Jens Hentschel writes about helping B2B sales teams understand procurement, build stronger customer relationships, and take clearer ownership of customer-focused work.
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.
Key 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.
Check first: Confirm audience demographics, engagement rates, and commercial terms before committing budget.
Main ideas
The word “we” spreads ownership, and buyers notice · Most of a procurement decision is made before the RFP lands · Customer care means bringing something before you are asked
Jens Hentschel writes about how B2B sales teams can work more effectively with procurement and earn customers’ trust.
The posts focus on understanding buyers’ work before an RFP, making individual commitments clear, and bringing customers useful ideas before they ask.
Their advice is practical: notice how familiar sales habits look from the buyer’s side, then change what you do.
Jens Hentschel connects small sales habits to larger questions of trust and customer focus.
In “The danger of ‘we’”, they argue that a promise made on behalf of a group can leave ownership unclear, and urge readers to say what they themselves will do.
In “Caring for a B2B customer”, they distinguish routine visits from learning a customer’s business well enough to bring a useful solution or opportunity before being asked.
In a post about supplier questionnaires, they highlight a blind spot: dissatisfied buyers who have stopped replying may be missing from the feedback.
A webinar post on procurement’s working day extends that buyer-first perspective to the sales process, showing why supplier outreach that starts at the RFP can come too late.
Readers looking for practical ways to build stronger procurement relationships will find clear prompts to rethink how they listen, follow through, and add value.
Jens Hentschel's writing returns to one priority: B2B sellers should understand procurement from the inside and take specific personal responsibility for the customer relationship.
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The arguments are practical — how language splits accountability, when a buying decision is really made, what counts as care, and why the usual feedback channels mislead. All four posts close with the same line, “Let's build bridges between #procurement and #sales – one relationship at a time,” framing the work as a bridge-building project rather than a set of unrelated topics.
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.
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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.
“We will come back to you on this” is the kind of line Hentschel asks readers to rewrite as a specific personal action.
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.
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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.
A free 60-minute webinar advertised for September 30, 2:30–3:30pm BST, titled along the lines of “A day in the life of your buyer: get inside procurement's head before the RFP lands in your inbox.”
Customer care means bringing something before you are asked
Hentschel distinguishes customer care from two common rituals.
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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.
The post casts the quarterly relationship visit and the innovation-day invitation as waiting, not caring.
The argument is sharper than most customer-care advice: it rejects two rituals widely treated as good practice and judges care by unsolicited commercial insight, not relationship maintenance.
Supplier questionnaires hear mostly from the buyers who still want you to change
Hentschel identifies a bias in supplier feedback.
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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!”
The post notes its own exception — some respondents do enjoy questionnaires — and treats that as further evidence of bias rather than ordinary variation in response rates.
Answers the first question a newcomer has: does this person have an argument of their own, or do they pass along industry news?
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This post is the clearest single statement of the viewpoint the rest of the work builds on.
Jens Hentschel takes one ordinary B2B sales habit and examines it closely: the word “we.”
They list the phrases buyers hear constantly: “We will take care of this,” “We take your feedback seriously,” and “We will come back to you on this.”
The argument is that “we” spreads ownership across more than one person, making it easier to promise something when delivery is not entirely in your hands.
The customer hears a nice gesture at best and an empty promise at worst, and they think the customer is usually right.
The post turns the same lens inward: company strategy documents are written in “we,” leaving employees without a specific individual action.
When nothing concrete is expected of them, people default to old habits.
The practical fix: catch the word, ask what you personally will do, reframe the sentence, then raise the same question in one-to-ones and leadership reviews.
For brands planning a campaign
The post offers a repeatable format: take a commonplace phrase, show what it costs the buyer, then give readers a small practice to try. It could anchor a thought leadership series on procurement-sales alignment, with each instalment testing a sales habit against how procurement actually reads it.
Short enough to read in a minute, it shows the day-to-day argument the longer posts build toward: what “customer care” should mean in a commercial relationship.
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A short, pointed post.
Hentschel argues that an hour-long meeting asking the customer what they need, or an invitation to an innovation centre in the hope they spot something in your portfolio, 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 they ask for it: either a solution to a problem or a way to seize an opportunity the supplier has spotted.
Doing that, the post says, moves a company from vendor to “commercial consultant” to the customer’s business.
For brands planning a campaign
The “commercial consultant” framing is a usable headline idea for sales enablement content aimed at account teams. The post’s length shows they can land one argument in a few lines, useful for social-format deliverables in a partnership.
A quick example of how they reason from data, and evidence that the work is not only motivational writing about relationships.
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Hentschel points out a bias in supplier questionnaires.
Nobody in procurement enjoys filling them in, and those who do usually have something they want changed.
Buyers who have already written a supplier off never reply.
