without sacrificing personalization. Its advanced API integrations allow the automation of repetitive tasks with chatbots and flows. Time zones are also no longer a barrier, as automated workflows and templates keep communication consistent, no matter when or where a message is sent.
Plus, with the possibility of personalizing templates and quick replies by adding customers’ names and personal info, WhatsApp allows your business to scale and build a genuine connection with customers without overwhelming your teams.
Impact of WhatsApp Business on B2B sales and customer engagement
Communication translates to sales. If, as we’ve seen above, WhatsApp supports B2B communication, then it also impacts sales and customer engagement.
To understand this impact, you need to see how industries started using WhatsApp Business and how WhatsApp enables smooth experiences for both customers and sales teams.
How industries are adopting WhatsApp Business
Industries worldwide are moving to WhatsApp Business. Why? Because it’s already a platform that their customers use.
Take eCommerce, for example. In the past, online shopping depended on email promotions and website visits. Now, with WhatsApp Business, brands can share product catalogs in real time, provide personalized recommendations, and even process instant payments, all within a single conversation. Naturally, this boosts conversions and sales.
For customer support teams, what used to involve lengthy phone queues or back-and-forth email exchanges has transformed into real-time fixes. With WhatsApp’s immediacy, businesses can handle queries faster, which boosts engagement and improves retention.
But where does this leave B2B companies? They’ve traditionally relied on formal channels like email or phone, especially for nurturing long sales cycles or managing important client relationships.
However, the tide is shifting. WhatsApp has offers that B2B companies simply can’t refuse, like being able to qualify and nurture leads and collaborate with internal teams, all on the same platform.
Even if WhatsApp Business doesn’t target B2B companies in specific, its features are the perfect fit to fill the gap between the demands of B2B sales and the shortcomings of tools in the past.
How WhatsApp provides smooth customer experiences
In B2B sales, success depends on one core element: customer relationships. And what shapes these relationships more than anything? Customer experience. It’s the key that determines whether a prospect becomes a loyal customer or just another lost opportunity.
This is where WhatsApp Business is supporting B2B customer engagement. Features like automatic responses, chatbots, and WhatsApp Flows are designed to improve the customer journey. Prospects can get immediate answers to their questions, while flows guide them from lead qualification to closing the deal.
Even tools like message templates allow businesses to send personalized updates, quotes, or reminders outside WhatsApp’s 24-hour window, helping them build relationships without waiting for customers to initiate the conversation.
Building strong relationships with customers translates quickly to sales and is key to many finalized deals.
How WhatsApp provides smooth sales teams experiences
WhatsApp Business has the customer experience handled, but what about the sales team experience? It’s a dream come true to have a smooth experience for both sides of the deal, the buyer and the seller. Can we say that WhatsApp has achieved this? Let’s see.
When it comes to B2B sales, finalizing a deal is no small task. With long cycles, multiple decision-makers, and constant follow-ups, the process can often feel anything but simple. However, that’s a thing of the past.
The beauty of the WhatsApp Business API shows here in non-native features that WhatsApp doesn’t offer but can be possible through third-party tools.
The combination of native WhatsApp Business features and third-party tools operating over the API carries endless possibilities for B2B sales.
Here are some examples of non-native features that have changed the way sales teams work:
- Team inboxes: This feature, offered by platforms like Rasayel, centralizes all client communications, ensuring that nothing slips through the cracks, especially when multiple team members are managing a single account or lead.
- CRM integrations: These let you link WhatsApp to your existing CRM tools for a centralized view of every client interaction. With access to real-time data, your sales team can prioritize high-value leads, make informed decisions, and deliver a more personalized experience, ultimately driving sales.
- Sequences: These automate follow-ups and keep leads engaged so that sales agents don’t have to keep track of every conversation manually. A sales team can use them to send personalized reminders and messages to push prospects through the sales funnel, increasing the chances of closing deals and improving conversion rates.
How B2B Companies can use WhatsApp to grow
We’ve talked about how WhatsApp makes B2B communication smoother, sales more efficient, and customer support more personal, but here’s the big question: how do you use WhatsApp to turn all of that into real growth for your business?
Lead generation and sales acceleration
Company growth depends on the success of the sales funnel as a whole, but lead generation is the first step, making it the most important. Now, how does WhatsApp support lead generation?
It offers click-to-chat links, which allow prospects to connect with your team instantly from ads, social media posts, or your website. This makes starting a conversation easy for potential leads.
Chatbots and WhatsApp Flows take it further by automating the lead qualification process. They ask customers pre-set questions to identify high-potential prospects quickly.
And it doesn’t stop there. WhatsApp’s real-time communication ensures no opportunity slips through the cracks. Sales teams can address concerns and build trust almost instantly, keeping leads engaged and moving them closer to conversion.
