A B2B eCommerce solution will ensure availability 24/7 and increased sales

Personal contact just won’t cut it

Many (way too many) wholesale and B2B businesses rely solely on personal contact when it comes to order management. Personal contact comes in many forms; some use phone calls, while others rely on email. Common for most of them is that there can be a significant lag in time from when a customer requests the contact to when a response is given. It might be because the customer resides in a different time zone. It might be that the employee is out of the office. Or maybe the seller is so busy that they just aren’t able to reply instantly.

If you are one of those companies that rely on personal contact, you know how important it is to respond swiftly. It might directly connect to whether or not customers commit to the order they are requesting. Or even if they are ever going to re-order.

What most companies fail to understand is that the only reason that customers are requesting (and expecting) that personal contact, is because you, as a company, instructed them to do so. It doesn’t mean that they necessarily value the dialogue and manual approach. On the contrary, they would likely appreciate a digital ordering option with automatic and instant feedback even more.

As a wholesale company, you need to put yourself in the place of your retailers and buyers

Just like you, your customers are busy people. Sometimes they’re in their stores getting a request from a customer which they need to ask you about. It might be stock levels, product availability, or order status. While their customer is waiting, it’s not exactly convenient for them to pick up the phone to get hold of you or one of your employees. Especially if they just need to order your products, or get that simple answer they are looking for.

At other times, your buyers are in meetings talking over new collections, purchases, and planning. If you are not making ordering easily available to the individual buyers, chances are that they will select other brands over you. Or perhaps simply forget that you exist, because they weren’t able to order instantly when they needed to.

With a B2B eCommerce solution, you make your brand easy and simple to interact with for buyers. It enables them to place orders at all times with instant feedback and makes it easy to look up new products in your collection while sharing them with their colleagues. Still, having doubts if retailers really prefer a B2B eCommerce?

Time for reflection

Now, let’s take a second to reflect. Imagine that you are the retailer/buyer. How would you feel about a brand that required all orders to go through spreadsheets or by phone?

Compare that to a brand with a B2B eCommerce solution that allows you to log on at any time to place orders, see stock, and receive confirmation within minutes. We think we know what you will prefer.

Most of the brands that already use a B2B eCommerce solution like Turis, can confirm that not only does the order volume increase, but the frequency of orders from the same retailers/buyers also increases.

A B2B eCommerce solution is the… Solution

As you might have guessed by now, what you need to do, is to get a B2B eCommerce solution to manage your B2B and wholesale sales. Earlier, the cost of such solutions was relatively high, resulting in many companies being reluctant to implement them.

But the times are changing! The rise of SaaS solutions has also affected the price of B2B eCommerce solutions, meaning you can get started at a very affordable monthly price! Below, we briefly touch upon some benefits of going digital, and why it beats manual order handling.

Confirm orders to buyers immediately by email and reduce cancellations

As mentioned above, one of the most significant drawbacks of manual order handling is the delay or lag in time from receiving the order to the point when a back-office employee picks it up. This delay might not seem significant to you as a seller. But once again, we need to look at this from the perspective of the buyer. After all, it is your benefit to get your products in stores.

The buyer is probably in the process of ordering products from several brands. They might be stocking up on existing products or working with some that are brand new. One thing is for sure, the buyer has ordering top of mind at this point, and you must engage with the buyer exactly at this point – not days or weeks later. Chances are that before you get to do your manual confirmation to the buyer, he or she might have found other suppliers with a smoother ordering process. Ultimately you end up with order cancellations and a lost sale.

If you give your customers the option to order digitally and 24/7 availability, the risk of order cancellations is considerably decreased! You should also keep in mind that not every product is suitable for B2B eCommerce.

The benefits of being digital

With a B2B eCommerce solution like Turis, all buyers receive an instant notification when placing an order. This confirms that their order is received and at the same time supplies them with the necessary order data (products, quantities, prices). You, as the brand, get a similar notification about the sale you just made.

Managing your B2B and wholesale business digitally also improves customer retention by giving you a better overview. Believe it or not, many brands actually tend to forget about retailers – especially the smaller ones. This is a complete waste of potential sales.

With Turis, you can even set up custom integrations (no code required!) that transfer the order data to other platforms. You can transfer data to other platforms like accounting systems, CRM, or even trigger a notification to a custom group of people, using the channels you prefer (email, text/SMS, Slack, Discord). This will enable you to save time and money by eliminating manual order handling.

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