Use e-Commerce as the first point of contact and source of information

The purpose of a B2B e-commerce must be more than just completing a transaction. Rather than having your sales team being the first points of contact, position your digital assets within your e-commerce site as the first resource for prospective buyers. Provide valuable information like: 

• How to purchase
• Blog articles on interesting tips
• FAQ
• "More like this" or "Product you may be interested in" query  

Make use of automated bots to assist buyers with their initial inquiries. Direct qualified leads to sales teams so that sales can offer product expertise or suggest components that will work well with the buyer's existing equipment. 

Your e-commerce site frees the sales team from administrative tasks related to standard orders. Sales can then provide a higher level of customer service, step into a consultative capacity and answer specific product-related questions.  

Use e-Commerce as a customer self-serve portal

You can make use of your e-commerce site as a self-service portal for your customers to view their account history and personalized pricing. Provide the customer with access to their dashboard to view the pricing (based on volume or contract) that applies specifically to them.

Your e-commerce site allows customers to track their shipments, verify availability and see what high-frequency products will need reordering at any time during the day, even after office hours. 

The new way of selling

While the role of the sales has evolved, it is still imperative that sales staff develop a firm understanding of their clients and the products. Train your sales representatives to be experts on your products and services, going beyond reciting your catalogue or eCommerce site. Having them discuss in-depth feature specifications and real-world success cases will help prospects feel more confident about their decisions. In some cases, some customers may have specific customisation - this is where sales can pick up the slack, to get into deeper technical discussion with them.

Educate your sales team to study the analytic reports - showing them the consumer's data and shopping history, so that they can have a more nuanced view of the customer, discovering insights that can potentially help drive sales or customer loyalty.

Final Thoughts

Think about how much your sales truly understand how eCommerce systems can help them increase their sales. Decide how to assist them in embracing the system as a part of their selling process and make your platform relevant, easy, and profitable for your sales.

Demonstrate to your sales team that eCommerce frees them from the mundane chore of standard order-taking and motivate them to acquire problem-solving or consultative skills that will enable them to go in-depth with their customers.

Lastly, integrate your eCommerce site with your back-end systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), and customer relationship management (CRM). This allows seamless data exchange between IT, sales and marketing - automate workflow or build triggers by specific rules or actions to support sales effectively.

Read our customer success: How A*Stars - RSC recalibrated and integrated their eCommerce site with their backend systems. 

Grow better with Zooloo, we are happy to help you get started with digital transformation, please contact us at sales@zooloo.asia.

• Pick up some marketing tips from our “How to” blog series 
• Read about The Digital Transformation Journey
• Learn more about our “Digital Backbones”

Tags: #CRM #MicrosoftDynamics #digitaltransformation #B2B #digitaladoption #digitalintegration #digitalsolutions #wholesaletradesector #wholesaletrade