So survey results lean toward customers who want the supplier to change and say nothing about those who gave up on them.
The post ends with a flat “That is a problem!” rather than a remedy.
For brands planning a campaign
This counterintuitive reading of everyday sales data makes for credible, shareable content: a potential partnership angle that challenges how sales teams measure customer sentiment.
Shows the format Hentschel works in beyond the written post: live teaching.
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It also states the market-timing argument that underpins the procurement-sales theme.
An announcement for a free 60-minute webinar on September 30, 2:30–3:30pm BST, titled along the lines of “A day in the life of your buyer: get inside procurement’s head before the RFP lands in your inbox.”
The premise is that roughly 80% of the buying decision is already made by the time procurement replies to a supplier’s email, because most of a buyer’s day happens before a supplier is invited in: defining the business need, scoping the specification, assessing the market and internal capabilities, and briefing stakeholders.
If the RFP landing in the inbox is a supplier’s first real contact with the procurement team, they have missed most of the buyer’s day.
The session promises to walk through a typical working day inside procurement and show where a supplier can add value.
For brands planning a campaign
The post points to a live or recorded teaching format as a possible partnership deliverable, and the 80% framing is a strong hook for sales enablement audiences.
Every post in the reviewed set returns to the same line: "Let's build bridges between #procurement and #sales – one relationship at a time."
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The argument is that sales teams treat procurement as a gatekeeper at the end of a deal, when procurement's work begins long before a supplier is contacted. Posts on buyer behaviour, language and customer care all support that positioning.
For brands planning a campaign
This repeated idea speaks to both sides of the table, making it a fit for sales enablement teams looking to reach procurement without pitching at them. It gives a content series a coherent editorial spine rather than a set of unrelated topics.
The post argues that "we will take care of this" and similar phrases spread ownership across several people, making commitments easier to give and weaker to keep.
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Buyers may read them as a polite gesture at best and an empty promise at worst. The same pattern appears in strategy documents written entirely in "we": employees are never told what to do individually, so nothing changes and people fall back on old habits.
Audit your own language.
Catch each "we" and restate it as what you specifically will do.
Then raise the same question in 1:1s and leadership reviews, turning strategy into individual commitments rather than collective intention.
For brands planning a campaign
A strong angle for sales enablement content on deal follow-through and internal accountability: it gives sales leaders a concrete, repeatable exercise rather than a general exhortation to be more customer-focused.
The post makes a timing argument: by the time procurement replies to an email, roughly 80% of the buying decision is already made.
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Most of a buyer's day happens before a supplier is invited in: defining the business need, scoping the specification, assessing the market and internal capabilities, and briefing stakeholders. If a seller's first contact is the RFP landing in the inbox, most of that day has already been missed.
A 60-minute webinar walks through a typical working day inside procurement and shows where a supplier can add value and be remembered before the RFP is written.
For brands planning a campaign
This is directly usable as a co-hosted webinar or educational asset: the premise gives sales audiences a reason to engage early with procurement, and the format is already demonstrated rather than hypothetical.
The post distinguishes two things often called customer care.
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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 waits for the customer to come to the seller. Real care means understanding the customer's business well enough to bring them something before they ask: a solution to a problem or a way to seize an opportunity the seller has spotted.
The post rules out two common relationship rituals — the quarterly visit and the innovation-centre invitation — rather than proposing to improve them, taking a sharper position than most customer-care content.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful for content that encourages sellers to bring unsolicited ideas and be judged on their quality. It supports a thought leadership partnership aimed at shifting seller behaviour rather than adding another relationship touchpoint.
The post points to a bias in supplier feedback: nobody in procurement likes filling in a questionnaire, and those who do usually have an agenda.
Read more
Buyers who have already written a supplier off never reply, so responses skew toward customers who want the supplier to change and say nothing about those who gave up. Survey data alone, the post concludes, gives a misleading picture of how a supplier is actually regarded.
The post notes its own exception — that some respondents do enjoy questionnaires — and then treats that as further evidence of bias rather than a normal variation in response rates.
For brands planning a campaign
A good prompt for content on listening methods and lost-deal analysis: it argues that the usual feedback channels systematically exclude the customers a sales team most needs to hear from, giving a partnership a practical diagnostic angle.
Jens Hentschel's posts do not name any brand, sponsor, client, or employment relationship.
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They describe working with companies on customer-centricity and procurement-sales alignment and advertise a free webinar on how procurement buyers make decisions, but name no company, product, or platform in connection with that work. Ask for named commercial partners; the section is otherwise empty, apart from passing company references in the posts.
Jens Hentschel writes about one relationship: the one between procurement and sales.
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The posts reviewed here return to the same argument from several angles — sellers treat procurement as a late-stage gatekeeper, though most of a buyer's work is done before an RFP is ever sent; and the language sellers use (“we will take care of this”) quietly spreads responsibility until nobody owns the commitment.
