Breaking Down Barriers to B-to-B Online Commerce

1. Improved user experience. Customers’ expectations for B-to-B online commerce have dramatically shifted and continue to evolve rapidly. Just like everyone else, your customers are spending time — whether work or personal — on social networks and retail shopping sites. B-to-C sites are increasingly setting the bar for B-to-B brands in terms of the level of customer service, ease of navigation and overall online shopping experience that users look for, whether in a B-to-B or B-to-C setting.

Understanding how your business buyers are shopping means meeting their desire for a richer, deeper browsing experience. One area where B-to-C e-commerce sites typically excel is in their ability to gather relevant data and provide recommendations tailored to each shopper. Knowing the right products or bundles of products to place in front of your business buyer opens tremendous opportunities for upselling, cross-selling and cross-promotion.

2. Subscription and renewal revenue. Your relationship with a business buyer doesn't end at the initial sale. In fact, it's only beginning. That said, marketing channels usually focus on landing that initial sale. They often overlook the customer lifecycle, ignoring opportunities for follow-up sales and other ongoing revenue streams such as subscriptions and renewals.

This occurs for a number of reasons: sales may fall below minimum order sizes; sales cycles are different; compensation structures don't create sufficient incentive to pursue renewals; etc.

Nonetheless, an attempt to capture subscription revenue through direct-to-business buyer sales is likely to be viewed as a channel conflict. Some of your sales teams and/or channels may feel threatened that they're being asked to give up their customers and in the process lose opportunities for future sales.

The reality is that many resellers aren't set up to manage subscription and renewal sales. A direct online channel can more effectively service those customers. Your resellers can be compensated for the loss in potential sales through an annuity-like revenue stream. I've seen some leading-edge businesses employ this type of arrangement, resulting in improved renewal rates, lower channel costs and closer relationships with customers — all while freeing up resellers to pursue larger, more lucrative sales.

3. Closing open niches. The various B-to-B sales channels that companies rely on can deliver significant value doing what they do best — pursuing enterprise sales and large group orders. These channels may also be leaving significant money on the table by neglecting smaller orders, however, everything from small businesses to individual orders from inside large organizations.

In fact, some of the sales channels companies rely on, both internally and externally, to deliver revenue are typically built to focus on large orders. Their compensation structures, order processing, sales training and management are specifically designed towards that. Some channels, whether resellers or internal sales teams, often have minimum order size requirements.

Capturing smaller customers and their orders requires coordinating ordering, payment processing, invoicing and supply chain with your existing infrastructure. When done correctly, untapped niches can result in significant new revenue streams as well as invaluable one-on-one relationships with business buyers.

Evolving the Ecosystem
Many retailers also struggle to adapt their internal sales channels because they've become dependent on the existing ecosystem. At a certain point it becomes somewhat of a bottleneck, however, restraining businesses from fully realizing the opportunities for sales and preventing channel evolution.