Soon, the Group APIs will make this process even easier because your team will be able to handle the concerns of all stakeholders of a specific business at once rather than separately.
As for sales acceleration, WhatsApp’s interactive commerce tools support it by allowing customers to shop in chat. Product catalogs, for example, help businesses showcase their products. Meanwhile, templates can serve as reminders for abandoned carts or notifications for shipments and delivery.
Higher customer retention through support
Another key factor for the growth of B2B companies is customer retention, which is only achieved through solid support. And you guessed it right. WhatsApp Business can help you with this too.
First of all, WhatsApp offers AI support through chatbots, which means your business can assist customers around the clock and resolve issues without delay. Till your support team is available to handle customers, chatbots can offer quick solutions, recommend fixes, or assign the conversation to a human agent. This frees up your team for more important inquiries and boosts your response times.
These automated workflows can also guide customers through onboarding, training, and feature updates. For example, after a customer finalizes a deal, WhatsApp can automatically send them a series of personalized messages, offering tutorials, tips, and even follow-up support.
Stronger customer relationships through personalization
WhatsApp’s main selling point for business communication is personalization. B2B companies at the buyer’s end need to feel like the deal being offered to them is tailored to their pain points, and that’s exactly what WhatsApp supports.
It provides automated features to give better and faster responses, but it doesn’t sacrifice the personalization part. Let’s look at templates, for instance. They save immense time and effort for teams because instead of typing the same message over and over again, they click on a button.
And for personalization, they include variables for customers’ names and personal information. So, the customer will receive a template, but they won’t know it because it’ll mention their name and specific info.
Another example is automated sequences through chatbots and flows. You can prepare a hundred of them, each one targeting a specific step in the sales process. For example, you can create a chatbot for lead nurturing and another one for lead qualification. This way, the responses won’t feel generic, and the customer will feel like a human is talking to them without costing you extra time or money.
The ability to personalize these interactions, even at scale, helps maintain a high level of customer satisfaction and makes them feel more invested in the relationship.
Why WhatsApp is the future sales channel for B2B companies
We’ve explored the tools, features, and potential of WhatsApp Business for B2B communication, sales, and support. But now it’s time to answer the most important question: why is WhatsApp predicted to become THE sales channel for B2B companies in the future?
Two facts answer this question:
- The rise of WhatsApp coincides with the fall of traditional channels
- WhatsApp can unify sales and support efforts, the biggest pain point for B2B companies
The decline of traditional channels
Email has long been the standard for business communication, but it’s quickly becoming clear that it can no longer keep up with the demands of modern sales teams. Slow response times, impersonal outreach, and cluttered inboxes make email less effective than ever.
In fact, by 2023, around 45.6% of all emails worldwide were flagged as spam. This means that nearly half of the emails people receive are ignored or discarded without ever being read.
Why is this happening? One big reason is that today’s workforce, especially Gen Z, prefers instant messaging over long email exchanges. Their communication style prefers direct, short sentences over long paragraphs.
These shifts in communication styles are spilling over into email behavior, where even email users are seeking a faster way to interact. And what’s the solution? Messaging apps like WhatsApp are taking over.
This comes at the same time when WhatsApp is reigning supreme in countries like India and Brazil, some of the world’s most populous nations and home to the largest growing middle class. Why? Because WhatsApp offers real-time, mobile-first, and cost-effective communication.
With lower internet costs and mobile phones being the primary means of access, WhatsApp provides an accessible and affordable alternative to traditional communication methods in these countries.
Seamless integration of sales and support tools
B2B sales teams are always looking for ways to improve workflows and boost sales. One of the biggest challenges they face? Unifying sales and support processes.
The reality is, many teams rely on a variety of tools that don’t always communicate with each other, creating silos of information and slower response times. This disconnect can lead to missed opportunities, frustrated clients, and a less-than-ideal customer experience. But with WhatsApp, this all changes.
It’s incredibly easy to integrate WhatsApp with your existing sales and support tools. With integrations available for popular CRMs, support automation software, and marketing automation platforms, you can sync your WhatsApp conversations with the rest of your customer data.
This gives you a complete view of the customer journey and ensures that your sales and support teams are always on the same page. Also, it helps your sales team close deals faster by providing them with the context they need. Finally, It boosts efficiency by allowing support teams to quickly assist with any post-sale issues without switching between multiple platforms.
In the end, the result is a consistent, end-to-end customer experience that strengthens relationships and boosts conversions.
Preparing B2B companies for a WhatsApp Business-driven future
Now that you have all of the facts we’ve listed above, what happens next? You adopt WhatsApp Business as your main communication channel, develop a long-term strategy around it, and adapt to the constantly changing future.