A separate thread asks what customer care means, arguing that quarterly visits and innovation-day invitations still wait for the customer to come to you, and that supplier questionnaires mostly reach buyers who already want something changed.
Start with the post on the word “we”, then the webinar description of a buyer's working day, followed by the pieces on proactive care and feedback bias; all four close with the same bridge-building line.
Toomey writes from inside procurement; Jens Hentschel writes about it from the sales side.
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Both treat procurement as a function whose work is changing because of AI, and explain that change through the practical decisions a buying team faces — tooling, reviews, stakeholder pressure, and who does the work before a contract is signed.
Toomey's focus is the procurement function and the software built for it, including an autonomous source-to-pay platform and the friction of buying AI inside an enterprise.
Hentschel focuses on the relationship between buyer and seller: how sellers should present themselves, when they should arrive, and how accountability language shapes the deal.
Someone seeking an insider view of procurement operations should read Toomey; someone seeking sales-side advice on reaching procurement should read Hentschel.
Hill and Hentschel both argue that procurement is becoming more strategic and that its daily observations carry useful market intelligence.
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Both also teach through a single reframing — Hill distinguishes "AI for procurement" from "procurement for the AI era", while Hentschel reframes customer care and the word "we".
Hill's examples come from construction, where estimating, procurement and commercial teams see supplier and delivery changes first.
Her argument is that AI is shifting the nature of buying decisions, and she offers training on that shift.
Hentschel's examples come from B2B selling and customer relationships, and their advice is aimed at how a seller behaves before and after the RFP, rather than at how a procurement career is changing.
Moyer's posts on proactivity and ownership in customer success make the same argument Hentschel makes about customer care: waiting for a signal is not the same as helping, and specific accountability beats good intentions.
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Both write short, plainly structured posts built around one named habit and a few observations from experience.
Moyer works on the post-sale side with customer success teams, and his advice is addressed to CSMs and their managers.
Hentschel works on the pre-sale and relationship side with sellers and procurement, focusing on the buying decision itself.
A reader seeking customer-success practice should follow Moyer; a reader seeking sales–procurement relationship advice should follow Hentschel.
The LinkedIn profile had 11,232 followers when observed on 7 October 2026, and the four posts address people who sell to procurement or work inside procurement—the same audience a procurement–sales alignment partnership would target.
The writing explains how procurement buyers shape decisions before an RFP is issued, why vague “we” commitments drain individual accountability, and why suppliers who bring ideas before being asked stop being vendors.
That points to B2B sales, key-account and procurement practitioners rather than general marketing readers.
The posts do not show who reads or shares them, their demographics, country or seniority breakdown, or engagement figures such as likes, comments and shares; they therefore do not establish readers’ job titles, company sizes or decision-making authority.
Before committing budget, ask Jens for recent LinkedIn follower demographics or an audience survey covering country, job function and seniority, plus engagement rates on comparable procurement–sales posts.
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.
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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.
A B2B sales enablement company wants a thought leadership partnership on procurement-sales alignment.
Reasons
Jens Hentschel's posts focus on this exact boundary. Each closes with the same line about building bridges between procurement and sales, and the arguments address people who sell into procurement or work inside it.
The work offers reusable teaching angles, not generic relationship advice: the claim that roughly 80% of a buying decision is made before procurement replies to a supplier email; the accountability problem in the word 'we'; the difference between a quarterly visit and bringing a customer an unsolicited idea; and the bias in supplier questionnaires that miss buyers who have given up.
The webinar announcement shows a teaching format beyond written posts: a 60-minute session on a working day inside procurement. A co-hosted webinar or educational asset would build on a format already present in Jens Hentschel's posts.
Audience evidence is directional but consistent. The LinkedIn profile had 11,232 followers when observed on 7 October 2026, and the writing addresses B2B sales, key-account, and procurement practitioners. Check reach, seniority, and response rates before committing budget; demographic and engagement data are unavailable.
Fit limits
No sponsorship policy, rate card, rights terms, or inquiry route appears in Jens Hentschel's posts. Agree on format, disclosure, review, and usage rights directly with Jens Hentschel rather than assume published terms.
When to choose a specialist
Poor fit on the evidence reviewed.
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Brief
A procurement software vendor wants a product-led demand-generation campaign with gated demo requests, pipeline targets, and performance guarantees.
Reasons
The reviewed work offers opinion and explanation, not product demonstrations. The posts analyse buyer behaviour, language, and feedback bias; none shows a software implementation, product walkthrough, or direct response offer.
The evidence reviewed documents no commercial format, rate card, deliverable specification, or performance history to support a pipeline-guarantee brief. It records no sponsorship formats, but does not show that sponsorship is refused.
