# Jens Hentschel

Jens Hentschel writes about helping B2B sales teams understand procurement, build stronger customer relationships, and take clearer ownership of customer-focused work.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/jens-hentschel/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenshentschel
- LinkedIn followers: 11,232
- Topics: sales, b2b-sales
- Based on 10 dated posts, latest 2026-10-06

## Summary

Jens Hentschel is most useful for teaching B2B sales teams to understand procurement and build trust before the RFP.

- Best for: A B2B sales enablement brand wanting thought leadership on procurement-sales alignment.
- Not for: A product-led demand campaign with gated demos, pipeline targets, or performance guarantees.
- Check first: Confirm audience demographics, engagement rates, and commercial terms before committing budget.

### Takeaways

- A promise made as 'we' can leave ownership unclear; say what you will do.
- Most of a procurement decision is made before the RFP lands.
- Customer care means bringing a useful idea before being asked.

## Main ideas

- **The word “we” spreads ownership, and buyers notice**: Jens Hentschel argues that phrases such as “We will take care of this” and “We take your feedback seriously” spread responsibility across several people. That makes the commitment easier to give and weaker to keep, and customers read it as a nice gesture at best and an empty promise at worst. The same habit appears in company strategy documents written entirely in “we”, which never spell out what any individual employee must do. When nothing concrete is expected, people fall back into old habits. The remedy: catch the word, restate what you personally will do, and raise the same question in one-to-ones and leadership reviews so strategy becomes a set of individual commitments.
- **Most of a procurement decision is made before the RFP lands**: Hentschel argues that by the time procurement replies to a supplier's email, roughly 80% of the buying decision is already made. A buyer's day is spent defining the business need, scoping the specification, assessing the market and internal capabilities, and briefing stakeholders — all before a supplier is invited into the room. If the RFP landing in the inbox marks a seller's first real contact, most of the buying process has already passed. Hentschel walks audiences through a typical working day inside procurement, showing where suppliers can add value and be remembered before the RFP is written.
- **Customer care means bringing something before you are asked**: Hentschel distinguishes customer care from two common rituals. A quarterly visit to ask what the customer needs, or an invitation to an innovation centre in the hope they spot something in the portfolio, still leaves the supplier waiting for the customer to come to them. Real care, in this account, means understanding the customer's business well enough to bring something before being asked — either a solution to a problem or a way to seize an opportunity the supplier has spotted. The post says this moves a company from vendor to “commercial consultant” to the customer's business.
- **Supplier questionnaires hear mostly from the buyers who still want you to change**: Hentschel identifies a bias in supplier feedback. Nobody in procurement enjoys filling in a questionnaire, and those who do usually have an agenda. Buyers who have already written a supplier off never reply. The responses a sales team collects therefore lean toward customers who want something changed, while saying nothing about those who gave up — giving the supplier a misleading picture of how it is regarded. The post ends with “That is a problem!”

## Work to read

- [The danger of the word “WE”](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jenshentschel_procurement-sales-activity-7505549142002290688-fM9F)
- [Caring for a B2B customer is not a quarterly visit or an innovation day](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jenshentschel_procurement-sales-activity-7510624917294407681-pPN6)
- [Supplier questionnaires only hear from the buyers who still want you to change](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jenshentschel_procurement-sales-activity-7507706759801778176-o7bT)
- [A day in the life of procurement (free webinar, September 30)](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jenshentschel_free-webinar-september-30th-230pm-3-activity-7508451534301663232-EL3-)

## Partnerships

Jens Hentschel’s four LinkedIn posts don’t specify partnership or sponsorship formats, or provide a sponsor policy, media kit, rate card, audience specification or inquiry route for paid or in-kind collaborations. They show the content a partner would be buying into: short, opinionated writing on procurement-sales alignment, accountability in customer-facing language and how sales teams should engage buyers before an RFP is written. Hentschel also promoted and hosted a free one-hour webinar on 30 September 2026 about a typical working day inside procurement. The post presents it as an educational session, not a sponsored placement, and directs readers to a registration link in the comments rather than a partnership contact. Buyers considering a thought leadership partnership should ask directly about format, rights and review terms.

## Alternatives

- Sarah Toomey: Choose Sarah Toomey when a campaign needs the procurement-side perspective for audiences seeking that voice. The posts describe more than 15 years in sourcing, building and running procurement functions across tech, and current oversight of procurement within a finance team at Levelpath. If the campaign's value comes from someone who can walk a sales audience through what actually happens inside the buying organisation, and where autonomous source-to-pay tooling now sits in that work, Toomey covers that ground directly. Hentschel's posts argue from the seller's side of the same boundary.
- Suzanne Hill: Choose Suzanne Hill when the audience sits in construction procurement and the campaign needs the strategic 'procurement for the AI era' argument rather than seller behaviour. The posts speak to construction estimating, procurement, and commercial teams about the early market intelligence hidden across tenders. They draw a line between using AI tools for existing tasks and the more strategic buying decisions AI creates: build, buy, partner, outsource, or purchase the outcome, plus questions about data and IP ownership and supplier dependency. One post also describes training built for that second layer.
- Mason Moyer: Choose Mason Moyer when the campaign moves to the post-sale side of the customer relationship. The posts cover Customer Success: spotting adoption trends before they become renewal risks, understanding a customer's 'why' beyond product usage, building touchpoints that are not driven by urgency, and owning the customer outcome so relationships move from vendor to partner. For a sales enablement company seeking thought leadership on retention and account ownership instead of procurement-sales alignment, that is the relevant territory.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/