Here’s how to do all three.
How to start with WhatsApp Business
While the WhatsApp Business app is a great starting point for small businesses, it has its limitations when it comes to supporting B2B companies. Features like multi-user access, deeper integrations, and advanced automation aren’t available in the standard app.
This is where the WhatsApp Business API comes in, offering a scalable solution. If you’re looking to integrate WhatsApp into your sales and customer support workflows, the API is the way forward.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to start with the API.
Step 1: Create a Facebook Business Account
To get started, you’ll first need to create a Facebook Business Account through Facebook Business Manager. This account acts as the foundation for all your WhatsApp Business integrations.
Step 2: Verify Your Facebook Business Account
To verify your account, you’ll need to submit official documents, like bank statements, utility bills, and else. The aim of this step is to prove the legitimacy of your business.
Although this process can take several weeks, you can still use the WhatsApp Business API during that time.
Step 3: Connect WhatsApp Business API to a shared team inbox
This is a critical step for B2B companies that rely on collaboration between multiple team members.
A shared team inbox, like Rasayel, helps centralize all messages, ensuring you don’t miss any incoming leads and helping you manage high-value clients or long sales cycles.
It allows your team to respond quickly and in a coordinated manner. It also eliminates the confusion of multiple team members reaching out to the same client separately, offering a smoother and more professional experience for all sides.
Step 4: Integrate WhatsApp with your existing tech stack
The final step is to integrate WhatsApp with your existing CRM or customer support systems.
Whether you’re using Salesforce, HubSpot, or another CRM, integrating WhatsApp ensures all customer data and interactions are synced in real-time.
This integration gives you a 360-degree view of your customer’s journey, from lead generation to support. It helps you track conversations and gain context quickly, improving your sales process and customer experience. Your API experience simply isn’t complete without integrations.
How to develop a long-term WhatsApp strategy
A WhatsApp-focused customer engagement plan can help you create lasting relationships with customers and improve your bottom line over time. But how do you build this plan?
The first step is to identify the gaps in your current strategy and see how the platform’s strengths can fill them.
Step 1: Assess your current strategy
Start by reviewing your existing customer engagement and sales strategies. Where are you losing opportunities? Are prospects dropping off during long sales cycles? Are follow-ups inconsistent, or is your team struggling to keep up with leads?
Identify how WhatsApp can fill these gaps. For instance, you can use automated follow-ups to keep leads engaged, set up proactive customer support for smoother sales processes, and maintain real-time messaging to build trust faster.
Step 2: Forecast the future
To stay ahead of the curve, you need to think beyond immediate needs. How will your business grow in the next 2-5 years? Will you expand to new markets, onboard more clients, or adopt new tools?
Plan a roadmap for scaling WhatsApp usage as your business grows. For example, anticipate how features like WhatsApp Flows or Group APIs could help you with lead qualification or multi-stakeholder conversations. This foresight ensures you’re prepared for changes, keeping you competitive as your company grows.
Step 3: Use integrations
Integrating WhatsApp into your CRM and sales tools creates a unified system that can help you sell better and faster, which is the goal of any strategy you build.
With a connected system, every customer interaction is tracked, analyzed, and used to improve your approach. Your sales team can prioritize high-intent leads based on past conversations, while your support team can resolve issues faster by accessing full customer histories.
How to stay adaptable to future changes
The way the digital world is currently moving mandates that you think ahead and stay adaptable, especially if you’re using a tool as changeable as WhatsApp Business.
Here’s how you can ensure your business is always one step ahead:
- Keep an eye on WhatsApp updates so you’re the first to know about new features and improvements.
- Choose CRM and automation tools that can grow with you
- Train your team regularly on the latest WhatsApp updates and how to use them.
- Work with third-party platforms that continuously update their integrations with WhatsApp.
- Listen to your customers. Their feedback will help you adapt your WhatsApp strategy and improve their experience.
WhatsApp is the future of B2B sales and customer engagement
After everything we’ve discussed, one truth remains: The future lies in WhatsApp Business.
From its real-time messaging to its integrations and automation tools, WhatsApp is already changing the way B2B companies connect with their customers. As we’ve seen, it offers faster responses, personalized interactions, and unified sales and support processes.
With new features on the horizon and the potential of building more thanks to the cloud API, using WhatsApp for B2B sales seems to be only the logical solution.
The time to act is now. If you want your B2B business to catch up with the continuous changes in the industry, invest in WhatsApp Business and the tools that integrate with it.
Hania is a content writer with four years of experience, driven by deep passion for writing and reading. She helps B2B companies market their products and boost their sales using one of the most powerful tools of mankind: words. Writing has always been her way of connecting with people, sharing her ideas, and leaving an impact.