Audience evidence cannot support a firm pipeline forecast. The only measured audience figure is a follower count of 11,232 observed on 7 October 2026; demographics, job titles, company sizes, and engagement rates are unavailable.
A gated demo campaign typically needs conversion assets and tracking, which Jens Hentschel's posts do not provide. The webinar is an educational session promoted to readers, not evidence of a lead-capture funnel.
What would change it
Ask for evidence of commercial formats, audience demographics and engagement, and sales outcomes from similar campaigns.
A worked campaign example
Angle
Use Jens Hentschel's recurring argument as the spine: sellers lose the deal before the RFP because they arrive after procurement has defined the need, scoped the specification, assessed the market, and briefed stakeholders. Build the series around that timeline, not generic relationship-building.
Campaign
Procurement-sales alignment thought leadership series for a B2B sales enablement audience.
Caveat
This is a proposed campaign angle, not a documented offer from Jens Hentschel. The posts include no partnership terms or inquiry route.
Format
A three-part LinkedIn essay series with one accompanying webinar or recorded session. Jens Hentschel's webinar announcement shows the live teaching format; the written posts show the short-argument format. Both have precedents in the posts.
Open commercial questions
Deliverable scope and rights
Sponsorship disclosure and review terms
Audience demographics, seniority, and engagement rates
Availability and cost
Why it fits
It uses the creator's actual arguments and demonstrated formats, speaks to the practitioner audience addressed in the posts, and gives the sponsoring sales enablement company a practical teaching sequence rather than a brand-awareness placement.
Worked sequence
Format
Co-authored essay or short video script that walks through the buyer's day and identifies where a supplier can add value.
Premise
Procurement's day starts long before a supplier is invited in; roughly 80% of the buying decision is already made by the time procurement replies to an email.
Reader action
The audience maps its own accounts against the buyer-day stages and identifies where first contact happens.
Title
Before the RFP lands
Format
Essay plus a one-page language audit worksheet: catch each “we,” restate it as what I will do, and use the worksheet in 1:1s or leadership reviews.
Premise
“We will take care of this” spreads ownership: buyers hear a polite gesture or an empty promise, while strategy documents written in “we” leave employees without individual action.
Reader action
A sales leader runs the audit on one live account or internal plan.
Title
“We” is where accountability goes missing
Format
Short diagnostic piece with a discussion prompt for lost-deal or account-review sessions.
Premise
Supplier questionnaires hear from buyers who still want change, but miss those who have written you off.
Reader action
The team reviews one lost account without relying on questionnaire data.
Choose Sarah Toomey when a campaign needs the procurement-side perspective for audiences seeking that voice.
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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.
The posts are tied to a vendor platform: one launches Levelpath's Ranger platform, and another shares a colleague's take on why buying AI is slow and expensive.
That makes the teaching closer to product and category messaging than a repeatable seller lesson.
Unlike Hentschel's recurring sales-facing assets—the buyer-day timeline before the RFP, the 'we' accountability audit, and the questionnaire-bias diagnostic—the posts do not offer those tools.
Ask for examples of how the content would support sales education.
Choosing Sarah Toomey trades a sustained sales-education spine for an insider's account of procurement itself.
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.
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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.
The reviewed work is construction-specific and written for procurement professionals, not sellers, so a general B2B sales enablement audience focused on procurement-sales alignment would need the material re-angled.
The posts explain the shift and offer a training session, but do not show sales-side practices such as contacting procurement before the RFP or auditing accountability language.
Ask how the material would be adapted for sellers.
Choosing Suzanne Hill trades cross-industry guidance for sellers for construction-specific strategic procurement depth.
Choose Mason Moyer when the campaign moves to the post-sale side of the customer relationship.
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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.
The posts focus on customer success, not procurement or pre-sale engagement, so they do not cover the buyer-day argument or the procurement-sales boundary that define Hentschel's work.
Ask for examples that establish procurement relevance before choosing Mason Moyer.
This changes the campaign topic, bringing customer-success material from a different stage of the relationship rather than just a different voice.
This profile draws on four posts published from a LinkedIn account in Jens Hentschel's name: a webinar announcement about how a procurement buyer spends a working day, a post on the word "we" and the way it spreads ownership, a post arguing that customer care means bringing a customer something before they ask, and a post on the bias built into supplier questionnaires.
All four posts were read in full.
They carry no publication dates, so the arguments are presented as a consistent set of themes rather than a sequence, and the webinar post advertises a session rather than recording what was taught in it.
The account showed 11,232 followers when observed on 7 October 2026; no engagement, demographic, or sponsorship-terms data was available.
The three comparison creators are drawn from their own published posts, read the same way.
The posts name no employer, client, sponsor, or product, so no brand relationship is asserted.
Anything a reader should check before making a decision — audience make-up, commercial terms, response rates — is flagged where it matters rather than filled in from assumption.
