Strike Up B-to-B Business in the Consumer World

By Susan McIntyre

Patient: Doctor, although I have a consumer catalog, I’ve found some business customers on my list. I’m unsure of whether or not to try to find more business customers. Is B-to-B a good growth tonic for me, or a snake-oil serum?

Catalog Doctor: B-to-B can be a good segment for some consumer catalogers to try to grow, especially if you sell business-appropriate gifts or productivity products. Plus, average order values can be double that of consumers, which can help cure slow growth and profitability. To grow that B-to-B segment, however, you need different treatments than you’re used to. Here’s a nine-step prescription.

1. Hang a welcome sign.

Set aside space in your catalog telling businesses that you’re open for business with them. Say you understand and can serve their needs, and explain why your products are right for their business.

2. Offer volume discounts.

A great advantage of B-to-B is business’s tendency to buy in quantity. To encourage quantity buying, follow these three steps:

* Develop a discount schedule;

* Analyze what your savings will be on large orders due to savings like lower per-order labor costs; and

* Pass a portion of that volume savings on to your customers as an incentive.

3. Offer credit terms, purchase orders.

Don’t force B-to-B customers to change their business practices to do business with you — adjust to them. Make sure your systems can accommodate billing terms and accept purchase orders, and that your accounting department can accommodate credit checking. Don’t try to make B-to-B customers all pay by credit card. You’ll vastly decrease your catalog’s B-to-B potential.

4. Have specially trained CSRs available.

You needn’t have a dedicated B-to-B customer service team at first. But do train a few of your top customer service staffers to take B-to-B calls and help walk business customers through questions, options and ordering.

Offer your B-to-B customers one or more of these:

* a special toll-free number;

* a special extension; or

* just have the caller ask for the “business specialist.”

5. Offer company names and logos embroidered or engraved on your products.

Businesses appreciate the value of advertising their name and will appreciate your products more if you can include their name or logo. Lands’ End embroiders company names/logos on polo shirts. Things Remembered engraves on pens and clocks.

Even food gifts can bear company names and logos. Take Fairytale Brownies, for example, which offers customized bands that slip over its brownie boxes.

If your company offers embroidery, engraving, silk-screening, hand-painting, etc. for consumers, it’s easy to add the same services for business customers.

As for name/logo charges, you can have charges and minimums or, like Miles Kimball and Lillian Vernon, wrap personalization charges into each product’s price. Study your own internal costs and processes to see what works best for you.

6. Offer product customization.

Your exact products may not exactly fit all your business customers’ needs. If you can customize for them, you’ll expand your B-to-B market.

Gift baskets are an example. It’s not usually profitable to allow consumers to custom-fill their basket. But business customers may want 100 identical baskets to reach a certain price point. Help them choose a custom set of basket contents — even including items they supply, such as their business card. And since you’re purchasing, packing and shipping in volume, you gain assembly-line economies.

7. Offer a broad range of price points.

Business gift-giving — for both holiday and year-round recognition — is a big market. It requires a wide range of price points: from employee birthdays to impressive “best client” Christmas gifts.

So, the doctor has a question for the patient: Can you offer any options in the $5 to $10 range? You can? That’s great. It’s also OK to sell in minimums of two or three at a time if needed.

8. Make it easy to order in quantity for multiple ship-tos.

Avoid the big frustration many customers experience when they try to order all their holiday gifts at once. They find that to order on the Web, they have to re-enter every different ship-to address as if it’s an entirely new order.

Consumers get plenty annoyed when they find it hard to ship to three or 10 different people on one order. But you’ll find that businesses can have even bigger needs, such as shipping to hundreds of recipients on a single order. They’ll get so annoyed that they’ll cancel their order.

Instead, make Web ordering easy. Check out GiftTree.com for a slick system to add all the gift recipients you want to a single order.

9. Appearance counts when business orders arrive.

Most of your B-to-B orders will be gifts, and customers want their gifts to look great when they arrive. The first impression recipients have of these gifts reflects directly on your business customers.

So, I highly recommend that you don’t just polybag items and ship in a manila envelope. Instead, follow this checklist:

* The gifts inside should look good;

* If items aren’t naturally “giftable” (like gift baskets or food towers), make sure they come in presentable boxes or envelopes;

* Pack items to arrive in good condition;

* The outer shipping carton should at least be neat and fresh-looking (no reused cartons, please); attractively printed cartons are even better;

* Include packing slips clearly stating who the gifts are from;

* If possible, offer gift wrapping or gift boxes; and

* Every order is about making a great gift impression.

Susan J. McIntyre is president of McIntyre Direct, a catalog marketing agency and consulting firm based in Portland, Ore. Reach her at (503) 286-1400 or susan@mcintyredirect.com.

For two more ways to make the most of your B-to-B customers, click on the Web-exclusive sidebar, “Local, Expansion Issues.”